January 2022 – ongoing

Principal Investigator

Professor Adekeye Adebajo

Partnering with the Sweden-based Nordic Africa Institute (NAI) in Uppsala, CAS has conducted a four-year research and policy project (2022-2025) on "Assessing Africa's Post-Cold War Security Architecture" funded by the Swedish Research Council, Konrad Adenauer Stiftung, and Trust Africa. Implemented under the leadership of CAS Senior Research Fellow, Professor Adekeye Adebajo, and NAI Senior Researcher, Dr. Angela Muvumba Sellström, the project also had a post-doctoral fellow, Dr. Samuel Igba, in 2023/2024. This work has brought together an interdisciplinary and inter-generational group of about 50 scholars and policymakers to examine Africa's security architecture over the last three post-Cold War decades. The project has involved scholars from the fields of international relations, political science, history, law, security studies, public policy, and human rights.

This work has assessed conflict prevention, peacemaking, peacekeeping, and peacebuilding across Africa, as well as thematic issues of human security focused on women, children, human rights, and the environment. Policy research seminars have been held in Pretoria (2022), Addis Ababa (2023), and Uppsala (2023), involving African and Western scholars, policymakers, and civil society. A 26-chapter edited volume, Security in Contemporary Africa: Towards A New Pax Africana (Adekeye Adebajo ed.), is expected to be published from the project by December 2025. Professor Adebajo published a related biography, Boutros Boutros-Ghali: Afro-Arab Prophet, Pharaoh, and Pope (Jacana and Routledge: 2022 and 2023); three policy briefs have been published and disseminated from the project, as well as 10 newspaper articles in African and Western media. The project has also built an active and diverse Community of Practice on African conflict management.

Research Team

Prof Adekeye Adebajo is a Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for the Advancement of Scholarship at the University of Pretoria in South Africa. He was the Director of the Institute for Pan-African Thought and Conversation (IPATC) at the University of Johannesburg (UJ) and Executive Director of the Centre for Conflict Resolution (CCR). Professor Adebajo served on United Nations missions in South Africa, Western Sahara and Iraq, and was Director of the Africa Programme at the International Peace Institute (IPI) in New York. He is the author of several books, including Building Peace in West Africa, UN Peacekeeping in Africa, and Boutros Boutros-Ghali: Afro-Arab Prophet, Pharaoh, and Pope (2022). A graduate of the University of Ibadan, Nigeria, and the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy in Massachusetts, US, he obtained his doctorate from Oxford University in England.

Dr. Angela Muvumba Sellström is a Senior Researcher at the Nordic Africa Institute (NAI), Uppsala, Sweden and has contributed to policy research in Africa, Sweden and internationally for over 20 years. She directed and carried out programmes at the African Centre for the Constructive Resolution of Disputes (ACCORD) and the Centre for Conflict Resolution (CCR). She has been a political officer in the Office of the Chairperson at the African Union Commission and a senior programme officer at the International Peace Institute (IPI). She is a leading researcher on wartime sexual violence prevention, international interventions and mediation, gender, women, peace and security, and the UN Security Council and the role of non-permanent members.

Project Outputs

Policy Brief 1: Fifteen Diplomats on a Powder Keg November 2022	Policy Brief 2: Pax Africana and Africa's Post-Cold War Security Architecture August 2023	Policy Brief 3: Beating African Swords into Ploughshares Febraury 2024