September 2nd 2019

Pan-Africa humanitarian body to launch at end-2019


The expected launch of the African Humanitarian Agency (AfHA) in October 2019 will see the African Union (AU) trying to take the lead in creating an Africa-led humanitarian intervention system to tackle the continent's problems.


The Assembly of the AU endorsed the creation of the AfHA back in January 2016, when the AU's member states adopted it as part of the continent's Common African Position (CAP) initiative, which seeks to unify member states' responses to Africa's post-2015 global development. According to the AU, the CAP aims to achieve "effective humanitarian action by 2025", although it expects the AfHA (the vehicle designed to achieve this) to become operational by late 2019. This will only be a start, with the new AU agency requiring additional financial, logistical and staffing capacity before it can begin to take over from the current UN agencies and foreign NGOs. This means that the AU will need to begin negotiating a transition process with the UN and foreign agencies before it can take the lead in handling major humanitarian catastrophes on the continent, such as that resulting from Cyclone Idai.

Apart from creating an ongoing re-division of labour, the AU will also have to gain access to financial and technical resources from foreign donors that can fund and train the various specialists the AfHA will need for its humanitarian operations. In the longer term, the agency will need to increase funding by African member states if it is to become a genuinely Africa-led and managed body. The increasing frequency of natural disasters associated with climate change means that many African countries are slowly upgrading their domestic disaster-response architecture (although not all can yet afford to do so). The continental AfHA will, therefore, have to find ways to integrate itself with African states and regional bodies that have their own local spending priorities. In many cases, it will also involve dealing with authoritarian regimes with little interest in human rights and strong misgivings about allowing in outside actors who could compromise their sovereignty.

Impact on the forecast

Lacking the geopolitical muscle of great power actors (such as China or the US), upon which the UN can sometimes rely, the AU will have to craft a mechanism for resolving political conflict between members over funding, aid priorities and access, before the AfHA can emerge as an effective replacement for international aid agencies.

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