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This book explores the evolving African security paradigm in light of the multitude of diverse threats facing the continent and the international community today and in the decades ahead. It challenges current thinking and traditional security constructs as woefully inadequate to meet the real security concerns and needs of African governments in a globalized world. The continent has becoming increasingly integrated into an international security architecture, whereby Africans are just as vulnerable to threats emanating from outside the continent as they are from home-grown ones. Thus, Africa and what happens there, matters more than ever. Through an in-depth examination and analysis of the continent’s most pressing traditional and non-traditional security challenges—from failing states and identity and resource conflict to terrorism, health, and the environment—it provides a solid intellectual foundation, as well as practical examples of the complexities of the modern African security environment. Not only does it assess current progress at the local, regional, and international level in meeting these challenges, it also explores new strategies and tools for more effectively engaging Africans and the global community through the human security approach.
conflict has security as its goal. In such contexts the leitmotif ‘If we do not dominate, we will be dominated’ is created by astute propagandists and political manipulation, which all play on the presence of an enemy and the desire for survival. 2 For Lederach peace-building is about transforming ‘conflict towards more sustainable, peaceful relationships’. 3
. Likewise, mutually reinforcing and cross-cutting linkages of identity, resource competition, weapons availability or poor governance and political alienation can provide further tinder to fan the flames of these conflicts. Identity and resource-based conflicts are especially vulnerable to political manipulation and are particularly difficult to resolve. Without improved governance and enhanced democratic inclusion across the continent’s most divided societies these types of conflicts will likely continue to plague African societies for years to come. In extreme
of conflict. Abiodun Alao, for example, points to a failure of governance in how resources are exploited and utilized within the society.13 Accordingly, it is the political manipulation of resources in elite and interest politics that can trigger or sustain conflict. Likewise, Paul Williams sees poor governance and weak leadership as crucial in determining whether resources are a blessing or a curse. And although Williams is skeptical that an abundance or scarcity of resources (other than land) is directly responsible for driving conflict, he acknowledges that
political manipulation, Fishkin argues, ‘The fact that the practice might conceivably be so successful that it robs the subordinate group of any desire to voice its interests is only an indication of how dramatically our conditions are violated.’ 17 Evident in both Alexy’s pragmatic rules for discourse and Benhabib’s principle of egalitarian reciprocity is a concern for forms of
willing tools in this endeavor by reinterpreting traditions, customs, and even history to align with the colonial perspective of African identity. This was especially true in British governed colonies, whose use of indirect rule necessitated the existence of an African administrative structure built largely along identity lines.* The end result was an increasingly fluid and adaptive concept of African identity that was to become a powerful tool of political manipulation and mobilization, first by colonial rulers and later by post-independence leaders. Ethnicity Even