Overview of the Status, Challenges and Future of the African Standby Force and the African Capacity for Immediate Response to Crises

Many African states have generally opposed 'foreign' interventions. With the adoption of the AU's Constitutive Act, Article 4 (h) in 2000 and the ECOWAS Conflict Prevention Framework in 2008, the principles of intervention has mutated from non-interference to non-indifference. The establishment of the African Standby Force (ASF) and subsequently the African Capacity for Immediate Response to Crises (ACIRC) are part of the grand scheme by African countries to respond to conflicts on the continent in a timely and efficient manner especially when it threatens regional security. What characterizes the literature on interventions involving African state(s) are conceptions initiated on illfounded assumptions, arbitrariness and in extreme cases failure. What is presented as
explaining such failures is the often un-nuanced discourse about the inability of the African state to intervene, sustain and restore a post-conflict country to the path of peace and development. This paper presents a counterfactual argument about the unique agency of African countries in intervening in crises. Using the AU's intervention in Somalia and Mali and the ECOWAS intervention in Guinea Bissau as empirical cases, this chapter explores such potentially symbiotic relationships between the causes and consequences of interventions, current third-party interventions and how it differs from those of the past and the different typologies of multilateral interventions in the post-cold war period.