Africa, with its combination of fragile governments and institutions, abject poverty amid great resources, wealth and a legacy of incessant violent conflict, has increasingly become integrated into the global security architecture. With growing globalisation, insecurity anywhere is a threat to security everywhere. Given this context, Africa's own insecurity is serving as a source of concern for the United States and other global powers. Africa is plagued by a broad spectrum of traditional and

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... n-traditional security threats on the one hand, and yet, as will be seen in this article, home to an emerging regional and international security consciousness and activism on the other. It was the purpose of the study on which this article reports, to examine African approaches to ensure peace, security and stability on the continent at national, sub-regional and regional level. The African Union's (AU) approach to the promotion of peace and security on the continent can be described as a constructivist-inspired cooperative security approach, and it will be demonstrated that sub-regional organisations are very important security enforcing actors in the African security architecture.