The Olu of Warri signed a cooperation protocol with the UAE’s Minister of Tolerance and Coexistence at AIM Congress 2026 and made the argument that Africa’s oldest institutions have something to teach the world about living together.
By Pan-African Voice | Dubai
DUBAI — On the second day of AIM Congress 2026 at Dubai World Trade Centre, the Olu of Warri told a hall of ministers, investors and multilateral officials that his kingdom had recently handed rival communities paintball guns and let them shoot at each other.
“We gave them guns. They shot at each other. Everyone had a wonderful time,” said His Majesty Ogiame Atuwatse III, CFR, before adding, pointedly, that “nobody died.”
The line drew laughter. The argument underneath it did not.
The 21st Olu of Warri, custodian of Itsekiri heritage in Nigeria’s Niger Delta, was delivering a guest lecture titled “Tolerance as a Tool for Advancing Peace, Social Cohesion and Shared Prosperity: The Case of Africa,” at a congress session themed “World Governments as Incubators for Tolerance and Shared Growth.” He shared the platform with His Excellency Sheikh Nahyan bin Mubarak Al Nahyan, UAE Cabinet Member and Minister of Tolerance and Coexistence.
Before the session closed, the two men signed a Cooperation Protocol between the UAE Ministry of Tolerance and Coexistence and the Royal Iwere Foundation, the monarch’s institution, an agreement covering peacebuilding, cultural exchange and social inclusion, and committing both sides to sustained dialogue between institutions and nations. Her Majesty Olori Atuwatse III attended alongside government officials and heads of international institutions.
Begin at home
What made the address land was that the monarch did not open with the continent. He opened with his own compound.
“You cannot build bridges with your neighbours while your own house is divided,” he said. “So I began at home.”
Warri Kingdom, he reminded the room, is home to Itsekiri, Ijaw, Urhobo, Isoko, Igbo, Yoruba, Hausa, Bini and Ilaje people, communities carrying their own histories and, in some cases, unresolved grievances. Last month the kingdom staged its first annual Warri Unity Games, bringing tribes with a record of conflict against one another onto the same field for football, tug of war and the now much-quoted paintball tournament.
The Olu’s own community finished third in a tournament he himself hosted a detail he offered as evidence rather than modesty. What unites the kingdom, he concluded, is stronger than what divides it.
“What sounds like a ceremony is governance,” he said. “And once the house was stronger, we opened the field.”
Five centuries of practice
From there, the address widened. Recalling the story of a Warri prince who travelled to Coimbra, in Portugal, centuries ago and the way that single journey enriched the kingdom that sent him, the monarch made the line that has since travelled furthest: “No kingdom survives by standing alone.”
It was a deliberate reframing. Africa, in this telling, is not a late arrival to the conversation on coexistence but one of its longest-running practitioners: a continent that has managed plural societies, layered identities and contested land for generations, and that arrives at forums like AIM with method, not merely need.
He praised the UAE’s decision to establish tolerance and coexistence as a formal ministry of state, calling it “one of the defining government choices of our time,” and credited the Global Tolerance Alliance with carrying that model beyond Emirati borders. Africa, he argued, brings centuries of lived experience in coexistence to the same table and what is needed are partnerships that let those lessons “travel and compound.”
What the signature actually does
The protocol is the part editors should not skim past.
A sovereign ministry signing a cooperation instrument with a traditional institution is a form of recognition ordinarily reserved for states, multilaterals and development agencies. It places the Royal Iwere Foundation in a working relationship with an Emirati ministry, a standing channel rather than a communiqué and it treats cultural authority as an instrument of foreign policy rather than a decorative feature of it.
That matters for a continent whose traditional institutions command trust that governments frequently do not, and whose convening power over land, custom and community remains decisive in exactly the places where investment stalls. Peace is infrastructure. Institutions that can produce it are worth partnering with.
It also fits the shape of this year’s congress, where African participation was structural rather than symbolic, a dedicated Africa Pavilion, delegations arriving with prepared instruments, and a Gulf audience increasingly willing to treat the continent as counterpart rather than cause.
The Olu closed on the sentence he clearly came to Dubai to deliver: “People who can live together can build together, and people who can build together can change the world.”
Paired with the UAE’s structural approach, he suggested, Africa’s historical wisdom could help build a better world. On the evidence of the room, African delegates nodding, an Emirati minister reaching for a pen, the argument found buyers.
AIM Congress 2026 runs 7–9 September at the Dubai World Trade Centre. Pan-African Voice is an official media partner of AIM Congress, reporting on all things Africa.
