Efforts to end conflict across Africa, especially in Mali, dominated the African Union summit opening on Sunday, with the 54-member bloc’s chief saying greater efforts are needed to build peace.
“Much still needs to be done to resolve ongoing, renewed and new conflict situations in a number of countries,” AU Commission chief Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma said in her opening speech.
“We cannot overemphasise the need for peace and security – without peace and security no country or region can expect to achieve prosperity for all its citizens,” she told the bi-annual summit in the Ethiopian capital.
The 20th ordinary summit, which continues on Monday, opened with a minute’s silence in memory of the late Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi and Ghanaian President John Atta Mills, who died last year.
The meeting is expected to focus on the war against Islamist militants in northern Mali, including the scaling-up of African troops to support the weak Malian army.
Mali’s army, boosted by the recent French military intervention, is battling Islamist insurgents, who seized swathes of Mali’s desert north following a coup last year.