Africa is navigating a pivotal postcolonial transition driven by a deliberate pursuit of strategic and energy autonomy to sustain its rapid demographic and industrial expansion. A critical tension has emerged between international nonproliferation frameworks, namely the Treaty of Pelindaba and the African Commission on Nuclear Energy (AFCONE), and the sovereign right of African states to develop civilian nuclear energy. In an era defined by Great Power Competition, this tension is accelerating a geopolitical shift in Egypt and the nations along the Sahelo-Saharan strip, the narrow belt between the Sahara and the Sub-Saharan savannas, stretching from the Atlantic to the Red Sea. This is happening as they are increasingly bypassing traditional Western channels to sign nuclear memoranda with global alternatives such as Russia’s Rosatom. The structural limitations of the current African Union disarmament architecture are being tested by sovereign imperatives. To reduce proliferation vulnerabilities and external interference, the continental framework must evolve from a passive monitoring mechanism into a dynamic legal shield across Africa’s developing nuclear landscape. 

Introduction 

Africa is currently undergoing a pivotal phase in its post-colonial history, characterized by an explicit shift toward comprehensive sovereignty. This dynamic manifests as a dual transition: strategic autonomy aimed at securing the continent through regional means, and energy autonomy essential to sustain the industrial development of a rapidly expanding demographic base. However, this quest for technological advancement, specifically through civilian nuclear energy, clashes with an increasingly polarized global security environment. Now, a central conceptual and practical tension arises. How can the African Union‘s (AU) disarmament architecture oversee this transition without local nations perceiving it as an external technological constraint or a vector of vulnerability mitigation vis-à-vis global nuclear powers? 

The Pelindaba Framework Confronting New Geopolitical Imperatives 

The continent’s disarmament architecture historically rests upon the African Nuclear-Weapon-Free Zone Treaty, also known as the Treaty of Pelindaba, which established Africa as a zone free of nuclear weapons while promoting the peaceful use of the atom. While this legal framework and its executive body, the AFCONE, have successfully prevented military proliferation, their structural limitations are becoming apparent under the new paradigm of absolute sovereignty. Conceived within a post-Cold War logic, this architecture is increasingly critiqued by African scholars as a passive monitoring structure heavily influenced by the Western Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) requirements, inadvertently restricting the transfer of dual-use technologies to the Global South. 

Conversely, AFCONE, headquartered in South Africa, represents an historic institutional success. By championing a modern, pragmatic vision, AFCONE actively promotes the peaceful application of nuclear technologies in vital sectors such as medicine, agriculture, and power generation. This strategy demonstrates that targeted, sovereign institutional management can transform budgetary limitations into opportunities, ensuring technical efficiency and non-proliferation compliance without compromising regional autonomy. 

Great Power Competition and the “State-Led Strategic Vision” 

Africa’s transition toward energy autonomy extends beyond technical parameters. It represents a calculated act of geopolitical repositioning driven by state-led strategic visions. In an international order regulating civilian nuclear technologies under strict non-proliferation banners, African states are actively asserting their right to development through decisive executive leadership. This top-down political willpower challenges the traditional monopoly of Western regulatory frameworks by treating energy access as a fundamental national security imperative. 

This disruptive paradigm is reshaping regional alliances and redrawing maps of strategic dependency. Egypt’s El Dabaa, nuclear power plant megaproject and the strategic shift of Sahelian heads of state signing new nuclear memoranda with Russia’s state-owned corporation, Rosatom, reflect a top-down executive momentum. The “State-led strategic vision” has become the primary arbiter between international collective security demands and the immediate requirement of national industrialization. This shift introduces a complex variable into global deterrence tracking, as local leaders increasingly bypass traditional Western commercial and political channels. By leveraging foreign partnerships that do not impose conditional governance clauses, African states are redefining the geopolitical balance of technology transfers in the Global South. 

Resource Securitization and the Sahelian Laboratory 

While political leadership drives policy, access to raw materials stems from geography. The abundance of uranium, particularly in the Sahelo-Saharan strip, imposes a severe security responsibility upon regional leaders. Long exploited under frameworks that yielded minimal tangible benefits for local populations, these strategic reserves are now the focus of intense sovereign reclamation. Securing the front-end of the nuclear fuel cycle has evolved from a commercial negotiation into a matter of state survival. 

In an environment marked by volatile asymmetric threats and state fragility, proving that African states can secure their own strategic resources is essential to prevent foreign military interference and secure global supply chains. Consequently, the Sahel has become a contemporary laboratory where the imperatives of local scientific capacity building and sovereign resource control are actively tested against global non-proliferation norms. The critical vulnerability no longer lies solely in the physical diversion of material, but at the intersection of physical infrastructure security and tactical hybrid threats. Unmanned aerial systems, border penetration by non-state actors, and specialized cyber-attacks targeting industrial control devices represent a new spectrum of risks that the African Union’s legacy framework is ill-equipped to counter. 

Conclusion 

Ultimately, the African Union’s disarmament architecture must evolve from a passive doctrine of non-proliferation into a dynamic legal and political shield that protects African states’ right to technological emancipation. This evolution requires converting AFCONE into an active operations intelligence hub that coordinates real-time security threats across newcomer nuclear states. For global strategic analysts, understanding this shift is critical. The Sahel’s technological transition cannot be ignored or suppressed through restrictive regimes. Instead, it must be matched by a rigorous, collaborative culture of physical nuclear security, international safeguards verification, and cyber resilience to reduce proliferation risks while accommodating Africa’s inevitable and legitimate energy transition. 

Lanssina TO, PMP, holds a DESS in Management (Ing.) and serves as an international climate negotiator. He is a Vertic Hub Africa Member, GSTE/NDV of Vertic Member, Founder of NewComer Global, and Founder of IGNIS-University for NewComers in Nuclear (Virtual). He currently serves as the Director of Publicity for the African Nuclear Society, conducting strategic research on nuclear education, newcomer state integration, environmental diplomacy, and regional security architectures across the African continent. Views expressed in this article are the author’s own. 

The African Union Disarmament Architecture: Balancing Autonomy and Proliferation Risks  was originally published on Global Security Review.

 The growing gap between rapid advances in artificial intelligence (AI) and inadequate verification mechanisms has created several challenges for the technology. In this context, global AI governance has become a central topic of discussion in the tech world. However, the discourse around AI focuses primarily on how the technology will be regulated. The central problem of global AI governance is no longer whether AI should be regulated, but whether states possess the power to regulate the actors and infrastructures on which they increasingly depend.  

The international system has begun responding swiftly to evolving AI dynamics. Notably, the UN Global Digital Compact has established a framework for digital cooperation. The General Assembly has created the Independent International Scientific Panel on Artificial Intelligence, along with a Dialogue on AI Governance. In parallel, the European Union (EU) has moved towards an enforceable risk-based regulation through the AI Act. Likewise, the Council of Europe has also launched the first internationally binding treaty on AI. These initiatives are a step in the right direction. However, they lack a coherent global regime or direction, which impacts their effectiveness.  

As the latest initiatives show, the U.S. relies on targeted export controls on advanced chips, voluntary frameworks, and a pro-innovation approach that preserves U.S. dominance. China, on the other hand, favors a state-driven approach, built around controls on generative AI. The EU, by contrast, prioritizes enforceable rules for high-risk and general-purpose AI, along with strong fundamental rights protection. The emerging AI order is therefore not one model, but several operating simultaneously. This fragmentation is not accidental. It reflects competing power struggles among national interests. In such an environment, the search for a global AI governance appears misguided.  

Future AI governance is likely to mirror a hybrid model of international finance or trade regimes. Against this backdrop, private companies remain incredibly powerful, given their monopoly over data, models, computing power, and expertise, which are concentrated in a handful of private companies. This trend creates a governance paradox. Governments aim to regulate the private sector while remaining excessively dependent on it, creating a capacity challenge.  

These trends point to three prominent developments for the future. Regulatory fragmentation is likely to intensify as rival technological blocs establish incompatible standards. Ultimately, technologically backward states opt accordingly. Second is procedural multilateralism, where states agree on universal principles, but actual power remains concentrated among a few powerful entities. The third option is that states retain their distinct regulatory systems but agree on some conditions. These scenarios and trends are not mutually exclusive and can coexist, with different approaches emerging across sectors. As a result, the landscape is expected to remain complex. Whichever the scenario, the technological ecosystems are likely to become tools of influence vis-à-vis cloud access, advanced semiconductors, data centers, export policies, global supply chains, digital infrastructure, and divergent AI standards.  

For the Global South, the ongoing trend poses multifaceted challenges. The foremost is structural dependence. While these states may draft their own AI policies, they will remain dependent on foreign technology. Likewise, consensus among states remains elusive. This becomes increasingly complex in a future environment where AI governance may become more infrastructural. This might involve the development of measurable controls. The key challenge for the Global South is not mere exclusion; it is participation without agenda-setting influence. In addition, AI innovation moves much faster than regulation, creating a governance lag and adding to the challenges. The main priority is to define a meaningful role for itself in this environment. Its main priority should be to integrate into regional frameworks, shared datasets, and coordinated diplomatic moves.  

The international organizations have a limited but important part in global governance. They can expand their role by laying the ground for common scientific assessments, incident-sharing mechanisms, and capacity building. The approach should complement existing frameworks while acknowledging divergent national systems. Fostering coordination where political consensus allows remains central for relevant international organizations.  

AI Governance in the contemporary era is complex. As the ongoing developments suggest, the future of AI governance will not be manifested as a single regulator or a universal AI rulebook. Instead, it will emerge as a highly contested polycentric order, characterized by an environment where laws, norms, technical standards, and UN/international organization-led coordination overlap. In this context, the U.S., China, and the EU will continue to assert their dominance and institutionalize their edge into rules and norms. In parallel, countries in the Global South are likely to resist and consolidate their own influence. The pivotal challenge in such an environment will not be whether AI is governed. Instead, it will be whose security interests and priorities prevail in the technological age. Hence, the tussle will be to convert technological capability into institutional influence. 

Shaza Arif is a Senior Research Associate at the Centre for Aerospace and Security Studies (CASS), Islamabad, casss.thinkers@casstt.com. The views in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of NIDS.

The Politics of Global AI Governance was originally published on Global Security Review.

President Trump’s foreign policy will primarily focus outside South Asia and engage countries with a lens toward their relationship with China. Drawing on his known foreign policy orientation, Trump 2.0 is poised to keep India on a high strategic pedestal in the broader framework of Indo-Pacific strategy.

Pakistan is unlikely to play a major foreign policy role for the Trump administration. Thus, it is pertinent for the Pakistani diplomatic community to find areas of convergence with the Trump administration. Policy options must be exercised in a way to constructively approach strategic divergencies between the two states.

America’s engagement with the Global South is likely going to decline as an “America First” approach calls for reducing international engagement towards all but a handful of countries. Critics may characterize President Trump’s foreign policy approach as short term and transactional, but this sells the president short. A policy of “minilateralism” is not shortsighted but may allow him to focus on more pressing domestic issues in the United States. This redirection of focus is, however, bad news for global agendas like climate change and multilateral cooperation.

There is a broader consensus in the Trump team, based on a strategic imperative to counter China in the Asia-Pacific, that leaves less room for lower priorities. Thus, the trade and tariff wars between China and the US may have second-order effects for countries like Pakistan.

President Trump’s advisers are likely to approach China as an adversary and will view Pakistan with some caution, perceiving it as an ally of Beijing. The Trump administration may seek to intensify the competition with China and up the ante for countries who are onboard with Chinese infrastructure and development projects, such as Pakistan, which could be a potential victim of a new Great Game.

An era of conditional trade agreements between Pakistan and the United States appears imminent and is characterized by a departure from preferential trade practices. Instead, the US is likely to prioritize market-driven agreements, emphasizing economic pragmatism over diplomatic goodwill. To enhance bilateral trade relations, Pakistan could strategically leverage its geopolitical significance and pursue a proactive approach to addressing American concerns, without compromising its national strategic interests.

This would necessitate credible efforts to combat terrorism and contribute to stabilizing the situation in Afghanistan. Such measures could foster greater mutual confidence and pave the way for more constructive economic engagement between the two nations.

American attempts to make India its strategic surrogate in the Asia-Pacific will embolden Indian hegemonic ambitions. Intense security collaboration between the US and India at bilateral and multilateral defense groups like the Quad could disrupt the regional strategic stability calculus in South Asia.

Pakistan’s economic woes may not allow it to sustain the brunt of a growing Indian strategic modernization in the long run. This will impact strategic stability in the region.
Retrospective analysis of the first Trump administration suggests that American cooperation with Pakistan, in the realms of climate change and clean energy, will be relegated as more pressing geostrategic issues take precedence. Moreover, the dwindling economy of Pakistan may find the Trump administration far less sympathetic as far as economic aid and loan packages are concerned. The first Trump administration was less sensitive to Pakistan’s core interest, like Kashmir, and more demanding of Pakistan in its Afghanistan conundrum.
The US State Department under Trump will likely pursue a limited set of priorities, especially in the security and counterterrorism realms. US-Pakistan relations are traditionally marked by events in Afghanistan. This was true from the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan to the war on terror. With the reduction of American engagement in Afghanistan, Pakistan finds itself entangled in an increasingly intricate security matrix amid deteriorating relations with the Taliban and increasing terrorism in Pakistan.

Shifting the onus onto Pakistan for an American policy debacle was a convenient strategy of the Biden administration. Pakistan may find the new administration more aggressive in its demands for stabilizing Afghanistan. The “do more” mantra will not go over well with Pakistan anymore and will require a more practical approach on the part of the US.
On the flip side, President Trump’s personality-centered diplomatic overtures, rather than institutionalized mechanisms, are not good for Pakistan. President Trump engaged with Imran Khan constructively, but he is no longer in office. Criticism could come from Trump’s team regarding the crackdown on Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) movement. State Department and Pentagon engagement with Pakistan’s diplomatic corps and security establishment will depend on the whims of Trump rather than an ongoing policy framework. The absence of mutual interests between the US and Pakistan remains a hurdle.

These are interesting times for the diplomats of Pakistan. On the one hand, they will try to resist President Trump’s pressure-based strategy toward Pakistan. On the other hand, they will try to convince State Department officials to pursue more practical approaches to the US-Pakistan relationship. How hard this proves is yet to be determined.
Either way, Pakistan will face a more conditional and transactional relationship with the US. It will hinge on security concerns rather than economic issues. Being close to China diplomatically and strategically opens a unique window of opportunity for Pakistan. It can play the role of a bridge between China and the US, as it has done historically, should the Trump administration seek it out.

Muhammad Haseeb Riaz is a Research Assistant at Center for International Strategic Studies, Islamabad. Views expressed in this article are the author’s own.

The Future of US-Pakistan Relations was originally published on Global Security Review.