Make official warning to store belonging to African country (9)
I believe the answer is:
formalise
'make official' is the definition.
Both the answer and definition are verbs in their base form.
Perhaps they are linked in a way I don't understand?
'warning to store belonging to african country' is the wordplay.
'warning' becomes 'fore' (used to warn of airborne balls on a golf course).
'to store' is an insertion indicator.
'belonging' becomes 's' (I can't justify this - if you can you should give a lot more credence to this answer).
'to' says to put letters next to each other (I've seen this in other clues).
'african country' becomes 'mali' (country in Africa).
's' put after 'mali' is 'malis'.
'fore' placed around 'malis' is 'FORMALISE'.
Can you help me to learn more?
(Another definition for formalise that I've seen is " structure".)