The
continent is stereotyped as being violent and increasingly unstable, but a
closer look suggests that conflict is declining
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| UN peacekeepers in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Photograph: Reuters |
Writing in Foreign Policy two years ago, New York Times east Africa correspondent and Pulitzer
Prize winner Jeffrey Gettleman espoused this view. He painted a dismal picture
of pointless wars waged by brutes and criminals "spreading across Africa
like a viral pandemic."
Gettleman
is right that warfare and political violence are changing on the continent, but
he is wrong to portray that change as one of brutal violence increasing out of
control.
In fact, as
I show in a recent piece in African Affairs, looked at since the end of the
cold war, wars are not becoming more frequent in sub-Saharan Africa. To the
contrary: according to the Uppsala Armed Conflict Data Program, the pre-eminent
tracker of warfare worldwide, wars in the 2000s are substantially down from
their peak in the early 1990s. Even if one counts an uptick during the past two
years, there were about one-third fewer wars in sub-Saharan Africa in the
period compared to the early-to-mid 1990s.
Another
prevailing view is that sub-Saharan Africa is the most war-endemic region. Not
so, especially if one looks at the continent's history since 1960. Wars in
sub-Saharan Africa (compared to other world regions) are not longer or more
frequent on a wars-per-country basis. Those distinctions effectively go to
Asia, where between wars in India, Afghanistan, the Philippines, and Vietnam,
among others, wars are more frequent and longer lasting.
The pattern
holds true for extreme cases of mass killing, like Rwanda in 1994 and Darfur in
the mid-2000s. Such events are on the decline in Africa; viewed across time,
Africa is also not the regional leader of such events on a per-country basis.
My point is
not to engage in crude regionalism, but rather to suggest that what often
transpires as common sense about sub-Saharan Africa is wrong.
The bigger
point is that we may be witnessing significant shifts in the nature of
political violence on the continent. Wars are on the decline since the 1990s,
but the character of warfare is also changing. Today there are fewer big wars
fought for state control in which insurgents maintain substantial control of
territory and put up well-structured armies to fight their counterparts in the
state – Mali not withstanding. Such wars were modal into the 1990s. From
southern Africa in Angola, Mozambique, Namibia, and even Zimbabwe to the long
wars in the Horn in Ethiopia, Eritrea, and Sudan to the Great Lakes wars in
Rwanda and Uganda, the typical armed conflict in Africa involved two major,
territory-holding armies fighting each other for state control.
Today's
wars typically are smaller. They most often involve small insurgencies of
factionalised rebels on the peripheries of states. Today's wars also play out
differently. They exhibit cross-border dimensions, and rather than drawing
funding from big external states they depend on illicit trade, banditry, and
international terrorist networks.
Typical of
today's wars are the rebels in Casamance, in the Ogaden region of Ethiopia,
various armed groups in Darfur, and the Lord's Resistance Army. The latter
typifies an emerging trend of trans-national insurgents. The LRA moves across
multiple states in the Great Lakes region. Northern Mali is another case in
point – prior to seizing control of the north, the Islamists moved across
multiple countries in the Sahel. Once they gained territorial control in 2012,
they attracted fighters from Nigeria and across North Africa. Moreover, these
are not non-ideological wars, as Gettleman claims. The jihadis in Mali and
Somalia, the separatists in Casamance, and the rebels in Darfur are certainly
fighting for a cause.
To be sure,
no one in his or her right mind could claim that warfare or political violence
has ended in Africa. Many countries in the region have features that political
scientists believe make countries vulnerable to armed conflict: weak states,
high dependence on natural resources, and horizontal inequalities. Of the
recent armed conflicts in Somalia, Sudan, Mali, the Central African Republic,
Chad, and eastern Congo, one obvious commonality is the lack of effective state
control. Rebels survive in remote regions where state authority is tenuous. The
fact of weak states in these and other countries will not end any time soon.
Moreover,
other forms of violence deserve greater scrutiny. Consider, for example,
electoral violence. As African states have turned to multiparty elections, so
too has the risk of violence during those electoral campaigns increased.
Electoral violence on the scale of Kenya in 2007 and 2008, Côte d'Ivoire in
2010, or Zimbabwe in 2008 is not the norm, but in many locations there is often
some form of violence between incumbent and opposition forces. Yet we know
substantially less about patterns and causes of electoral violence.
Consider
too violence over vital resources, such as land, water, and pasture. Trends are
harder to detect, but one new data collection effort from the University of
Texas shows an increase in such violence events since the early 1990s. With
climate change, rapidly growing urbanisation, and other changes that increase
the pressure on vital but often scarce resources, we can expect more violence
of the type recently seen in northern Kenya. Yet again, we know much less about
this form of violence.
What
explains the recent decline in warfare across Africa? I don't know for certain,
but would point to geo-political changes since the end of the cold war.
First, the
end of the cold war meant that the opportunities for rebels to receive
substantial weaponry and training from big external states declined. To be
sure, states across Africa still meddle in the affairs of their neighbors, but
insurgent funding from neighbouring states is usually enough to be a nuisance
to, but not actually overthrow, existing governments.
Second, the
rise of multi-party politics has sapped the anti-government funding, energy,
and talent away from the bush and into the domestic political arena.
Third,
China is a rising external force in sub-Saharan Africa. China's goals are
mainly economic, but their foreign relations follow a principle of
non-interference. To my knowledge, China supports states, not insurgencies.
Finally,
conflict reduction mechanisms, in particular international peacekeeping and
regional diplomacy, have substantially increased on the continent. Peacekeeping
is more prevalent and especially more robust than in the 1990s. Regional bodies
such as the African Union, Eccowas, Eccas, IGAD, and SADC are quite active in
most conflict situations. They have exhibited greater resolves in conflicts as
diverse as Côte d'Ivoire, Sudan, the Central African Republic, and Madagascar.
The four
posited mechanisms are hypotheses, each of which deserves greater scrutiny and
empirical testing. But taken together, they suggest plausible ways in which the
incentives of insurgents and even state leaders to fight have been altered in
recent years. They give reason to expect that while war is clearly not over in
sub-Saharan Africa, we should continue to observe a decline in its frequency
and intensity in coming decades.
Scott
Straus is a professor in the Department of Political Science at the University
of Wisconsin
“… Africa
Let me tell
you where else it's happening that you are unaware - that which is the
beginning of the unity of the African states. Soon the continent will have what
they never had before, and when that continent is healed and there is no AIDS
and no major disease, they're going to want what you have. They're going to
want houses and schools and an economy that works without corruption. They will
be done with small-minded leaders who kill their populations for power in what
has been called for generations "The History of Africa." Soon it will
be the end of history in Africa, and a new continent will emerge.
Be aware
that the strength may not come from the expected areas, for new leadership is
brewing. There is so much land there and the population is so ready there, it
will be one of the strongest economies on the planet within two generations
plus 20 years. And it's going to happen because of a unifying idea put together
by a few. These are the potentials of the planet, and the end of history as you
know it.
In
approximately 70 years, there will be a black man who leads this African
continent into affluence and peace. He won't be a president, but rather a
planner and a revolutionary economic thinker. He, and a strong woman with him,
will implement the plan continent-wide. They will unite. This is the potential
and this is the plan. Africa will arise out the ashes of centuries of disease
and despair and create a viable economic force with workers who can create good
products for the day. You think China is economically strong? China must do
what it does, hobbled by the secrecy and bias of the old ways of its own
history. As large as it is, it will have to eventually compete with Africa, a
land of free thinkers and fast change. China will have a major competitor, one
that doesn't have any cultural barriers to the advancement of the free Human
spirit. …”
