Jihadists kill 40 civilians in northern Mali. At least 13 people killed by suicide blast in central Somalia. Suspected jihadists kill 10 in Burkina Faso. Headlines like these, of acts of terrorism or extremism across Africa, have become all too frequent in the last decade or so.

Different forms of armed conflict have been around for a while. But as President Paul Kagame told the EU-AU Summit in Brussels on February 17, in Brussels, they are a growing security threat and have to be tackled in a different way.

Perpetrators of such acts are a diverse lot with different reasons. There are some that are made up of local groups with specific local grievances, usually of a socio-economic nature. These are probably easier to deal with. But that does not always happen. Sometimes it is ignored by the authorities, its root causes not properly addressed, or is hijacked by some political group that uses it for its own ends. And so a limited, local issue is allowed to grow into a serious problem,

There are others that take up grievances, membership and organisation that go beyond national boundaries. They have an ideology they want to impose or reject existing ways of doing things without necessarily offering a credible or acceptable alternative. Often, they take advantage of existing local complaints to gain a following. These are more difficult, but not impossible, to tackle.

The question then has been how to combat and defeat such non-state or cross-state armed groups.

Until recently, the response has been mixed. The state has usually treated them as a domestic matter with varying seriousness, and handled them as such, also with varying success. Some tend to regard them as a mere nuisance and do little to contain or eliminate them, or look into their concerns. As a result, they grow and become a bigger problem.

But sometimes, the state lacks the capacity, or for some reason is reluctant to effectively fight them and so they get entrenched and grow and become a real menace.

When the state fails to deal with the problem, which unfortunately is the case most times, the usual recourse has been to call for outside intervention, usually the United States, Europe or the United Nations.

But even this traditional approach to security issues of this nature has not always worked as desired. For several reasons.

First, the mission of external intervention, for example by the French who are the quickest to get involved because they have military bases in many of their former colonies, has been: regime prop when that serves their interests or regime change when they can best be served that way regardless of what citizens think about it. It was never designed or meant to defend them or the nation. Which is perhaps why they have not been very successful in the fight against insurgents in Mali and Burkina Faso.

Second, these interventions sometimes tend to treat the matter as purely a military problem. They will fight the groups, maybe defeat them and then leave. But as experience has shown in Africa and elsewhere, force alone is not enough to defeat armed groups and end the threat they pose.

Third, at some stage in some of these conflicts, the United Nations gets involved in a peacekeeping role. Which means to stand between belligerents and hope they behave themselves and not attack each other.

Now, the UN is frustratingly slow in getting off the ground, and when it finally does, woefully ineffective. It takes long to agree on the need for intervention and even longer to assemble and deploy forces. There will be debates on who will provide troops, equipment and funding, and then the nature of the mandate.

As all this talking is going on, hundreds of thousands of people are being killed and property destroyed.

The presence of UN peacekeepers does not even solve the problem. It merely postpones it, allows it to grow or polices an uneasy stalemate. Rwandans have painful experiences of this snail-slow process of the UN.

Departure from this sort of intervention is clearly needed. Which is exactly what President Kagame did when he proposed "new thinking and new template on counter-terrorism and peace support operations” at the EU-AU Summit in Brussels last week. In his words, "a blended bilateral and multilateral” approach is what is required.

How does this new thinking depart from what has been going on? In several ways.

One, it proposes a quick response, usually obtained through a bilateral arrangement. Once the ground has been prepared a ‘credible multilateral force” can then take over.

Two, alongside military operations and even when they have ended, issues of governance must be addressed.

Three, gains made have to be consolidated. The forces must stay longer to ensure stability, help build capacity to prevent return of armed groups. Immediate departure after so-called pacification or prolonged stay without achieving it have been a major weakness in the past.

Four, funding for these operations.

This new approach has already been tried, with success, in the Central African Republic where Rwandan forces are involved in a bilateral arrangement and as part of a UN peacekeeping mission and in Mozambique under a bilateral agreement and in collaboration with a multilateral force from SADC.

In Mozambique, for instance, Rwandan troops had a specific mission: fight and defeat IS-affiliated terrorists who had taken over the province of Cabo Delgado, stabilise the area, restore the authority of the state and reinforce its capacity.

There is therefore evidence that this sort of new intervention model provides a faster response. It is also clear that stability is returning to the region and rebuilding is ongoing.

The world had better listen to and act on President Kagame’s proposal. He is speaking from knowledge and experience.

The views expressed in this article are of the writer.