Rwanda's security forays buck the trend

Kigali's bilateral agreements with Maputo and Bangui are underpinned by mining ventures

- Erika van der Merwe

Amid mounting criticism of United Nations peacekeeping missions and Western military involvement, many African governments have sought alternative security partners — private military companies, local militias and several regional partnerships such as the Alliance of Sahel States and Multinational Joint Task Force around the Lake Chad Basin.

In the eyes of many scholars and practitioners, these partnerships challenge longstanding normative preferences for multilateral and regional institutions, namely the African Union and its regional economic communities.

These institutions have long been lauded for their mandates to preserve the sovereignty of cooperating states and develop collective legitimacy in African governance. In practice, however, consensus-building has frequently led to slow deployment timelines and gross operational inefficiencies on the ground.

While operational successes under multilateral institutions do exist, they are more often exceptions and are vastly outpaced by the decisive responses demanded by Africa's security crises.

Against this backdrop, Rwanda's recent forays into bilateral security agreements mark a significant departure from Africa's status quo.

Kigali's deployments to the Central African Republic (CAR) in 2020 and Mozambique in 2021 challenge both conventional norms and institutional habits. The relative success of these deployments, especially in contrast with their multilateral equivalents, raises a fundamental question of African security cooperation.

As more states pivot toward bilateral partnerships, is it time to recalibrate Africa's security architecture? If so, what normative and legal frameworks must accompany this shift to prevent entrenching patterns of dependency and personalised security politics?