The Wilson Center Africa Program in partnership with the Institute for Peace and Security Studies at Addis Ababa University co-hosted the 2018 Southern Voices Network for Peacebuilding (SVNP) Conference from July 16 to 19, 2018 under the theme "National, Regional, and Global Infrastructures for Peace in Africa: Challenges, Prospects, and Opportunities," in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. The conference convened over twenty representatives from African research organizations from all regions of the continent, and centered on substantive dialogues regarding Africa’s peace architectures. The SVNP conference assessed the peacebuilding architecture in Africa and the infrastructures in place to meet Africa’s peacebuilding needs, in addition to discussing challenges and sharing policy options and best practices for sustainable peace.

Session topics ranged from the changing nature of elections in Africa, natural resource management, gender and peacebuilding, the role of international partners in peacebuilding, country specific peacebuilding case studies, as well as the African Union’s peace and security architecture. Speakers included SVNP members as well as representatives from International Foundation for Electoral Systems (IFES), the United States Mission to the African Union, Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ), and members of the African Peacebuilding Network. A highlight of the conference was a visit to the African Union (AU), where conference participants toured the facilities and met with representatives from the AU’s peace and security department to discuss the peace and security operations of the AU. This annual conference is a part of the Southern Voices Network for Peacebuilding that works to bring African knowledge to U.S., international, and African policymakers in order to develop policies and frameworks for state-building in Africa.