Africa has experienced dozens of conflicts over a variety of issues during the past two decades. Responding to these conflicts requires concerted action to manage the crises – the violence, the political discord, and the humanitarian consequences of prolonged fighting. It is also necessary to address the long-term social and economic impacts of conflict, to rebuild communities, societies and states that have been torn apart. To accomplish this requires the involvement of institutions and groups rarely considered in formal official African conflict management activities: schools, universities, religious institutions, media, commercial enterprises, legal institutions, civil society groups, youth, women and migrants. These groups and organizations have an important role to play in building a sense of identity, fairness, shared norms and cohesion between state and society – all critical components of the fabric of peace and security in Africa. This volume brings together leading experts from Africa, Europe and North America to examine these critical social institutions and groups, and consider how they can either improve or impede peaceful conflict resolution. The overarching questions that are explored by the authors are: What constitutes social cohesion and resilience in the face of conflict? What are the threats to cohesion and resilience? And how can the positive elements be fostered and by whom? The second of two volumes on African conflict management capacity by the editors, The Fabric of Peace in Africa: Looking beyond the State opens new doors of understanding for students, scholars and practitioners focused on strengthening peace in Africa; the first volume, Minding the Gap: African Conflict Management in a Time of change, focused on the role of mediation and peacekeeping in managing violence and political crises.

Civil society is one of several Western political and social concepts that have not traveled successfully to Africa. Revived in response to the search for democracy in Eastern Europe during the late Soviet era, Western donors promoted and funded new civil society organizations in sub-Saharan Africa, regarding them as an essential grounding for African democratization. Most of these new civil society organizations had little in common with African associational activity. Focusing on the characteristics and behavior of longstand-ing African organizations would appear a better starting point for developing a useful concept of an African civil society. One candidate worth serious investigation is the Buganda Kingdom Government. This organization violates most distinctions central to Western notions of civil society. Yet it continues to behave like a civil society organization. Its political and conceptual collisions offer guidance toward a useful notion of African civil society and understanding Ugandan politics.

This book is the outcome of a conference on common security and civil society in Africa. The contributions seek to go beyond the "war of images" to imagine a different and more secure future. They are concerned with five different themes: economic and social change; prevention of violent conflicts; the causes of conflict; political security, and the international politics of development partnership.

The prevailing narrative on Africa is that it is awash with violent conflict. Indeed, it does suffer from a multitude of conflicts — from border skirmishes to civil wars to terrorist attacks. Conflicts in Africa are diverse and complex, but there have been a number of cases of successful conflict management and resolution. What accounts for the successes and failures, and what can we learn from Africa’s experience? Minding the Gap: African Conflict Management in a Time of Change takes on these questions, bringing together more than 20 experts to examine the source of conflicts in Africa and assess African management capacity in the face of these conflicts.