ADDIS ABABA, Jan. 17 (Xinhua) -- As African leaders are to meet next month under the African Union (AU) umbrella on silencing the guns across Africa, experts have called on the continent's policymakers to repeat the unity achieved on Africa's Continental Free Trade Area Agreement (AfCFTA) to tame all conflicts that wreaked havoc on the continent's development aspirations.
The latest call was made by the Institute for Security Studies (ISS), an African non-profit organization, in its latest publication entitled "Conflict is still Africa's biggest challenge in 2020", has stressed the imperative for African leaders to "repeat the show of unity achieved on continental free trade to silence the guns."
According to the institute, the year 2020 "is supposed to be a landmark year" for the 55-member pan African bloc, as the AU's flagship continental initiative - dubbed Silencing the Guns - advocates "ending all wars, civil conflicts, gender-based violence, violent conflicts and preventing genocide in the continent by 2020."
"While no one can argue with that laudable goal, the continental body and its member states will have to work miracles to achieve it by the end of this year, especially when the trend seems to be heading in the other direction," the ISS's latest publication read.
Noting that Africa's pattern of "new conflicts bubbling up alongside existing ones is likely to repeat itself," the ISS also emphasized that the Sahel region is of particular concern, given the inability of either the United Nations peacekeepers, the French military or the regional G5 Sahel security force to contain the conflict.
According to the institute, a surge of violence in both Burkina Faso and Mali this year underscored the fragility of the governments in both countries, while conflicts in and around the Lake Chad Basin area has also continued.
The ISS, which noted that South Sudan's peace deal "is hanging by a thread," also indicated that new fighting between ethnic groups in central South Sudan had left at least 79 people dead and forced the deployment of the United Nations peacekeepers.
"The prospects of a resolution to this (South Sudan's) long-running conflict in 2020 look slim," the institute argued.
In Ethiopia, Nobel Peace Prize winner Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed's ambitious reform project "is facing its greatest threat yet as various political groupings seek to take advantage of the newly-opened political space," the ISS argued.
It also noted that the situation has resulted in "widespread communal violence and tensions within the ruling party, with Ahmed's government struggling to get a grip on the situation."
The institute also argued the need to tame regular flare-ups of violence in the Central African Republic (CAR), the conflict in the Ebola virus-affected Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), as well as Nigeria's entrenched long fight against Boko Haram, saying the phenomenon necessitates further attention during the just-started 2020.
The ISS also stressed that the impact of extreme weather events related to climate change are "complicating any response to conflict across the African continent."
African leaders will convene the annual 33rd Ordinary Session of the Assembly of Heads of State and Government of the AU under the theme "Silencing the Guns: Creating Conducive Conditions for Africa's Development," from Feb. 9 to 10 at the headquarters of the AU in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa.
As a flagship project of the AU's 50-year continental development Agenda 2063, "Silencing the Guns by 2020" was adopted by the AU heads of state during the 50th anniversary of the OAU/AU in 2013.
