Regional Security Complexes – Africa 2024-2025

Regional Security Complexes – Africa 2024-2025

by Julia Davies and Ferdinand Matheri 

Background 

Many International Relations (IR) theorists contend that the narrow and Euro-American-centric framing of mainstream IR theory (IRT) cannot be applied to the non-Western world without rethinking its fundamental assumptions (Bischoff, Aning, and Acharya, 2016). Indeed, Buzan and Wæver in Regions and Powers: The Structure of International Security (2003) acknowledge that, like most traditional IRT, postcolonial Sub-Saharan Africa remains a challenge for Regional Security Complex Theory (RSCT) (pp. 129). Aiming to address the overemphasis on the global level in traditional IRT, RSCT offers a conceptual framework to classify, compare, and predict outcomes for patterned regional security complexes (RSCs) based on the assumption that threats travel more easily over short distances.  

The failure of the postcolonial state posits that Africa’s security constellation is thickest at the domestic level. As such, RSCT allows the domestic level to be at the forefront for explaining African security, rather than traditional IRT, which limits analysis to states as the referent object. In the Sahel region (namely, Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger) and the Horn of Africa, militant Islamist terrorist groups have increased in number and geographic scope of violent attacks and fatalities in recent years, contributing to the displaced person population in Africa reaching over 45 million people (Africa Center for Strategic Studies (ACSS), 2024; Peace and Security Council (PSC), 2024). This increase in extremist violence and internal repression is linked to the rise of repressive military juntas in Burkina Faso, Chad, Guinea, and Mali. Decades-long conflicts in Sudan and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (hereafter, DR Congo) have created opportunities for nonstate actors (transnational organized criminal networks, armed militant groups), regional powers (South Africa, Rwanda), and superpower competition (China, Russia, US), further destabilizing the continent (ACSS, 2024). Geopolitical rivalries in the new multipolar world have intensified foreign penetration at the global level, (re)shaping conflicts, political behavior, and thinning security at the domestic, regional, and interregional levels.  

This​ Regional Security Monitor analytical​ paper is structured around RSCT’s four levels – domestic, regional, interregional, and global – to make up and analyze Africa’s security constellation ​in 2024/2025​​​, noting changes and continuities from Buzan and Wæver’s original application of RSCT to Africa in 2003. It concludes with predictions for the future of Africa’s security constellation, considering nonstate actors, emerging and declining regional powers, and superpower rivalries.  

 Domestic Level 

Security in Africa is often described as ‘domestic,’ yet conflicts frequently transcend borders, becoming long-term and transnational, rather than short-term crises (Buzan and Wæver, 2003: 224; Shaw, 1998). The post-Cold War liberal peacekeeping model faces challenges both internally – by diminished Western support – and externally, by increased contestation from non-Western states in recent years. Africa has hosted the most UN peacekeeping missions, with five active operations in the Central African Republic (CAR), DR Congo, Western Sahara, South Sudan, and the Abeyi area (United Nations, 2025). However, African nations are increasingly challenging Western dominance, prioritizing state-centric approaches over liberalism with support from China and Russia (Coleman and Job, 2021).  

African regimes are usually characterized as highly personalized and centralized, with rulers exploiting state resources to build systems of patronage. Starting with the 2020 coup in Mali, military insurgencies across the Western African Sahel brought to power military juntas in Guinea, Burkina Faso, and Niger (Akinyemi, Apeloko, et. al., 2024). These regimes have shifted military alliances from Western partners to Russia, escalating violence against civilians, particularly evident with the al-Qaeda-affiliated JNIM terrorist group in Mali (Haidara, 2022; ACLED, 2024). Non-state armed groups vary; the decreasing number of rebel groups is partly attributable to more inclusive governance policies by states, while the number of political and community militias is increasing, exposing more civilians to violence (ISS, 2025). State-backed terrorist groups, such as the Ethiopia-backed Al-Shabaab in Somalia and Rwanda-funded M23 in the DR Congo, exemplify the blurred lines between nonstate and state actors, characteristic of domestic security in Africa.  

Intrastate civil wars continue to plague the continent. In Ethiopia, the government struggles to hold onto power, with new conflicts erupting in the Amhara region against the Fano and OLA militia groups (Uppsala Conflict Data Program (UCDP), 2024). Sudan’s civil war between the government of Sudan and paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) remains the primary driver of violence since 2023, causing the largest displacement crisis in the world, widespread human rights violations against civilians, and spilling over into the Horn in the form of nonstate armed groups (UCDP, 2024). A myriad of private, regional, and global actors remain enmeshed in the lucrative DR Congo conflict, with violence surging along the Rwanda-DR Congo border and the Rwandan-backed M23 rebels successfully taking Goma in January 2025 (ACLED, 2025). 

Military juntas hold power across states in the Western African Sahel, nonstate, terrorist violence plagues the Sahel and West Africa, intrastate wars in Ethiopia, Nigeria, and Sudan, and external states and organizations’ interventions, such as in the DR Congo, present “the nonstate nature of the African state” (Buzan and Wæver, 2003: 225). The ‘domestic’ or substrate level persists as the focus of security in Africa. As such, RSCT remains relevant for analyzing the interactions between weak states, personalized regimes, and nonstate actors.  

 Regional Level 

To be classified as an RSC, there must be significant levels of security interdependence among a group of states or other actors in a shared geographic region. In Africa, the main lines of security interaction take place within states or across state borders by nonstate actors, meaning that interstate security dynamics are usually spillovers of domestic dynamics (Buzan and Wæver, 2003: 229).  This remains the case in West Africa and the Horn, while Rwanda’s rise as a potential core in East Africa has given way to predictable patterns of RSCT, with competition between Uganda and South Africa in the DR Congo. Southern Africa remains the exception and only example of a fully-fledged RSC in Africa, due to the power yielded by South Africa. In all regions, weak states lead to weak regional security organizations and low levels of regional security interdependence.  

West Africa: Unstructured RS​C​​     ​

Applying RSCT, West Africa emerges as an unstructured regional security complex (RS​C​​). First, West Africa’s security constellation is predominantly shaped at the domestic level, with threats such as terrorism, insurgency, transnational organized crime, political instability, and intercommunal violence (Bala and Tar, 2024; Seiyefa, 2023; Council of Foreign Relations (CFR), 2022). Second, the weakness of regional security bodies and the absence of a core and a leader hinder security interdependence at the regional level.  

While the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) provides legal and normative frameworks to address these threats, it has failed to adequately resolve Africa’s conflicts due to inadequate information sharing, intelligence gathering, and cooperation between member states (Eugene and Abdussalam, 2022; Bala and Tar, 2021). The organization’s credibility and agency as a peace mediator were further eroded with military juntas in Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger establishing the Alliance des États du Sahel (AES) and withdrawing from the ECOWAS in 2023 (Ndiaye, 2024). Other regional bodies, such as the Multinational Joint Task Force (MNJTF) and the G5 Sahel, face similar institutional and cooperative deficiencies (Gnanguênon and Hofmann, 2025).  

Once a regional power, Nigeria no longer meaningfully engages in security interactions outside its immediate neighbors due to economic and internal security challenges, poor leadership, and democratic regression (International Crisis Group, 2024; Akinola, 2024). This decline, the ECOWAS’s past failures and fragmentation, and the dominance of domestic-level security threats describe West Africa’s internal transformation from a proto-complex (Buzan and Wæver, 2003: 62) to an unstructured RS​C​​     ​ today.  

Central and East Africa: Unstructured and Pre-Complex 

While some scholars separate Central and East Africa into distinct security complexes, we will analyze them together as Buzan and Wæver (2003) had, arguing that Central Africa remains an unstructured RSC, while East Africa has transformed into a pre-complex driven by increasing regional power competition and cooperation. In Central Africa since the 2000s, two regional economic communities, the Economic and Monetary Community of Central Africa (EMACCA) and the Economic Community of Central African States (ECCAS), have increasingly addressed peace and security issues, particularly in the CAR, but limited intergovernmental cooperation, member state commitment, and nonstate actor dominance hinders regional security interdependence (Meyer, 2011). Domestic threats and external penetration from regional and global powers define Central Africa as an unstructured RSC.  

We diverge from Walsh’s (2021) view that East Africa, influenced by the Horn and Southern Africa, is too in flux to form an RSC, arguing instead that it constitutes a pre-complex, driven by strengthening security links within the East African Community (EAC) and competition and cooperation among Kenya, Uganda, and Rwanda. Uganda leads the EAC’s restructuring by linking EAC member security through expanding membership (Rwanda and Burundi in 2007, South Sudan in 2016) and remains the only African regional organization with an end-goal of a political federation (Walsh, 2021). Kenya and Uganda, as East Africa’s largest and most influential nations, largely determine the region’s security (Kiprotich and Onyango, 2023), while Rwanda’s rise as an economic and military power and support for the M23 rebel group in the DR Congo has altered historical patterns of amity between Rwanda and Uganda, escalating tensions between the neighbors in 2018-19 (ACSS, 2019; World Mediation, 2024). Uganda continues to shift the balance-of-power between the DR Congo and the M23, while the EAC and the SADC support the DR Congo against Rwanda (SETA, 2025).  

Yet, the EAC remains a weak regional organization, lacking a common security strategy and latent mistrust from its dissolution in the period 1977-2000 (Chege Kamau, 2013). States’ overlapping memberships with different regional economic communities cause decision-making overlaps and conflicting obligations, ultimately weakening security at the regional level and limiting East Africa’s ability to be classified as a fully-fledged RSC (Rwengabo, 2016). Additionally, high levels of global penetration from former colonial powers (such as the UK in Uganda) and superpower and great power competition (between China, Russia, and the US in the DR Congo) weaken the ability of regional actors to define the security constellation and thus labeling East Africa as a pre-complex. 

Horn of Africa: Pre-Complex 

The Horn of Africa remains a pre-complex, exhibiting bilateral security interdependence between regional states but failing to link these into an integrated security pattern due to the weakness of the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) and external penetration from the Middle East and Gulf states. IGAD struggles to fulfill its conflict resolution mandate, hampered by member states’ diverse histories and conflicting political and economic ideologies to prevent or manage conflicts (Verhoeven and Yihdego, 2022). As such, security cooperation agreements and peace deals remain fragile, short-lived, and undefined, with the collapsed 2018 peace deal between Ethiopia and Eritrea amid Ethiopia’s internal conflicts (Mulugeta and Girma, 2025). The IGAD remains unable to address conflict and development challenges in the Horn, including Somalia’s three-decade-long civil war, the conflict and displacement crisis in Sudan, border disputes between Eritrea and Djibouti, and the fragile peace agreement between Eritrea and Ethiopia (Verhoeven and Yihdego, 2022; ACSS, 2024). 

Patterns of amity between Ethiopia and Somalia persist, dating back to the interstate war over the Ogaden region in 1977-8, with new controversies arising from the January 2024 Ethiopia-Somaliland Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) that granted Ethiopia access to the Red Sea and reignited disputes over Somaliland’s statehood (Mulugeta and Girma, 2025). Egypt and Eritrea’s security assistance, affirming Somalia’s sovereignty, aimed at fighting the Al-Shabaab terrorist group, undermines the Turkey-mediated Ankara Agreement between Ethiopia and Somalia in December 2024 (Mulugeta and Girma, 2025). 

Clashing interests among Middle Eastern and Gulf states drive security interdependence between the two regions, precluding further RSC development in the Horn and fueling instability and conflict in Ethiopia, Somalia, and Sudan (Donelli and Gonzalez-Levaggi, 2020; Gebru, Zeru, and Tekalign, 2023). Egypt dominates regional security, providing military and economic assistance to Eritrea and Somalia to counter Ethiopia and deploying peacekeeping missions in Somalia since January 2025 (Mulugeta and Girma, 2025). The proliferation of foreign military bases and naval forces (from Europe, the US, the Middle East, the Gulf, and Asia) gives rise to prospects of proxy wars reflecting global geopolitical tensions (SIPRI, 2025; Liyew, 2024). External penetration from neighboring regional actors, namely from the Middle East and the Gulf, overshadows the thin security interdependence and further weakens regional interdependence within the Horn.   

 Southern Africa: Standard RSC 

The Southern African region remains a standard RSC with post-apartheid South Africa acting as the region’s unipole. Domestic-level security challenges still dominate the region, including violent extremism, armed insurgencies (most recently, the Islamic State of Central African Province (ISCAP) in Mozambique), governance deficits, transnational organized crime, human security for marginalized populations, gender-based violence, and illegal migration (Bussotti and Ermenegildo, 2023; Southern African Development Community, 2022). 

According to Buzan and Wæver (2003), great powers are distinguished from regional powers “so long as other powers treat them as potential superpowers” (Buzan and Wæver, 2003: 34-5). South Africa remains the clear leader on the African continent, having the most industrialized economy, BRICS membership, an ongoing case against Israel for genocide in the International Court of Justice (ICJ), and hosting the G20 summit in 2025 (Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2023). Yet, internal challenges of economic growth, crime, corruption, and xenophobic attacks against other Africans living within its borders diminish its international credibility (Hendricks and Majozi, 2021). Most describe the African giant as a ‘middle power’ (Hendricks and Majozi, 2021, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2023; Chatham House, 2024), fitting Buzan and Wæver’s classification as a ‘regional power.’ 

Established in 1992, the Southern African Development Community (SADC) has held two major peacekeeping missions in northern Mozambique (2021) and DR Congo (2023). The SADC’s withdrawal from Mozambique in April 2024 and from DR Congo in March 2025 reflects its poor operational capacity, funding challenges, lack of interregional collaboration (specifically, with the AU and UN), and in the DR Congo, struggles to counterbalance Kagame’s Rwanda as a rising regional power (Emirates Policy Center, 2025; The Global Observatory, 2025). However, the SADC exhibits greater regional cooperation and patterns of amity than other security constellations on the continent (such as the ECOWAS), explained by the accepted position of South Africa as the region’s unipole (Burgess, 2021). As such, the Southern African RSC remains a standard RSC with South Africa’s unipolarity wholly defining the regional level.  

 Interregional Level 

While the African Union (AU) continues to proffer solutions to African security problems, the organization has failed in addressing these problems due to limited capacity, external funding dependency, lack of interstate cooperation, geopolitical divides between NATO and Russia, and internal conflict and instability (Maza, et. al., 2021; Tsegaye, 2023; Ndiaye, 2024; Ukaeje, 2022). These constraints render the AU an aspirational rather than practical security actor, as evidenced by the failure of its 2013 ‘silencing the guns’ initiative, which aimed to end “all wars, civil conflicts, gender-based violence, and violent conflicts” on the continent by 2020 (Abiodun, 2024; Check and Hlanyan, 2021). In another example, the AU Mission in Sudan (AMIS) in 2007 ended with appeals to the UN to take over the mission (Akinola, 2024). Similarly, during the 2011 Libyan crisis, the A3 voting bloc (South Africa, Nigeria, and Gabon) diverged from the AU consensus by supporting NATO military intervention, exposing the lack of regional coordination and the dominance of the UNSC Permanent 5 (P5) members (Akinola, 2024).  

However, African positions in multilateral organizations have proliferated in recent years (Brosig and Lecki, 2022). In most cases, the A3 has become an influential voting bloc in the UNSC, partnering with P2 (China and Russia) to promote African security (Akinola, 2024). The AU’s permanent G20 seat and Resolution 2719 (2023) at the UNSC, establishing a framework for authorizing and funding AU-led peace support operations and strengthening the UN-AU partnership, demonstrates greater interregional influence (United Nations Security Council, 2023). Ethiopia and Egypt received BRICS membership offers in 2025, a loose bloc of non-Western states seeking to challenge Western dominance in multilateral groups (e.g., UNSC, World Bank, G7), to which South Africa is a founding member (CFR, 2025). However, the AU remains too weak to exert interregional influence, and most security interactions in Africa remain on the domestic level, although Rwanda’s rising power has created interregional competition between the East African RSC and Southern Africa RSC in DR Congo (BBC, 2025).  

 Global Level 

At the global level, weak African states and the emergence of China and Russia as superpowers diversify and intensify global power penetration in African security. Superpower rivalry between the US and China is mainly being played out in the access to Africa’s reserves of rare earth minerals and critical raw materials (African Policy Research Institute, 2024). In direct challenge to China, the US-brokered peace agreement between Rwanda and DR Congo aims to facilitate cooperation over the extraction and trade of rare earth minerals in exchange for security (Center for Strategic & International Studies, 2025). However, the US and ex-colonial powers are losing influence in Africa as China and Russia gain ground (Security Council Report, 2024).  

While in the post-Cold War period, US interest in African security declined (Buzan and Waever, 2003: 250), after 9/11 and the declared ‘Global War on Terror,’ the securitization of ‘state failure’ drove US and its European allies’ foreign policy to focus on counter-insurgency, capacity-building, and security sector reforms in the Sahara-Sahal region (Abubakar, 2023). However, the new non-interventionist US foreign policy under the second Trump administration is urging African countries to be more responsible for their own security (DW, 2025). On the other hand, the EU, funding over 60% of AU peace initiatives, is shifting towards multilateralism and “African solutions to African problems,” though African skepticism increasingly labels this neocolonialist (Hellenic Foundation for European and Foreign Policy, 2024; Staeger, 2023).  

China and ​​Russia have emerged as ​​great powers, fostering amity with African elites by positioning themselves as non-interfering counterweights to Western influence since 2000, exemplified in the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC), the security-development nexus in the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), and China’s expanding role in military and police training (Carrozza, 2021; United States Institute for Peace (USIP), 2024; South African Institute of International Affairs (SAIIA), 2021; Chatham House, 2023). China’s security policy in Africa promotes a ‘developmental peace’ model, viewing economic modernization rather than political liberalism as the key to peace and stability in Africa (Brookings Institution, 2019).  

In the last decade, Russian penetration in Africa has expanded more than any other external actor, with Moscow capitalizing on state fragility and protracted conflicts through arms for resource deals, mining concessions, disinformation, election interference, and mercenaries/private military contractors, such as the Wagner Group (renamed the Africa Corps in 2023) (SAIIA, 2021; Kohnert, 2022; Africa Center for Strategic Studies, 2025). Russian mercenaries exploit and profit from insecurity, with the security situations in countries employing Russian mercenaries worsening, such as in Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, Libya, the Central African Republic (CAR), and Sudan (RAND, 2025). The weakness of African states allows superpowers and great powers such as the US, China, and Russia to penetrate and influence African security at a low cost, thickening the global level security.   

 Conclusion 

Regional Security Complex Theory (RSCT) remains relevant for analyzing Africa’s security constellation. This paper sought to identify the changes and continuities since Buzan and Wæver’s original theoretical development and application to Africa in 2003. Continuities persist in the predominance of domestic-level insecurities – defined by weak states, personalized and repressive regimes, and a variety of nonstate actors such as terrorist groups, militias, and transnational criminal networks – spilling over into the regional, interregional, and global levels. Most African regions remain unstructured or pre-complexes, with Southern Africa as the exception and only standard RSC led by South Africa as the region’s unipole.  

At the regional level, the IGAD in the Horn and the ECOWAS in West Africa lack member cooperation and have mostly failed to address security threats. The SADC in South Africa and the EAC in East Africa show greater patterns of interdependence but remain weak institutions. We predict that the rise of Rwanda as a potential great regional power will lead to more competition between Uganda and, potentially, Kenya. If other East African states can accept Rwanda’s position as the region’s leader, RSCT indicates the thickening of East Africa’s RSC and growing rivalry between the EAC and the SADC. This is already being seen in the DR Congo, but Uganda undermines the EAC by oscillating between support for Rwanda and South Africa.  

In the last three decades, the AU and individual African states gained greater representation at the international level through the A3 voting bloc and Resolution 2719 in the UN. However, the AU remains a weak global actor and continues to rely on outside powers to provide security for Africa. We predict that the continued weakness of individual African states and nonstate actors’ ability to exploit state fragilities and geopolitical rivalry will preclude the member-state cooperation needed for thicker interregional security interdependence.  

The most significant change to African security since Buzan and Wæver’s development of RSCT is the geopolitical transition to multipolarity with the rise of China and Russia. Western disagreement on globalization and liberalism, combined with African skepticism, mostly welcomes new Chinese and Russian penetration into security, evident in the Chinese security-development nexus model and Russian military cooperation. Looking ahead, China and Russia’s penetration in African security will spread and likely lead to US-China and US-Russia competition, particularly over access to rare earth minerals, shaping security interactions at the domestic, regional, and interregional ​​levels.

 

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