Path to the Africa We Want: Sustained Peace and Development
Whether Africa can become an “integrated, prosperous and peaceful [continent], driven by its own citizens and representing a dynamic force in international arena” will fundamentally depend on its ability to achieve the twin goals of sustained peace and development. And here is why:
In 2007, a report presented
some striking findings on the costs of insecurity and instability on Africa’s
development efforts. In the period between 1990 and 2005, for example, half of
all deaths due to armed conflicts worldwide took place in Africa, and the
continent became the host of world’s largest number of refugees and internally
displaced persons. Moreover, during the same period, violent conflicts cost the
continent about $300 billion, almost an equivalent amount of foreign aid it
received throughout the same period. Indeed, civil wars, which are hitherto
recurrent, have been the most devastating to the continent. According to Paul Collier, for
instance, civil wars last about seven years, during which the GDP of the
concerned countries shrink by around 15%. To return to pre-war economic
performance, they would need about ten years and more than twenty extra years
to attain the development levels they would have reached had they not descended
into chaos.
Yet Africa is intermittently mired
in violent conflicts and insecurity, further frustrating its development
initiatives. For example, the Peace Research Institute Oslo finds
that 2015 and 2016 witnessed the most conflicts in Africa since 1946, a trend
that would continue well
into to 2017; and the Council on Foreign Relations reports that
of the 25 ongoing conflicts worldwide, nine are in Africa. Unsurprisingly, many
African countries have been dealing with various forms of instability. In fact,
although some progress has been made since 2016 (when Africa recorded 21 fragile states of a
total of 26 worldwide), 14 of the world’s top 20 most fragile states
were African in 2018. Such state of affairs creates “increasingly ungoverned and ungovernable spaces” while
similarly greatly hindering African countries’ attempts to prosper.
Undoubtedly, this explains as much the fact that of the
15 UN Peacekeeping Missions worldwide, 8 are in Africa and nearly half (10) of
the 21 UN Political Missions and Good Offices Engagements are deployed in the continent as it does the fact that Africa’s security issues represent more than
60% of all issues dealt with
by the UN Security Council. With such a reality, the AU’s goal to “Silence the
Guns by 2020” is an almost missed deadline. Yet, rather than giving ways to a
sense of helplessness, these issues call for more urgent and more decisive
actions, if only because this is undoubtedly the Africa we have, rather than the one we want.
And to shape the Africa we want, more efforts and new thinking in tackling
security and development issues are called for.
What is clear though is that as they
persist,
security challenges have direct bearings on African countries’ development
efforts. Indeed, many would agree that violent conflicts, with their high
human, social, and economic costs, have been the most obliterating obstacle for
the continent: lives are lost in untold numbers, people forcibly displaced,
families and communities divided, future generations lost to ruins, and what
little there may have been shattered.
Nonetheless, if insecurity and instability frustrate
development efforts in Africa, securitizing
development has equally proven disastrous, as the nexus of security-development
is much more convoluted. Perhaps, this intricacy is best captured by the former
UN Secretary-General and late Kofi Annan when he once observed that “there
is no long term security without development. There is no development without
security”. In line with this premise, I argue that Africa needs to rethink its
development strategies to ensure that both security and development are given
equal priority. More specifically, I contend that
African countries’ ability to
collaboratively and cooperatively achieve the twin goals of sustained peace and
development will decide on the future of Agenda 2063 for the continent.
Of the seven aspirations the
Agenda set, aspiration number four, building “a peaceful and secure Africa”,
will likely be the gateway to their materialization, because it entails
effectively balancing the security-development nexus—whereby broader security
measures adequately serve to promote sustainable development and development
initiatives help foster efforts to consolidate long-term peace. As such, I
primarily focus on this aspiration, which in turn requires three crucial
initiatives to be realized: rethinking security, engaging the African youth,
and fostering broader collaborative and cooperative efforts on security and
development.
Rethinking
security
Rethinking security in Africa
fundamentally entails reconsidering Africa’s approach to security to ensure
that security initiatives are integral parts of the broader development efforts
i.e. striking a balance between hard-security issues (state security) and the
broader human-security through poverty alleviation and inclusive prosperity. It
also entails reinforcing and adapting the African Peace and Security
Architecture as well as updating its pillars to sustainably promote and maintain
peace, security, stability, and prosperity in the continent. In more practical
terms, for instance, post-conflict reconstruction and peacebuilding efforts
would be more conscious and purposeful in striving to holistically address the
root causes of the conflicts and promote more inclusive development. They would
also effectively adopt and adapt the DDR Programs—disarmament, demobilization
and reintegration programs—to fit each specific context. This would help end
Africa’s recurrent violent conflicts as they prevent future outbreaks and
foster more peaceful and inclusive societies.
Moreover, rethinking security in
Africa entails recognizing the fact that mismanagements and illegal exploration
of Africa’s abundant natural resources (alongside deeply entrenched grievances,
inequalities, and exclusions) have been playing a leading role in fueling and
sustaining violent conflicts throughout the continent. For that reason,
adopting, effectively enforcing, and transparently evaluating performance with
natural resources management mechanisms such as the Kimberly Process
Certification Scheme (KPCS), the Equator Principles (EPs), the Extractive
Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI), NEPAD’s guidelines for resource
management, the ECOWAS’s Conflict Prevention Framework (as this has brought
some successes in West Africa), etc. would be a necessary step forward, a
concerted effort a better future. And although it is crucially important to
reinforce regional and continental initiatives on resources management, it is
equally important Africa learns from and adapt to its specific contexts the “good
practices” and effectiveness of the international mechanisms.
Finally, in rethinking security,
Africa would do better to initiate and operationalize cross-regional
interactions, dialogues, and learning. As such, the AU could reinforce its
continental leadership role by aligning regional economic communities (RECs) to
its agenda while allowing for more flexibility to tailor continental guidelines
to meet regional and country contexts. To that end, the dual principles of subsidiarity and proportionality should be given more momentum. It would be a
trust-building process across the continent and across RECs. Perhaps, the
African Standby Force, which has been divided in line with the existing RECS,
is a good example, as it helps ensure a quick response to security challenges
in each region. But more coordination and cooperation amongst them is needed,
especially in cases where the challenges do not fit into the traditional
geographical delimitations (as is the case with the cross-border crises in
Nigeria and Cameroon).
Engaging
the African youth
There is a growing consensus that
Africa’s failure to “take off” is largely due to its long practice of
sidelining its vibrant and dynamic youths. That is, with its long history of
marginalizing its young population, hence its future, Africa has been missing a
lot. It is, therefore, time to better engage the African youths, empower young
men and young women. That building an “integrated, prosperous and peaceful
Africa” is a fundamental task for each African cannot be overstated. As a
crucial stakeholder, thorough participation of the African youths in shaping
Africa’s future is as important as the aforementioned rethinking security in
the continent.
Yet to better harness Africa’s
demographic dividend, the quality of education and training this a dynamic
segment of Africa’s population receives would certainly play a determinant
role. That it is quite impossible to build “an integrated Africa” without
integrating the educational systems of its youths is to state the obvious.
Hence rekindling, in the African youths, the spirit of a continental
togetherness in forging Africa’s destiny would help promote the idea of peace,
continental unity despite diversity as much as it would revitalize the sense of
common destiny. For example, initiating continental exchange programs and
regional and cross-regional working groups, youthful movements of which Dr
Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma talks about so
passionately, would allow young Africans to learn from their shared knowledge,
experience, and aspiration through interactions, exchanges, discussions, and
even (positive) confrontations. Only when the youths feel empowered and
meaningfully engaged, could there be “a peaceful and secure Africa” the
aspiration four Agenda 2063 has called for.
Fostering broader collaborative
and cooperative efforts on security and development
In addition to empowering and
engaging the African youths, building a secure and peaceful Africa also
requires more collaborative and cooperative efforts at all levels of governance
systems i.e. continental bodies, regional organizations, national governments,
civil society, activists, etc. This would ultimately promote cross-border and
regional dialogues and learning processes. In that regard, despite the fact
that there is room for betterment, the newly established Continental Free Trade
Area and the adoption and ongoing implementation of initiatives such as the
Kampala Convention on internally displaced persons may serve as tangible
results born out of combined and concerted efforts.
Likewise, collaboration and
cooperation would help the continent effectively claim ownership of its destiny
and its development priorities, both of which are largely lacking to these
dates. They would also help the continent use efficiently its limited resources
to achieve measurable goals. Governance deficiencies have been identified to be
detrimental to Africa’s development efforts. Yet fostering broader
collaborative and cooperative efforts on peaceful and secure development would
contribute to achieving Agenda 2063. Since it is obviously counterproductive to attempt to do too much, as it
would dilute the efforts and weaken the impacts, it is imperative that peace
and development strategies have informed focus, clearly defined priorities,
implementation guidelines, and transparent and accountable evaluation
mechanisms—all of which may be best achieved through intensive and rigorous
research (R&D) and well-informed policy making, especially, given that
security-development challenges are as dynamic as they are intertwined.
To sum up, Africa faces daunting
security and development challenges. Yet I strongly believe that the Agenda
2063 is achievable and must actually be achieved. To meet that imperative,
however, I identify the aspiration number four of the Agenda as the gateway to
realizing other aspirations. In finding a way forward, I argue that Africa
needs to rethink its approach to security, better engage the African youths,
and collaboratively and cooperatively work toward sustained peace, security,
and inclusive prosperity. Certainly, the success or failure to take such bold
and innovative measures, at such a critical moment of the continent’s history,
will determine the future of Agenda 2063 and that of the continent more
broadly, no less because “Destiny is not a matter of chance; it is a matter of
choice; it is not a thing to be waited for, it is a thing to be achieved.” Thus
Africa’s stakeholders must work together even more diligently in choosing and
building the future of the Africa We Want.