2022 — Africa Day of Peace and Reconciliation

Each January 31 marks the African Union's Day of Peace and Reconciliation. The day was instituted at an extraordinary summit in Malabo, convened as coups and terrorism swept the continent. The summit called for resilient societies and national unity, in the spirit of the Mandela Decade of Reconciliation.

At that summit, Angola's President João Lourenço was named the African Union's peace champion, a role honoring the work of mediation over the work of war. The day itself asks a hard thing of a continent that knows conflict intimately: to set aside one date each year for reconciliation, and to mean it.