The Southern Africa Centre for Mediation and Extremism Prevention (SACMEP) is proud to announce a formal partnership with the Institute for Strategic and Policy Studies (ISPS) based in South Sudan. The two organisations have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to collaborate on joint research, policy advocacy, and capacity-building initiatives focused on peace, security, and sustainable development across Africa.
This partnership, details of which are available at the ISPS MoU announcement, marks a significant step toward evidence-driven conflict prevention and resource governance.
As an early deliverable under this MoU, SACMEP and ISPS jointly hosted a highly successful webinar titled “Beyond Raw Exports: Advancing Value Addition as a Strategy for Preventing Violent Conflict and Extremism in Africa” on the 4th of June 2026. The dialogue brought together policymakers, researchers, civil society representatives, and artisanal mining associations from across the continent.
Key Dialogue Findings
- Value addition in extractive and agricultural sectors is essential for African peace and stability.
- Current extractive practices often displace local communities and marginalise artisanal miners, creating economic exclusion that fuels frustration and vulnerability among young people.
- Governance gaps, opaque licensing systems, and corruption enable the extraction of wealth without corresponding community benefits.
- Africa persistently fails to learn from industrialised nations, including in developing local processing technologies.
- Limited intra-African trade continues to undermine the African Continental Free Trade Area, constraining collaborative industrialisation and regional value chains.
Key Recommendations
- Strengthen regulation of natural resource extraction through transparent and competitive tendering.
- Mandate local value addition and enforceable community benefit-sharing mechanisms in all extraction contracts.
- Formalise artisanal miners into legally recognised cooperatives.
- Institutionalise meaningful civil society participation in resource governance.
- Invest significantly in STEM education and technical skills.
- Establish an Association of African Mineral-Producing Countries to strengthen collective bargaining power.
- Prioritise debt restructuring and fiscal sovereignty to enhance negotiating leverage with external partners.
SACMEP and ISPS affirm that the pathway from resource extraction to peacebuilding lies in transforming Africa's resource governance systems into engines of inclusive growth, accountability, and shared prosperity. Both institutions will now develop a joint workplan to translate these recommendations into policy action.