Where will the 12th Tana Forum be held?

The 12th Tana Forum will be held in Bahir Dar, ETH.

What is the primary focus of the Tana Forum?

The Tana Forum is a high-level forum on security, focusing on peace and security challenges in Africa.

When does the Tana Forum take place?

The forum is scheduled to take place over several days in the fall.

12th Tana Forum (High-Level Forum on Security)

Name: 12th Tana Forum (High-Level Forum on Security)
Start: 2026-10-23T00:00:00Z
End: 2026-10-25T00:00:00Z
Location: Bahir Dar

Oct 23–25, 2026Bahir Dar, EthiopiaIn-person

Registration open

The 12th Tana Forum, a high-level forum on security, is scheduled to convene in Bahir Dar, Ethiopia. This annual gathering brings together African leaders, policymakers, and experts to discuss critical peace and security challenges facing the continent. The forum aims to foster dialogue and generate African-led solutions to complex issues, emphasizing a holistic approach to security that extends beyond traditional military considerations.

Committees & topics

Topics
Pathways to Peace in Africa: Economic Sovereignty and Geopolitical Transformation · Resource Sovereignty and Strategic Resource Governance for Industrial Development · Digital Transformation and Inclusion · African Institutions and Capabilities · Regional Integration, Informality, and Illicit Economies

Why it matters

The Tana Forum serves as a crucial platform for shaping the discourse on peace and security in Africa. By bringing together diverse stakeholders, it facilitates the exchange of ideas and the development of strategies that are tailored to the continent's unique contexts. The forum's focus on African-led solutions is particularly significant, as it promotes self-reliance and ownership in addressing regional conflicts and instability. This approach is vital for building sustainable peace and fostering long-term development.

The discussions at the Tana Forum often highlight the interconnectedness of various security threats, from political instability and governance deficits to climate change and resource scarcity. This comprehensive perspective is essential for crafting effective responses that address the root causes of insecurity. The forum's outcomes can influence policy decisions at national and regional levels, contributing to a more stable and prosperous Africa. Its continued existence underscores the ongoing commitment of African nations to collaboratively tackle their most pressing security concerns.

How to prepare

To effectively engage with the discussions at the Tana Forum, participants should undertake thorough preparation, focusing on the multifaceted nature of African security challenges. Understanding the historical context of conflicts and the various actors involved is paramount. A deep dive into the political, economic, and social dynamics of key regions, such as the Horn of Africa or the Sahel, would be beneficial. Participants should also familiarize themselves with the mandates and activities of relevant regional organizations, such as the African Union.

Consideration of diverse perspectives is also crucial. This involves understanding the viewpoints of different countries, civil society organizations, and affected communities. Resources such as the Model Diplomat lesson on "gender-dynamics-across-cultures" can offer insights into how social factors intersect with security issues. Additionally, reviewing the Model Diplomat lesson on "hidden-stakeholders" can help in identifying less obvious but influential actors in peace and security processes. Preparing to engage in constructive dialogue, informed by a nuanced understanding of the continent's complexities, will maximize the impact of participation.

Country perspectives

Where the most-relevant 3 countries stand on the core issues in play. Click through for the full country profile.

Ethiopia

As the host nation, ETH plays a central role in facilitating dialogue and showcasing regional security efforts.

Role in topic

ETH provides the venue for the forum, underscoring its commitment to African-led peace and security initiatives. Its own experiences with regional stability and conflict resolution often inform the discussions.

South Africa

ZAF often advocates for inclusive approaches to peacebuilding and regional cooperation.

Role in topic

ZAF, as a prominent African power, frequently contributes to discussions on continental security architecture and the role of regional bodies in conflict prevention and resolution.

Nigeria

NGA emphasizes addressing internal security challenges and their regional implications.

Role in topic

NGA, facing significant internal security issues, often brings a perspective on the challenges of counter-terrorism and maintaining stability within large, diverse nations, and their spillover effects on neighboring countries.

Topics & background

The background behind each topic and the actors that shape it.

Pathways to Peace in Africa: Economic Sovereignty and Geopolitical Transformation

Africa's post-independence peace and security architecture has long been shaped by external dependencies — in trade, finance, currency arrangements, and security partnerships — that constrain policy autonomy. The end of the Cold War briefly entrenched a Western-led liberal order on the continent, but successive shocks (the 2008 financial crisis, COVID-19, the war in Ukraine, and accelerating great-power rivalry) have exposed the fragility of growth models tied to commodity exports and external borrowing. A wave of coups across the Sahel since 2020, the suspension of several states from ECOWAS and the AU, and the contraction of French and UN missions have underscored that insecurity and economic dependence are deeply linked. At the same time, a multipolar reordering is underway. The African Union's admission to the G20 in 2023, the expansion of BRICS to include Egypt and Ethiopia in 2024, and growing Chinese, Gulf, Turkish and Russian footprints have widened the menu of partners available to African states. The African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), operational since 2021, offers a structural lever to reduce extraversion by deepening intra-African trade, which still hovers around 15 percent of the continent's total. The core debate at Tana is whether durable peace requires first securing economic sovereignty — over currencies, value chains, debt terms, and security provision — and how African states should position themselves amid US–China competition, EU 'de-risking,' and the erosion of Bretton Woods consensus. Delegates must weigh the trade-offs between non-alignment, strategic hedging, and deeper continental integration.

Key players

Resource Sovereignty and Strategic Resource Governance for Industrial Development

Africa holds an estimated 30 percent of the world's mineral reserves, including the bulk of global cobalt, manganese, and platinum-group metals, and substantial lithium, copper, and rare earths. Yet the continent captures only a small share of the value generated along these supply chains, exporting raw or semi-processed ores to be refined and manufactured abroad. The colonial-era extractive template was reinforced after independence by IMF and World Bank structural adjustment programs in the 1980s–90s, which liberalised mining codes and emphasised foreign direct investment over local beneficiation. The global energy transition has sharply raised the stakes. EU Critical Raw Materials Act (2024), the US Inflation Reduction Act, and China's vertical integration in battery supply chains are competing for African ores, while Indonesia's 2020 nickel export ban has popularised resource nationalism as an industrial-policy tool. African states are responding: Zimbabwe and Namibia have banned exports of unprocessed lithium; the DRC and Zambia signed a 2022 MoU to co-develop a battery-precursor value chain; and the AU's African Mining Vision and AfCFTA Protocol on Investment provide a continental framework. The governance challenge is substantial. Illicit financial flows from extractives — quantified by the Mbeki Panel at roughly USD 50 billion annually — coexist with weak environmental standards, conflict financing in eastern DRC, and contractual asymmetries with foreign investors. Delegates will debate how to translate geological endowment into industrialisation without reproducing extractive enclaves or triggering a 'green resource curse.'

Key players

Digital Transformation and Inclusion

Africa has the world's youngest population and its fastest-growing internet user base, but also persistent digital divides. Mobile penetration exceeds 80 percent in many markets, yet only around 40 percent of Africans use the internet, and gendered and rural gaps remain wide. Mobile money — pioneered by Kenya's M-Pesa in 2007 — has leapfrogged formal banking in much of the continent, and digital identity programmes from Nigeria's NIN to Ethiopia's Fayda are reshaping service delivery. The AU's Digital Transformation Strategy (2020–2030) and the AfCFTA Protocol on Digital Trade, adopted in 2024, aim to build an integrated continental digital market. The enabling environment, however, is uneven. Submarine cable capacity has expanded with 2Africa and Equiano, but data centres, cloud infrastructure, and skilled labour remain concentrated in a few hubs. Cybersecurity capacity is thin: only a minority of African states have ratified the AU Malabo Convention on Cybersecurity and Personal Data Protection. Internet shutdowns, increasingly used during elections and protests, undermine both rights and commerce. AI development poses fresh questions about data sovereignty, with African data often training models hosted offshore. For a security forum, the key question is how digital transformation intersects with stability: misinformation and platform-driven mobilisation in conflict zones, cyber-enabled financial crime, and the surveillance risks of imported infrastructure. Delegates will consider how to align inclusion goals with the UN Global Digital Compact and ensure that digital public infrastructure — identity, payments, data exchange — strengthens rather than erodes citizen agency.

Key players

African Institutions and Capabilities

The African Union, established in 2002 as successor to the OAU, was designed to move the continent from non-interference to 'non-indifference,' embedding norms against unconstitutional changes of government and creating the African Peace and Security Architecture (APSA) and the African Governance Architecture (AGA). Two decades on, the institutional landscape is dense — AU Commission, Peace and Security Council, Pan-African Parliament, African Court, and the eight Regional Economic Communities — but capability gaps remain stark. The AU still funds the majority of its programme budget from external partners, despite the 2016 Kaberuka decision to finance operations through a 0.2 percent import levy, which only a minority of member states have fully implemented. Recent crises have tested these institutions. The AU and ECOWAS have struggled to reverse coups in Mali, Burkina Faso, Guinea, Niger, and Gabon, with the Sahelian juntas forming the Alliance of Sahel States and withdrawing from ECOWAS in 2024. UN-AU cooperation on peace operations, including the long-sought predictable financing under UNSC Resolution 2719 (2023), is being operationalised but remains contested. AfCFTA implementation is hindered by overlapping RECs and weak national capacity. Reform debates centre on subsidiarity between the AU and RECs, the role of the AU Commission versus member states, financing autonomy, and credibility of normative instruments after selective enforcement. Delegates must consider how to strengthen African institutions without overloading them, and how capability-building can be insulated from donor dependencies.

Key players

Regional Integration, Informality, and Illicit Economies

Africa's formal integration project has advanced significantly on paper, from the 1991 Abuja Treaty to the AfCFTA, which entered into force in 2019 and began trading under preferential terms in 2021. Yet intra-African trade remains structurally low, hampered by infrastructure deficits, non-tariff barriers, currency inconvertibility, and overlapping memberships across the eight recognised RECs. Parallel to the formal economy, dense cross-border informal trade networks — estimated by UNECA to account for 30–40 percent of intra-regional commerce in some corridors — sustain livelihoods and food security but also escape regulation and revenue capture. Illicit economies have grown alongside. The Sahel and Lake Chad basin host trafficking routes for narcotics, arms, gold, and people, with criminal and jihadist groups exploiting weak border governance. Gold smuggling from artisanal mines in Mali, Burkina Faso, and Sudan finances both state and non-state armed actors; the UAE has been identified by Swissaid and others as a principal destination for undeclared African gold. The collapse of the Sudanese state since April 2023 has intensified these flows, while maritime crime in the Gulf of Guinea and the Mozambique Channel threatens trade routes. The policy challenge is to harness informality as a developmental asset, integrate it into AfCFTA frameworks, and simultaneously dismantle illicit value chains that fuel conflict. Delegates will weigh enforcement, formalisation, and harmonisation of customs, financial-intelligence, and labour regimes across porous borders.

Key players

Resources

News, lessons, and country profiles to prep for 12th Tana Forum (High-Level Forum on Security).

Recent reporting to ground your prep

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Trump's Economic Reset

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Lessons

Bite-sized lessons to build the basics

Gender Dynamics Across Cultures

Hidden Stakeholders

Engagement Strategies

Dynamic Analysis

Courses

Guided courses that go deeper on the topic

Advanced Negotiation

Multilateral Negotiation

Policy Brief Writing

Conflict Resolution

The states in play, with the data that shapes their stance

Country dossier

Country dossier

Country dossier

Country dossier

Country dossier

Country dossier

Democratic Republic of the Congo

Country dossier

Country dossier

Country dossier

Country dossier

Country dossier

Country dossier

Country dossier

Country dossier

Country dossier

Country dossier

Ethiopia October 2026

By committee

Frequently asked questions

12th Tana Forum (High-Level Forum on Security)

Oct 23–25, 2026Bahir Dar, EthiopiaIn-person

Registration open

Committees & topics

Topics
Pathways to Peace in Africa: Economic Sovereignty and Geopolitical Transformation · Resource Sovereignty and Strategic Resource Governance for Industrial Development · Digital Transformation and Inclusion · African Institutions and Capabilities · Regional Integration, Informality, and Illicit Economies

Why it matters

How to prepare

Country perspectives

Where the most-relevant 3 countries stand on the core issues in play. Click through for the full country profile.

Ethiopia

As the host nation, ETH plays a central role in facilitating dialogue and showcasing regional security efforts.

Role in topic

South Africa

ZAF often advocates for inclusive approaches to peacebuilding and regional cooperation.

Role in topic

ZAF, as a prominent African power, frequently contributes to discussions on continental security architecture and the role of regional bodies in conflict prevention and resolution.

Nigeria

NGA emphasizes addressing internal security challenges and their regional implications.

Role in topic