This open access book on the state of peacebuilding in Africa brings together the work of distinguished scholars, practitioners, and decision makers to reflect on key experiences and lessons learned in peacebuilding in Africa over the past half century. The core themes addressed by the contributors include conflict prevention, mediation, and management; post-conflict reconstruction, justice and Disarmament Demobilization and Reintegration; the role of women, religion, humanitarianism, grassroots organizations, and early warning systems; and the impact of global, regional, and continental bodies. The book's thematic chapters are complemented by six country/region case studies: The Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Sudan/South Sudan, Mozambique and the Sahel/Mali. Each chapter concludes with a set of key lessons learned that could be used to inform the building of a more sustainable peace in Africa. The State of Peacebuilding in Africa was born out of the activities of the Southern Voices Network for Peacebuilding (SVNP), a Carnegie-funded, continent-wide network of African organizations that works with the Wilson Center to bring African knowledge and perspectives to U.S., African, and international policy on peacebuilding in Africa. The research for this book was made possible by a grant from Carnegie Corporation of New York.

Based on intellectual openness and an interest in transdisciplinary perspectives, this edited volume introduces scholars of African Peace and Security to innovative methodological and conceptual approaches, offering new insights into the inner life of APSA.

Facing threats ranging from Islamist insurgencies to the Ebola pandemic, African regional actors are playing an increasingly vital role in safeguarding peace and stability across the continent. But while the African Union has demonstrated its ability to deploy forces on short notice and in difficult circumstances, the challenges posed by increasingly complex conflict zones have revealed a widening divide between the theory and practice of peacekeeping. With the AU's African Standby Force becoming fully operational in 2016, this timely and much-needed work argues that responding to these challenges will require a new and distinctively African model of peacekeeping, as well as a radical revision of the current African security framework. The first book to provide a comprehensive overview and analysis of African peace operations, The Future of African Peace Operations gives a long overdue assessment of the ways in which peacekeeping on the continent has evolved over the past decade. It will be a vital resource for policy makers, researchers and all those seeking solutions and insights into the immense security challenges which Africa is facing today.

This book concerns the United Nations’ peacemaking, peacekeeping, peace-building, and post-conflict reconstruction efforts in Africa from 1960 to 2021. Succinctly discussed are historic and contemporary peace, security, and economic engagements within 18 countries spanning eight African regions: the Great Lakes; the Economic Community of Central African States; East Africa; the Horn of Africa; North Africa; the Sahel Region; West Africa; and Southern Africa. The book develops a neo-realist and imperialist critique that discusses how resource-rich, conflict-ridden states have become easy targets for capitalists, terrorists, and transnational crime, aligned to geostrategic parochial interests. Critically argued is that endogenous economic growth factors, if applied effectively, can achieve both peace and security, and meet the Global Sustainable Development Goals. Such efforts require constructive engagement with the five permanent members of the UN Security Council: China, France, Russia, the UK, and the US. However, the book contends that the cornerstone of multilateral engagement involves Africa’s 55 states and the African Union’s three major pillars: the Peace and Security Council, the African Governance Architecture, and the Post-Conflict Reconstruction Development Centre, which have the ability to move resource-rich, conflict-ridden states out of transnational crime and poverty. This book offers wide-ranging analyses of contemporary African diplomacy and a compelling critique of UN peacekeeping efforts in Africa, which resonates to scholars of international relations, peace and conflict studies, and African politics.

This book describes and analyzes protracted conflicts in the Great Lakes Region of Africa. In doing so, it emphasizes obstacles to peace rather than root causes of conflict. Case studies are presented from Burundi, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Northern Kenya, Northern Uganda, Southern Sudan, and Zanzibar. Amongst other conclusions, the book shows that, to settle or transform protracted conflicts, distinction must be made between strategic and nonstrategic actors: the former must be able to prevail upon the latter in the negotiation and implementation of peace agreements. The theme and collection of the research presented in this book is unique in the literature. The case studies all employ methods of othick description, o process tracing (following particular actors and their interests), and in-depth personal interviews. The book will be of interest to academics, researchers, undergraduate and post-graduate students, and professionals in conflict theory, analysis and resolution, African and development studies, political science and international affairs, as well as to mediators, negotiators, and facilitators in conflict resolution

For the last twenty years, the West African nation of Guinea has exhibited all of the conditions that have led to civil wars in other countries, and Guineans themselves regularly talk about the inevitability of war. Yet the country has narrowly avoided conflict again and again. In A Socialist Peace?, Mike McGovern asks how this is possible, how a nation could beat the odds and evade civil war. Guinea is rich in resources, but its people are some of the poorest in the world. Its political situation is polarized by fiercely competitive ethnic groups. Weapons flow freely through its lands and across its borders. And, finally, it is still recovering from the oppressive regime of Sékou Touré. McGovern argues that while Touré’s reign was hardly peaceful, it was successful—often through highly coercive and violent measures—at establishing a set of durable national dispositions, which have kept the nation at peace. Exploring the ambivalences of contemporary Guineans toward the afterlife of Touré’s reign as well as their abiding sense of socialist solidarity, McGovern sketches the paradoxes that undergird political stability.

This volume offers an informed and critical analysis of the operationalization and institutionalization of the peace and security architecture by the African Union and Africa's Regional Economic Communities (RECs). It examines the institutions that will carry the mandate forward, raises pertinent research questions for the successful operationalization of the architecture and debates the medium and long-term challenges to implementation.