West Africa has moved from reactive military intervention to a preventative, development-led human security model, ECOWAS’s permanent representative to the African Union told the AU Peace and Security Council.
Hon Abdou Kolley made the case during an open session of the council on 2 November 2026, held under the chairmanship of Côte d’Ivoire, which holds the council’s chair for the month.
The session formed part of a month of activities marking 20 years since the African Union adopted its Post-Conflict Reconstruction and Development policy, and brought together council members, AU member states, regional economic communities and partners to compare experiences in implementing it.
In a report from the Economic Community of West African States, Kolley said ECOWAS had spent the past two decades building out peace infrastructure.
He cited stabilising transitions in The Gambia and Guinea-Bissau and comprehensive disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration programmes in Liberia as examples of interventions that moved away from capital-centric approaches.
He described the current focus as structural development, naming youth unemployment, cross-border resource conflicts and the socio-economic vulnerabilities that radical groups exploit.
According to his account, ECOWAS has built an architecture in which the ECOWAS Standby Force and the ECOWAS Early Warning and Response Network, known as ECOWARN, serve as immediate cushions for regional stability.
Looking to the next decade under ECOWAS Vision 2050 and the revised AU Post-Conflict Reconstruction and Development policy, Kolley said the shifting security landscape requires tighter institutional synergy between ECOWAS and the African Union.
He identified two gaps. On what he called the response gap, he said early-warning mechanisms are technically sound but political response often does not match their speed.
On what he called the sovereign funding gap, he said the region remains unsustainably reliant on external partners and called for the collective operationalisation of the ECOWAS Peace Fund and full use of the African Union Peace Fund to anchor African-led solutions.
Kolley asked the Peace and Security Council to commit to three immediate actions: harmonising the African Union–ECOWAS relationship to eliminate institutional duplication and streamline the division of labour; prioritising decentralised, community-owned peacebuilding initiatives focused on women and youth; and maintaining institutional solidarity to bridge geopolitical fragmentation across the sub-region.
He closed by urging those in the room to use the 20-year milestone not only to celebrate but to institutionalise permanent resilience.
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