The heads of state will have some recent successes to build on. The new chair, Comoros President Azali Assoumani, will require the support of other senior African leaders to discharge the role, given his country’s limited diplomatic heft. The handover will occur in line with an AU tradition of rotating the position. The summit will see the chair of the assembly of heads of state, the AU’s highest decision-making body, pass from Senegal to the tiny Indian Ocean archipelago of Comoros. Amid all this ferment, the leaders meeting in Addis Ababa should concentrate on crises where new or intensified efforts by the AU can be of greatest help, while recommitting to norms and reforms that will better enable the body to do its job. The invasion, and the Western sanctions that followed, have rattled African economies and left many in deep distress. Russia’s full-scale assault on Ukraine, meanwhile, unfolded just as much of Africa was charting a path to economic recovery after the shock of COVID-19. Intercommunal fighting rages in South Sudan. Somalia, Mozambique and other countries, such as in the Lake Chad basin, continue to battle jihadist insurgencies. The situation in the central Sahel shows no sign of improving, with armed groups destabilising swathes of it and seeking footholds elsewhere. The past two years have brought deadly internationalised civil wars in Ethiopia and the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). The 2023 African Union (AU) heads of state summit will take place at an especially delicate moment for the continent.
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