On 11-12 December 2019, the city of Aswan, Egypt, hosted the inaugural meeting of the “Aswan Forum for Sustainable Peace and Development.” Titled, “An Agenda for Sustainable Peace, Security and Development in Africa,” the meeting took place in the broader context of Africa assuming ownership of its peace and development agendas.

In this regard, the Forum highlighted that the nature and scope of the opportunities promising to transform the continent’s security and development landscape, and the challenges undermining these transformative developments, underscore the imperative of a “paradigm shift” from crisis management to sustainable peace and development, by means of a “peace-development continuum”. It also emphasized the existing normative and legal frameworks at Africa’s disposal are adequate to advance this “paradigm shift”. The primary challenge, however, lies in the operationalization of these frameworks.