African Solutions to African Problems: Political Sloganeering or African Renaissance?

When establishing the African Union (AU), the founders took cognisance of the fact that the scourge of conflicts was a major impediment to the socio-economic development of the continent. They therefore noted the need to promote peace, security, and stability as a prerequisite for socio-economic development, and drafted an agenda to tackle African problems. While some African elites, politicians, and increasingly the Africans in the security fields, appear to cherish the somewhat canned notion of ‘African Solutions to African Problems’ (ASAP), many others—owing to a history of failure of similar ideas—regard this as mere political sloganeering. Drawing on the Somalia crisis, this chapter examines whether ASAP has been used as a mere cliché of political sloganeers or presents a valid rubric for addressing African problems. The argument forwarded here is that, while ASAP captures Africa’s substantive values and priorities in conflict resolution and addressing Africa’s security challenges, it remains theoretical, without the requisite capacity or functional tools to operationalize.