Agadir – Morocco’s Foreign Minister Nasser Bourita has called for stronger national and continental support to prevent conflicts in Africa, stressing the need to act before crises escalate.
Bourita made the remarks during a ministerial meeting organized by Egypt, Kenya, the United Nations (UN), and the African Union (AU) on national peace infrastructures, according to Morocco’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
The meeting comes amid growing security challenges across Africa, with conflicts increasingly crossing national borders and involving armed groups, terrorist organizations, and transnational criminal networks.
Bourita said these challenges have also created a major humanitarian burden. More than 45 million people were forcibly displaced across Africa by the end of 2025, according to the African Union.
He also pointed to emerging risks linked to new technologies, particularly artificial intelligence, saying that insufficient regulation could contribute to the spread of disinformation, hate speech, and tensions.
The minister recalled a message from King Mohammed VI at the 29th African Union Summit in 2017, in which the king called on the African Union to transform its approach to address emerging threats on the continent.
“Faced with the new threats facing our Continent, it is necessary for the African Union to begin its transformation in order to provide adequate and appropriate responses,” the King said, according to the statement.
Against this backdrop, Bourita called for stronger collective capacities to anticipate crises, address their underlying causes, and intervene before tensions develop into conflicts.
Prevention should therefore be treated as a policy in its own right rather than simply as a response to crises, he said, according to the ministry.
Bourita stressed that effective conflict prevention depends primarily on national ownership, strong institutions, and responses adapted to the circumstances of each country.
He said national peace infrastructures should be firmly anchored in national institutions and designed to strengthen early warning, inclusive dialogue, and mediation.
“Early warning only has real impact when it leads to early action,” Bourita said, adding that international partnerships should support national priorities and strengthen existing capacities rather than replace national institutions.
Bourita said the priority is not to create more structures, but to better coordinate the work of states with the African Union, Regional Economic Communities, and the United Nations.
He added that such coordination must remain firmly anchored in the principles of the UN Charter and the AU Constitutive Act, including the peaceful settlement of disputes, sovereignty, territorial integrity, non-interference, and good-neighborliness.
