The United Nations continues its history of developmental and security support in Africa in 2025. The trilateral alliance with the African Union, the European Union and the United Nations on policy implementation will boost the number and effectiveness of programmes directed at key issues like climate change initiatives. Furthermore, the United Nations’ work will continue to be the essential heart of international support for Africa.

United Nations (UN) and African relations fall into three categories. The first is security. UN peacekeeping missions to unstable parts of Africa are ongoing, except in Somalia, where a new African Union (AU) initiative launched on 1 January, 2025, the African Union Support and Stabilisation Mission in Somalia (AUSSOM), has been put in place to help secure the fragile nation. The second thread in African-UN relations is environmental policy, comprising food security, migration, economic development, disaster mitigation and environmental issues. This category particularly focuses on climate change and the means to finance these policies. Third, the UN and Africa are closer to elevating the African voice in the world body. This is evidenced by joint African Union (AU) and UN initiatives and both bodies’ desire to pursue narrative diplomacy by granting an African UN member state a permanent chair on the UN Security Council.

These three strategies will be pursued at the African Union-European Union Summit in Luanda, Angola, in November 2025. The European Union (EU) is the third leg of the joint initiative, which aims to address Africa’s development. The European Union-African Union Summit set for 24-25 November, 2025 will base its resolutions on two guiding documents: the AU’s Agenda 2063 and the UN’s 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. The EU’s interest in Africa have been primarily three-fold: bilateral trade, immigration and security.

Addressing Security Priorities

In 2025, the UN continued its peacekeeping presence in Africa, prioritising its oldest and largest operation: the UN’s Organisation Stabilisation Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (MONUSCO). Established in 2010, MONUSCO is particularly important as a new peace agreement takes shape. The Democratic Republic of Congo-Rwanda Peace Agreement was signed in June 2025 and is now in the enforcement stage. MONUSCO’s objective has been humanitarian efforts and the protection of civilians in harm’s way during conflict.

Somalia has also long required the presence of UN peacekeeping missions. On 1 January 2025, the newest AU mission to assist with Somalia’s security and help its government stabilise the country was launched: The UN’s financing of AUSSOM is celebrated as a model for peacekeeping partnerships between the AU and the UN. Another initiative in South Sudan seeks to incentivize efforts to increase the meaningful participation of uniformed women in UN peace operations a pilot project called the Elsie Initiative Fund.

One concern about the effectiveness of Africa’s UN security initiatives is funding. Several African nations have failed to pay their annual dues to the organisation, just like other resource-constrained UN member states. The US owes nearly US$3 billion in unpaid dues. Consequently, the UN announced on 9 October 2025 that it will be significantly reducing its peacekeepers worldwide due to a lack of financing. The cuts included about 25% of all peacekeeping troops and police, and they will be cutting the amount of equipment they use and a number of civilian staff serving alongside them. How these reductions will impact MONUSCO and other African initiatives remains to be seen.

Across Africa’s 54 UN member states, 45 have served at least once on the Security Council, while 9 have never been elected. Nigeria and Egypt are the most frequent African members (five terms each).
Data courtesy: United Nations, 2025

Addressing climate change concerns

The UN’s work with Africa on climate change and environmental issues is focused on implementing existing policies endorsed by Africa’s UN member states through various treaties. The UN’s 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development is the key shared blueprint being followed to realise environmental initiatives.

UN developmental organisations, such as the UN’s Development Programme, act as implementing partners for projects funded by international organisations or partnering governments. Sweden is servicing this model by financing one of the more extensive UN environmental initiatives of 2025: the ongoing Sahel Resilience Project. Africa’s Sahel separating the Sahara Desert from the continent’s tropical areas runs from the Atlantic to the Red Sea. The Sahel Resilience Project more specifically targets the Lake Chad Basin and the Western Sahel countries of Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria and Senegal, the project seeks to set up climate disaster warning systems and mitigation programmes to lessen the damage of climate change in the vulnerable ecosystems of Africa’s Sahel region.

Environmental challenges facing Africa have multiple effects that impact food production, requiring the involvement of the Food and Agricultural Organisation of the UN and the UN World Food Programme. Addressing Africa’s health-related matters arising from environmental issues is the mandate of the World Health Organisation. Mitigating the impact of climate change on minors is the work of the UN’s child welfare organisation UNICEF. These four bodies have presences in every African country, partnering with national and local governments and NGOs, often in co-operation with local AU and EU offices.

A place for Africa at the Security Council table

African governments feel they will not receive the full attention or resources of the UN until an African representative is placed in a permanent position on the UN Security Council. This is an ongoing debate, centred on considerations of equality between the Global North and Global South. This was also a key topic in the UN’s 2025 Africa Dialogue Series, whose theme was “Justice for Africans and people of African descent through reparations”. Resolution to the reparation debate is unlikely without UN Security Council agreement on any plan requiring beneficiaries of colonialism and the enslavement of Africans to compensate present-day Africans historic injustices.

The critical points:

• UN and African relations are strong in 2025, reinforced by a trilateral partnership between the AU, the EU and the UN
• MONUSCO, the UN’s mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo, is the world’s largest peacekeeping project and, like the UN’s other missions on the continent, faces cutbacks due to funding shortfalls
• Africa’s full involvement in the UN cannot be realised until a representative from the continent is established in a permanent chair on the UN Security Council

Written by In On Africa