The African Union (AU) confronts a peace and security landscape that has grown more volatile and more fragmented since 2020, marked by the persistence of Boko Haram and the Islamic State West Africa Province in the Lake Chad Basin, the expansion of Jama'at Nasr al-Islam wal Muslimin across the Sahel, the entrenchment of Al-Shabaab in the Horn of Africa, the resurgence of M23 and allied armed groups in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, the civil war that has engulfed Sudan since April 2023, and a persistent wave of unconstitutional changes of government that has left Burkina Faso, Guinea-Bissau, Madagascar, Mali, Niger, and Sudan under African Union suspension as of early 2026. Against this backdrop, this study examines the strategic case for a harmonized African Union DNA Security Architecture (AUDSA): a continental forensic genomics framework capable of strengthening criminal investigation, counterterrorism, victim identification, and border and migration management across the Union's fifty-five member states and their constituent Regional Economic Communities. Drawing on Human Security Theory, Constructivism, and Technological Determinism, and employing a qualitative design combining comparative case analysis (South Africa, Nigeria, Ghana, Rwanda, and the European Union and INTERPOL as global benchmarks) with policy and document analysis, the study finds that forensic DNA capacity across Africa remains fragmented, under-resourced, and legally uneven, even as national initiatives South Africa's National Forensic DNA Database, Nigeria's National DNA Data Bank, and Kenya's Huduma Namba biometric programme demonstrate growing institutional appetite for genomic and biometric modernization, even as the AU's own continental e-passport, first announced in 2016, remains largely symbolic nearly a decade later. The study argues that the coup-driven suspensions of the mid-2020s, rather than foreclosing continental forensic cooperation, make a technically interoperable, legally safeguarded, and politically adaptable AUDSA more urgent, since terrorism and trafficking networks continue to operate across the boundary between AU-recognized governments and suspended transitional authorities regardless of institutional standing. It proposes a hub-and-spoke architecture, anchored in the AU Commission's Peace and Security Department and the African Peace and Security Architecture (APSA), that pairs continental standard-setting with implementation through the Regional Economic Communities ECOWAS, IGAD, SADC, ECCAS, and the EAC grounded in harmonized legislation, independent ethical oversight, and interoperability standards aligned with the AU's Malabo Convention. The study concludes that forensic genomics, responsibly governed, offers the African Union a credible pathway from reactive crisis management toward evidence-based, technology-enabled peacebuilding consistent with Agenda 2063's ambition to silence the guns.

Success Adeleke Dayisi, Abubakar Bashir Saulawa,"Forensic Genomics and the Future of Continental Security Designing an African Union DNA Security Architecture for Peace, Justice, and Counterterrorism in a Transforming Africa" International Journal of Advanced Multidisciplinary Research and Educational Development, V2(5): Page(66-72) September - October 2026. ISSN: 3107-6513. www.ijamred.com. Published by Scientific and Academic Research Publishing.