The tenth edition of the African Peace and Security Annual Conference (APSACO), held at the Mohammed VI Polytechnic University of Salé near Rabat, marked a decade of reflection on Africa’s shifting security landscape, with discussions largely focused on the changing dynamics between the Alliance of Sahel States (AES) and the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS).
Organized by the Policy Center for the New South, the conference examined how the persistence of insecurity in the Sahel and wider West Africa has exposed limits in existing regional cooperation frameworks and intensified debates over collective security and integration.
Experts and researchers presented diverging views on whether the emergence of the AES has fundamentally reshaped regional security architecture, with some describing it as a defining shift of the past decade and others arguing that it has not altered the nature of transnational threats.
While some participants called for renewed dialogue and possible convergence between ECOWAS and AES mechanisms, others stressed the need for a redesigned regional framework capable of addressing terrorism, instability, and cross-border crime through broader cooperation.
Despite differing perspectives, speakers agreed that the security challenges facing the region remain transnational and require coordinated responses combining security, political, and socio-economic strategies.
