Africa is faced with rampant armed conflicts in some of its countries with consequent negative effects to the economic, political and social lives of her citizens and neighbouring countries. However, where conflicts do exist, they affect not only the stability of the countries involved, but also their neighbours and the entire sub-region. Some of the African conflicts are the offspring of the political class who often uses ideologies to stay in office and sometimes resort to conflicts in the form of violence, while other conflicts takes the form of insurgency, terrorism and civil as the ones currently being experienced in northern Mozambique province of Cabo Delgado and Tigray in Ethiopia respectively. Central to some of these armed conflicts are natural resources, such as natural gas, oil and other minerals.
Conflict resolution, being a basic human activity, is conducted in forms that often vary across cultures. Different methods have been used in the past to try to resolve these conflicts including military deployment; dialogue between conflicting parties; and even negotiations.
As the African Union is trying to end continent’s armed conflicts through its initiative called ‘’Silencing the Guns’’ It is pertinent to reread arguments advanced by African historian and social theorist, Achille Mbembe, at the very start of the abertura in 1990. It is important during the current era of heightened global conflict and uncertainty to revisit earlier prognoses about Africa’s democratic prospects. What have been key factors and forces, in retrospect, that critically influenced these processes? What adjustments should be made to “our theories and prescriptions”? Finally, is democratic and constitutional governance likely to withstand the conflicts at hand?
From time immemorial Africa has experienced numerous forms of conflicts ranging from ethnic confrontations to interstate wars. The idea of war still plays a veritable role in the post-colonial Africa as well as in the international politics. An understanding of the situation in Africa has proved that most of these wars have been fought on the African soils and have had devastating effects on the continent and the world at large.
Examples of recent wars include insurgency in northern Mozambique and civil in Tigray region, Ethiopia. These wars have greatly affected people involved as the conflicts will reduce the economies of these countries to nothing but a shadow on their own. It is obvious that most of these wars are taken place but in the developing countries and therefore leaves one with the question, whether the wars can be seen as a consequence of poverty or is poverty the consequence of war? To my opinion, war is not a solution to conflict, looking at the aftermath of the war, the vulnerabilities of the women and children, the political and economic imbalance of the states.
In this light African Union and the regional blocks such as SADC and others should seek ways of avoiding the outbreak of such wars, it is important to come up with early warning systems to make sure that there is not even possibility of armed conflicts in contemporary Africa.
The only way for African Union to silence the guns in African countries is for the institution to be independent and have full financial support from its member states and limit external financial support to other areas of the organization. Immediately African Union becomes independent, it will be able to act decisively on armed and other conflicts and the guns will be silenced.
The obvious reasons for most violent conflict have been natural resources conflict, territorial and ethnicity, political and economic. The case of Cabo Delgado in northern Mozambique conflict, it is not as a result of coincidence or the colonial legacy left behind by the colonial powers, but the area has wealth hidden in form of natural gas and other minerals. Natural resources have been the cause of several violent conflicts in the developing countries. The question is “can natural resources be seen as a curse or a blessing in Africa”?
Many conflicts on the continent have been settled and others are in the process of being resolved, generally through peaceful means. This is an indication that as far as African states are concerned, military deployment has two faces, in some other instances being successful and on the other hand not been successful in resolving conflicts rather it fuels it. This is evident in southern Sudan where military deployment from the north for over a decade failed to resolve the conflicts until peaceful negotiations were introduced, the same as DR Congo. Despite the military deployment by the AU and UN peacekeepers in Somalia, the state is still in chaos as violent conflicts thrive.
With studies showing the similarities in the causes of conflicts in African countries, one thing that stands out is that we should not wait for conflicts to occur and try to resolve them later. Instead, African countries should put constitutional measures in place that will ensure corruption and resource allocation issues are dealt with from the roots upwards.
