As the new African peace and security architecture continues to develop, analysts need to decide how best to understand the extent and nature of contemporary security cooperation between African states and explain how the current state of affairs came about. On both these counts, there are elements of Benedikt Franke's book Security cooperation in Africa: a reappraisal which should be contested: first, his conclusion that the current state of security cooperation between Africa's states represents a type of 'security community' in the sense used by Karl Deutsch, and second, some of his explanations for how the African peace and security architecture took shape in the late 1990s and early 21st century.