Geopolitics of Africa: how is the continent reconquering its strategic narrative?

While the international system becomes “more fragmented, more conflictual and more transactional”Africa is undergoing an equally profound transformation of its own environments. It is this double dynamic that the 2026 edition of the Annual Report on the Geopolitics of Africa (RAGA), published by the Policy Center for the New South (PCNS), analyzes.

Directed by Abdelhak Bassou, this tenth volume intends to offer “ a structured reading of the way in which the continent is now at the heart of contemporary recompositions of power ».

Those responsible for the report emphasize that “The Africa of 2026 is no longer that of 2017”. The past decade has seen the acceleration of dynamics that the first editions had only anticipated: the recomposition of power relations on a global scale, the multiplication of sources of internal conflict, the irruption of technologies in spaces of war and governance, as well as “the open contestation of security architectures inherited from the post-colonial period”.

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Power rivalries and African margins of maneuver

The 2026 edition of RAGA is organized around four main lines. The first line of force concerns the rivalries between great powers and their impact on the capacity for action of African States. The report examines the continent’s new diplomatic balances “from the new rush towards southern Africa to the restructuring of relations between the European Union and the African Union, including the rise in power of non-Western actors”.

The authors seek to understand under what conditions African countries are trying “to balance sovereignty and survival in the face of cross-pressure from great powers.”

A particular issue is that of critical infrastructure and artificial intelligence. A contribution, qualified as « plus prospective » volume, analysis “the depth of this structural dependence and the possible paths to executable sovereignty by 2036”.

The second line concerns the transformations of armed conflicts under the effect of digital and aerial tools. The report cites specific areas: “The Sahel, Sudan, the Great Lakes region, Benin, so many areas where the doctrinal and operational transformations induced by “dronization”, cyber threats and the digitalization of confrontations are playing out, in their most concrete forms. HAS”

The case of Sudan, in civil war since April 2023 between the regular army (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), is the subject of a particularly dense contribution. The authors show how the interweaving of local rivalries, external interventions (Egypt, United Arab Emirates, Russia via Wagner then the African Corps) and the use of drones and cyber-operations transformed a classic political conflict into a long-term war with devastating regional ramifications.

The third line is interested in the geographical spaces where competitions for influence take place. The methodological reminder is firm: “Africa is not a continental mass closed in on itself: it is bordered by maritime facades whose strategic value grows as geo-economic competition intensifies.”

Several areas are specifically cited as objects of analysis: “The Mozambique Channel, the Indian Ocean routes, the Sahelian land corridors, Mauritania as an Atlantic pivot, Ethiopia struggling with the constraints of landlockment”. According to the report, these spaces are “Analyzed not as geographical abstractions, but as arenas where concrete power relations are established, where sovereignty is fragile and contested, where external actors project their influence with a continuity that local political transitions do not always succeed in stemming.”

The fourth line of force questions the conceptual frameworks themselves: “how to think about peace, security, development, political participation and governance from an autonomous African perspective? HAS”

Several contributions in the volume explicitly tackle this task. Whether it is “rethink the narratives on political youth in Kenya, articulate security and development in an endogenous paradigm, or question the foundations of sovereignism in West African political dynamics.”

These texts, the report specifies, “participate in a collective effort of epistemic decolonization, not as a rhetorical posture, but as a rigorous intellectual program, anchored in empirical data and renewed analytical frameworks.”

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A systemic approach to an interconnected continent

The report states that “From the Great Lakes to the Horn of Africa, from the Sahel to the maritime facades of the Indian Ocean, from Central Africa to the Saharan peripheries, this volume covers a spectrum rarely achieved in a single collective work.”

This geographical coverage is not intended for encyclopedic completeness. It responds to an analytical need: “the dynamics studied are structurally interconnected”. The authors take three examples: “The instability in Mali weighs on Benin; rivalries in the Horn of Africa have repercussions throughout the Great Lakes region; the droneization of the Sahel foreshadows tactical transformations which go far beyond this single theater. HAS”