Hassan, Mohamed(PhD)Abebe, Nigatu2018-06-112023-11-182018-06-112023-11-182014-06http://etd.aau.edu.et/handle/12345678/370In the final decade of the 20th century, the mounting need for greater continental integration resulted in the transformation of OAU in to AU (African Union) in 2002. Among the priority agendas of the new organization became issues of peace and security. Despite the commitment and efforts to build institutional capacity to confront problems, objective realities on the ground reflects the fact that situations of political instabilities in the continent were far from significantly resolved. Therefore in this study the researcher tried to portray the challenges AU facing in the maintenance of continental Peace and Security in light of the Malian political crisis. The Malian case was preferred in consideration of the fact that it is one of the incidents where AU‘s involvement for crisis management was significantly curtailed by the outsiders (i.e., the Western powers). Besides it is a complex event thought to be identified with separatism, religious radicalism and organized regional ―terrorist‖ groups that struck the researcher‘s curiosity and prompted him to conduct this study. The researcher employed the qualitative research approach by making the head quarter of the African Union and the embassy of Mali in Ethiopia as areas of operation for the study. Accordingly the study result indicated the fact that the Malian crisis of 2012/13 was identified with issues of ethnic dissatisfaction, poor governance, and expressions of some form of religious radicalism that involved actors respective to each of the factors. It also demonstrated the fact that the crisis had a significant impact up on the Sahel in particular and regional West Africa in general. Finally it was explored that the challenges AU faced in the crisis were issues related with lack of capacity to conduct its operation, lack of cooperation from the Malians themselves and tension with UN over handling some political developments on the groundenPeace ,SecurityThesis