This text identifies contributions of traditional mechanisms for conflict management in Africa and elsewhere. With African conflicts eluding efforts to be controlled, this work is guided by the question: can traditional methods yield insights and approaches that might help end the violence?

In Nigeria, for quite a long time, many medical scholars have advocated that attention should be given to traditional medicine as an alternative or complementary system of medicine for example, in the early 60ís, Prof. Adeoye Lambo, saw the need to integrate some aspects of traditional medicine into the country's health care system. Despite the growing interest in traditional medicine as an integral part of health care delivery, the bulk of it still remain unregulated. This observation may account for the contempt and distrust existing between the traditional healers and their orthodox counterparts, with each group claiming supremacy and relevance over the other. In Nigeria modern medicine continues to remain costly, heavily bureaucratised and elitist-oriented with large parts of the populace continuing to visit traditional clinics and healing homes in order to find succour and solace in the hands of the uncurbed and poorly regulated traditional healers. It is the view of the author of this book that some form of regulation between the two systems is necessary, to begin the debate the following questions are addressed here: What constitutes traditional or modern medicine? What are the criticisms against them and how are they refuted? How do you identify the beneficial, neutral, harmless and harmful aspects of the practice of indigenous medicine? What aspects of these, should or should not be integrated? What are the modifications the orthodox practitioner has to make? What are the problems and prospects of integration?

This book builds on the overarching theme of conflict management to reflect on negotiations, mediation, and conflict resolution in Africa.

This edited volume builds on a core set of concepts developed by I. William Zartman to offer new insights into conflict management and African politics. Key concepts such as ripe moments, hurting stalemates, and collapsed states, are built upon in order to show how conflict resolution theory may be applied to contemporary challenges, particularly in Africa. The contributors explore means of pre-empting negotiations over bribery, improving outcomes in environmental negotiations, boosting the capacity of mediators to end violent conflicts, and finding equitable negotiated outcomes. Other issues dealt with in the book include the negotiation of relations with Europe, the role of culture in African conflict resolution, the means to enhance security in unstable regional environments, and the strategic role of the United States in mediating African conflicts. This book will be of much interest to students of international conflict management, peace/conflict studies, African politics and IR in general.

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.

The profession of peacemaking has been practiced by indigenous communities around the world for many centuries; however, the ethnocentric world view of the West, which dominated the world of ideas for the last five centuries, dismissed indigenous forms of peacemaking as irrelevant and backward tribal rituals. Neither did indigenous forms of peacemaking fit the conception of modernization and development of the new ruling elites who inherited the postcolonial state. The new profession of Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR), which emerged in the West as a new profession during the 1970s, neglected the tradition and practice of indigenous forms of peacemaking. The scant literature which has appeared on this critical subject tends to focus on the ritual aspect of the indigenous practices of peacemaking. The goal of this book is to fill this lacuna in scholarship. More specifically, this work focuses on the process of peacemaking, exploring the major steps of process of peacemaking which the peacemakers follow in dislodging antagonists from the stage of hostile confrontation to peaceful resolution of disputes and eventual reconciliation. The book commences with a critique of ADR for neglecting indigenous processes of peacemaking and then utilizes case studies from different communities around the world to focus on the following major themes: the basic structure of peacemaking process; change and continuity in the traditions of peacemaking; the role of indigenous women in peacemaking; the nature of the tools peacemakers deploy; common features found in indigenous processes of peacemaking; and the overarching goals of peacemaking activities in indigenous communities.