Can a foreign policy framework enhance a common position in Africa?
Amid a fragmented international order, a coherent AU foreign policy may unify responses, but success depends on member states.
In February 2026, following recommendations from Kenyan President William Ruto in his role as champion of African Union (AU) institutional reform, the AU Assembly took decision 967. This directed the AU Commission chairperson to select five experts (one from each region) to draft an African foreign policy framework by the 40th ordinary AU summit in January 2027.
The move reflects growing concern that Africa is operating in an increasingly fragmented international order marked by intensified great/hegemonic power competition, weakened multilateralism and the weaponisation of trade, finance, technology and security partnerships. In this context, African states are frequently expected to articulate unified positions on global crises.
Africa’s demographic weight, mineral wealth and geostrategic relevance have increased its importance in geopolitical calculations in major non-African capitals. Yet persistent divisions among member states continue to weaken collective bargaining power in multilateral forums. The challenge is not only external pressure but internal fragmentation.
Is ‘foreign policy’ the right concept?
Traditional understanding of foreign policy is tied closely to sovereign statehood. In classical realist thought, foreign policy presupposes a central political authority speaking externally with a unified diplomatic voice. The AU does not have this attribute. While it has expanded its diplomatic and security roles – including representation at the United Nations (UN), the European Union (EU) and other multilateral institutions – it remains fundamentally an intergovernmental organisation. In it, states retain the primary authority over diplomacy, defence and strategic alignment.
Pluralist approaches offer more flexibility, arguing that regional organisations can still exercise meaningful external agency through shared norms, institutions and collective identity. From this perspective, the AU can gradually develop a diplomatic coherence even without full supranational authority.
Divisions among states continue to weaken collective bargaining power in multilateral forums
The EU provides a useful middle ground across these perspectives. Although it formally uses the term ‘Common Foreign and Security policy’ (CSFP), the EU increasingly operates through the broader framework of ‘external action’, encompassing diplomacy, trade, development cooperation, climate negotiations and security. Importantly, even with far deeper institutional integration than the AU, EU foreign policy remains largely nationally driven.
Common positions: successes and contradictions
Article 3(d) of the AU Constitutive Act signals an external role. However, it deliberately avoids the term ‘foreign policy’, instead referring to the ‘promotion and defence of African common positions on issues of interest to the continent and its peoples’. The real question, therefore, is not whether Africa can speak with one voice, but whether the AU can build a more coherent and strategically coordinated diplomatic ‘polyphony’ among states with differing interests and alignment. This is despite 54 AU states historically being part of the non-aligned movement.
Africa already has significant experience in collective diplomacy with the most prominent example being the Ezulwini Consensus of 2005, which articulated a unified African position on UN Security Council reform.
African coordination has been evident in climate finance, loss-and-damage negotiations and Covid-19 vaccine procurement through institutions such as the Africa CDC and Afrieximbank. However, these common positions remain uneven, with unity strongest on symbolic and governance issues and weaker when regime security, geopolitical alignment or material interests are involved.
Divergences of approaches about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, relations with China and the United States, regional level disputes in Nile Basin and the Sahel all illustrate the limits of continental coherence.
Hubert Kinkoh, a Mo Ibrahim Foundation Academy Fellow at Chatham House, also posits that emerging mini-lateral groupings such as the Alliance of Sahel States reflect broader trends toward subregion fragmentation. This, he says, might complicate AU approaches in diplomatic coordination that are already playing out in Africa-France and Africa-Russia relations.
Any external framework must grapple with Africa’s expanding, shifting foreign military footprint
Any credible external action framework must also grapple with Africa’s expanding and shifting foreign military footprint. This includes engagement by US, France, Russia, China, Türkiye and Gulf states, evidenced in multiple bases in Djibouti, Kenya, among others.
The AU Peace and Security Council (PSC) has repeatedly expressed concern over foreign military bases and their implication for sovereignty, regional stability and proxy competition. Careful reading of the 868th meeting reveals that the PSC’s authority remains limited because it cannot (by design) ban individual member states seeking to host military bases. Neither the PSC protocol nor the AU Constitutive Act grants that authority. Thus, strategic autonomy will remain elusive unless states are willing to coordinate these relationships continentally and more consistently.
Lessons from the EU
The EU offers a useful but partial comparison for understanding the AU’s external ambitions. Its external coordination was developed gradually through decades of economic and political integration rather than through a single constitutional moment. Integrations began with the European Coal and Steel Community (1951) and expanded through the European Economic Community, the Exchange Rate Mechanism (1979) and the single market (1993), creating deep economic interdependence.
This evolved into greater political coordination, culminating in the Maastricht Treaty (1992), which introduced the Common Foreign and Security Policy. Subsequent reforms under the Amsterdam (1997) and Lisbon (2007) treaties strengthened external action though the creation of the high representative for foreign affairs and the European External Action Service. However, Common Foreign and Security Policy decisions still require unanimity, leaving member states in control of defence, diplomatic recognition and major strategic choices. As a result, EU external coherence remains uneven and negotiated rather than fully unified.
Recent geopolitical crisis illustrates these limitations. Divisions over Gaza, Ukraine, Iran and Iraq demonstrate that institutional integration does not eliminate national strategic divergence. In practice, the EU often functions through coordinated plurality rather than complete unity.
The AU and the Organisation of African Unity prioritised political unity before economic integration
The key lesson for the AU is not that integration automatically produces consensus, but that sustained institutionalisation can gradually improve coherence. However, the EU’s external capacity rests on far deeper economic and legal interdependence than exists within the AU.
By contrast, the AU and its predecessor, the Organisation of African Unity (OAU), prioritised political unity before economic integration. Although leaders such as Kwame Nkrumah argued that political independence required continental economic integration, meaningful cooperation emerged much later through the 1991 Abuja Treaty and eventually the African Continental Free Trade Area signed in 2018 ― nearly 55 years after the OAU’s founding.
This sequencing matters because the AU lacks the supranational and economic integration underpinning the EU’s external coordination.
Institutional lessons
The EU experience highlights the value of stable coordination, long-term strategy and institutional linkages beyond changes in political leadership. One innovation suggested in previous PSC reports is an AU commissioner for partnerships and multilateral relations to coordinate the continent’s engagements with external powers and multilateral institutions. Ideally it would have at least two key directorates for engagements bilateral (AU-China, -United Kingdom-and -United States)and multilateral (AU-UN, -EU and -Association of Southeast Asian Nations).
The AU already has an institutional foundation for coordinated external engagement ― the Partnerships Management and Resource Mobilisation Directorate led by Steve Lalande, which oversees its multilateral partnerships and aligns them with Agenda 2063. Although reporting under the chairperson’s office, its current mandate remains primarily coordination rather than political strategy. Instead of centralising foreign policy authority, such an office could strengthen coherence across diplomacy, trade and security partnerships.
Similarly, stronger coordination between the PSC and the African members of the United Nations Security Council (A3) through the Oran Process could improve diplomatic coherence before, during and after international crises. However, as Kinkoh notes, more is needed. In particular, for African files such as Sudan ― where the UK is the penholder ― mandatory consultations or co-penholdership should be instituted. This would ensure clear A3 and PSC input and ownership on all African matters.
Simultaneously, direct institutional transplantation from Europe would be difficult. The AU has overlapping regional economic communities, regime diversity, external dependency and limited enforcement mechanisms. In many ways, it lacks the supranational glue that makes even imperfect European coordination possible.
Ultimately, institutional reforms may be necessary. For now, the AU’s proposed foreign policy framework should focus on improving coordinated external action in an increasingly fragmented international system. Its success will depend not on institutional ambition alone. It will rest on whether states ― particularly anchors such as Nigeria, South Africa, Egypt, Morocco and Kenya, each with a distinct foreign policy style ― are willing to align national interests with continental priorities and strategic coordination.
