The world is experiencing a dangerous interregnum between the declining post-World War II international order and the emerging new global system. This transition brings with it multiple critical challenges, including the erosion of multilateral institutions and the rules-based international order, deepening distrust among global powers, intensifying geopolitical rivalries, and diminished capacity and political will for crisis response by traditional responders.
The Pan African Agenda Institute (PAAI) presents Innovating the Future Initiative (IFI), a program addressing critical shortcomings in African peace and security frameworks during a precarious transition in the global order. More worrying still, the African peace and security architecture – a major investment by African leaders and development partners over the last two decades, which at times has shown great promise – is faltering, unable to prevent or end wars in Ethiopia, Sudan, and the DRC, or manage Ethiopia-Somalia, Ethiopia-Eritrea and DRC-Rwanda tensions.
In 2022 alone, organized violence claimed 237,000 lives – the highest since the Rwandan genocide – with major conflicts in Ethiopia, Sudan, and the DRC receiving an inadequate international response. The latest data for current fatalities, displacement and economic costs of wars is even more staggering.
Wars in Sudan, Ethiopia, and the broader Horn of Africa have caused close to one million fatalities since the end of the Cold War. Recently, since the war in Tigray state, active conflicts have sharply surged and inflicted economic losses exceeding half a trillion dollars for the Horn of Africa alone, and more than a quarter trillion in Sudan. With 123 million displaced people globally, 45 million from Africa (37% of the total), and a 6% annual increase, refugee flows, migration and displacement cannot be addressed without tackling root causes: conflict, atrocities, and failed or mismanaged transitions. War drums between Ethiopia and Eritrea threaten to unravel the Pretoria Agreement and have the potential to create another Yemen-like situation.
The coming African elections in 2026 and 2027 – affecting nearly half a billion people – carry enormous risks, and may either lead to democratic transitions or increased violence in Nigeria, Ethiopia, Kenya, and Uganda, among others. As states disintegrate, the risk of further mass atrocities increases. In West Africa and the Sahel, six military coups since 2000 have shaken the region, with the African Union and ECOWAS unable to mount a convincing response.
Into that void step outside actors, such as Turkey, the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, pursuing varied interests that may undermine the role of the AU and Regional Economic Communities (RECs) in peace and security, mediation, and the integrity of the state in Sudan, Ethiopia, Somalia, and Libya, becoming so deeply involved that they constrain and overshadow domestic political and military forces while heavily backing warring parties. These external actors have largely taken over regional mediation initiatives, with the African Union and RECs relegated to secondary roles, despite their primary mandate in conflict prevention.
New thinking and bold proposals about how to revitalize or replace old structures are urgently needed. This is where the Pan African Agenda's Innovating the Future Initiative comes in. Aimed at instigating vigorous discussion and urging immediate action, IFI is a thought leader and convenor that examines the existing African peace and security architecture and its relations with the ongoing reform initiatives of the United Nations and other multilateral bodies, advocating for a transformed, more effective architecture.
PAAI's IFI pursues five approaches, with five specific deliverables:
First, the critical IFI applied policy research project scrutinizes, from an African perspective, why the existing African peace and security architecture has proven inadequate and, in some cases, has failed to prevent conflicts and atrocities, leading to unprecedented civilian casualties since the end of the Cold War and the Rwandan genocide.
Deliverable: Conduct applied policy research to develop recommendations for overhauling African peace and security frameworks
Second, IFI advances bold proposals with strategies to transition from state-centric peace and security frameworks to a more inclusive architecture. This new structure should pave the way for action-oriented preventive diplomacy, regionally focused mediation, and a form of multilateralism that ensures balanced participation from political/policy actors, diplomats, technical communities, civil society, and private entities.
Deliverable: Develop bold proposals for overhauling African peace and security frameworks
Third, IFI deliberative platforms further develop, and stress-test the bold proposals by convening diverse groups of experts and consulting broadly, drawing on the decades of experience of the AU. The platform aims to address a critical communications gap between three communities at the heart of effective peace and security architecture: the political and policy community, which drives national agendas and decision-making processes; the diplomatic and multilateral community, tasked with facilitating cross-border cooperation and transnational, multilateral institutional interventions; and the technical community, including civil society, scientific, and business actors. This platform also bridges the alarming disconnect between early warning systems and decisive action by facilitating unprecedented dialogue between political leaders, multilateral institutions, and civil society experts.
Deliverable: organize deliberative platforms for effective coordination and collaboration among the siloed nature of key stakeholder communities – by building bridges between those communities through convening and informal networking.
Fourth, IFI constituency building aims to center prevention of wars and atrocities as the utmost and urgent priority of the peace and security architectures, prioritizing preventive mandates, including early warning, preventive diplomacy, and mediation. At transnational, national, subnational and local levels, IFI constituency building will fortify innovative conflict responses by developing alternative governance models and engaging younger generations to enhance preventive mandates and improve early warning-response mechanisms at national and local levels. At global and continental levels, IFI constituency building will aim to create urgency on the need for a sustainable world order, generate innovative conflict prevention solutions, and strengthen African agency in global affairs.
Deliverable: Organize cohorts of committed African professionals—including leading Pan-African scholars, media professionals, women leaders, and others—to effectively coordinate and mobilize their professional peers
Fifth, one key constituency that will be engaged on all levels – global, continental, national and local – will be Gen Z. IFI will offer alternative spaces for Gen Z to engage with other Pan-Africanist scholars and thought leaders. Employing leaders of Africa's youthful population, this investment in Gen Z will catalyze a transformative peace and geopolitical agenda, positioning Africa as a proactive shaper of international norms rather than a passive recipient of external interventions.
Deliverable: Organize cohorts of committed African Gen Z professionals—leaders, media specialists, activists, emerging scholars, and AI experts—for effective coordination and mobilization. Convene mentorship sessions focused on the strategic role of African youth in domestic political reforms, Pan-African institutional reform, and strengthening Africa's geopolitical agency.
Project: Converse with Gen Z on democracy and geopolitics
Africa's youth demographic represents an emerging domestic and geopolitical force increasingly courted by domestic political actors and major global powers, including Europe, the United States, Russia and China. The upcoming African elections in 2026 and 2027 – affecting nearly half a billion people across Kenya, Nigeria, Senegal, South Africa, Ghana, the Democratic Republic of Congo and the Sahelian countries – carry enormous risks that may lead to either democratic transitions or increased violence. With widening political divisions between elites and younger generations, particularly Gen Z, coupled with extreme polarization, these elections pose significant challenges for the continent's stability. They also present a great opportunity for inclusive democratic governance, where youth could play a central role.
Gen Z – young people born between 1997 and 2012 – is reshaping political discourse across Africa, leveraging digital platforms for advocacy and redefining engagement with governance structures, including Pan-African institutions. As they rapidly become the continent's primary labor force, those entering the middle class and voting bloc represent the most technologically connected and conversant generation in African history, increasingly active and assertive in both traditional and alternative political spaces.
This engagement in peace and security is already evident across the continent, from youth-led protests against government repression to grassroots initiatives addressing communal conflicts. Their digital fluency enables rapid mobilization, amplifying marginalized voices and holding leaders accountable in unprecedented ways. Yet significant challenges – including political suppression, unemployment, and lack of institutional support – continue to hinder their full participation in shaping Africa's future.
For this youthful population to translate into a demographic dividend and technological leap forward, favorable political and geopolitical conditions are essential. The African state must be reimagined and reformed, as must Pan-African institutions such as the Regional Economic Communities (RECs) and the African Union (AU), which are expected to represent and promote African agency globally while supporting youth aspirations both domestically and internationally.
PAAI's approach
PAAI believes Gen Z represents a crucial constituency for addressing the governance and geopolitical challenges Africa faces, and more essentially for seizing opportunities to reform governance at global, continental, national, and local levels. African youth offer considerable potential for expanding Africa's broader geopolitical agency and influence in global governance frameworks.
PAAI's vision extends beyond individual youth capacity building to create a digitally mobilized, politically active African youth, capable of influencing and informing the transformation of the African state and the continental Pan-African institutions. This enhanced capacity will strengthen Africa's global agency in international forums and initiatives.
Components of Converse with Gen Z
Under its Innovating the Future initiative, Converse with Gen Z aims to reposition the strategic role of African youth within domestic political reforms and the reform of Pan-African institutions of peace and governance. The project promotes the role of African youth in strengthening Africa's geopolitical agency.
Converse with Gen Z has three components:
Component 1: Mentorship by senior Pan-African leaders
Converse with Gen Z facilitates meaningful engagement between senior Pan-African intellectuals and Gen Z leaders through horizontal, peer-learning mentorship featuring deliberative dialogue. The initiative applies a deliberative approach, where mentors and Gen Z participants engage in interactive, two-way exchanges of ideas and thoughts. Two-thirds of the allocated time will be dedicated to Gen Z voices, ensuring youth perspectives drive the conversation.
Component 2: Reimagining the African State
The project engages youth in deliberating on and rethinking the nature of the African state and its relationship with citizens. Discussions focus on reimagining the role of the state regarding borders, state-society relations, and the distribution of power and wealth within the political economy. The initiative examines how state formation is shaped by political and social forces, external powers, and geopolitical competition across Africa.
Key discussions with Gen Z participants explore:
- State legitimacy and democratic governance
- The complex interplay of identity, power, and resource politics in shaping contemporary African politics and society
- The role of the African Union and Regional Economic Communities in peace and governance
- How African states manage relations with external powers amid geopolitical competition
Component 3: Geopolitical literacy and agency
Mentorship sessions focus on building a comprehensive understanding of contemporary geopolitical dynamics affecting Africa. Participants develop a critical understanding of how intensifying global competition has altered Africa's interventionist and integrationist roles, as outlined by the African Union and Regional Economic Communities.
The program examines:
- Strategies for safeguarding and advancing African interests in the face of increasing global geopolitical competition
- How artificial intelligence can enhance Africa's geopolitical positioning, from predictive analytics for conflict prevention to AI-powered advocacy in multilateral forums
- AI's potential for strengthening African agency in the G20, UN80 initiative, UN Pact for the Future, and UN reforms
The initiative offers alternative spaces for Gen Z to engage with Pan-Africanist scholars and thought leaders, building the next-generation constituency for legitimate governance and prevention of war and atrocities through platforms for meaningful dialogue and collaboration.
Expected outcomes and potential impact:
Increased Gen Z engagement in African governance, peace and security
Enhanced participation in Pan-African discourse creates a more vibrant and representative political landscape. The project builds stronger constituencies of young Pan-African advocates who actively influence policy spaces at all levels of governance.
Improved visibility of youth voices
Greater representation in multilateral and continental decision-making ensures that Africa's demographic dividend translates into political influence. The initiative facilitates the development of new narratives around Pan-Africanism, led by Gen Z perspectives and experiences.
Strengthened African geopolitical agency
A digitally mobilized and politically active youth base creates sustainable change that transcends electoral cycles and political transitions. This positions Africa as a proactive shaper of international norms rather than a passive recipient of external interventions.
Enhanced digital and civic literacy
Improved digital and civic literacy among African youth, especially in activism and governance, creates more effective advocates for continental interests. This includes developing AI literacy that positions young Africans as contributors to, rather than consumers of, technological advancement.
Image: UN Photo/Mark Garten
