Conflict in Africa

Abstract

In the half century since independence, the African continent has experienced intra- and interstate wars, failed and collapsed states, stagnant economies, and genocide. Thus, the question of security in Africa remains of great interest to scholars and policymakers alike. This article provides a broad overview of the major historical, political, economic, and cultural factors that have contributed to violent conflict in contemporary Africa by assessing these factors on a systemic, national, and individual level, while including in the analysis the impact of globalization processes on security.

KEYWORDS:

• Africa
• Cold War
• colonialism
• economic development
• empire
• ethno nationalism
• globalization
• independence
• religion

Notes

¹I. William Zartman defines conflict as a real or perceived incompatibility between two or more actors.

²Kenneth N. Waltz, Man, the State, and War: A Theoretical Analysis (New York: Columbia University Press, 2001).

³See Jeffrey Herbst, States and Power in Africa: Comparative Lessons in Authority and Control (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000).

⁴Naomi Chazan, Peter Lewis, Robert A. Mortimer, Donald Rothchild, Stephen J. Stedman, Politics and Society in Contemporary Africa (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1999, 46–65).

⁵See Thomas Pakenham, The Scramble for Africa (New York: Avon Books, 1992).

⁶The international impact of the breakup of empires is discussed in Mark Katz, “Collapsed Empires,” in Managing Global Chaos: Sources of and Responses to International Conflict, eds. Chester A. Crocker, Fen O. Hampson, and Pamela R. Aall (Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace, 1996), 25–36.

⁷See Robert Lloyd, “The Caprivi Strip of Namibia: Shifting Sovereignty and the Negotiation of Boundaries,” in Border Lines: History and Politics of Odd International Borders, ed. Alex Diener (Lanham, MD: Roman and Littlefield, 2009).

⁸See John J. Stremlau, The International Politics of the Nigerian Civil War, 1967–1970 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977).

⁹M. Paul Lewis (ed.), Ethnologue: Languages of the World, 16th ed. (Dallas, TX: SIL International, 2009).

¹⁰Ibid.

¹¹See Mats Berdal and David M. Malone, Greed and Grievance: Economic Agendas in Civil Wars (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2000).

¹²Population Divison of the Department of Economic and Social Affairs of the United Nations Secretariat. World Population Prospects: The 2006 Revision and World Urbanization Prospects. http://esa.un.org/unpp. New York, 2006.

¹³United Nations Population Division, “World Urbanization Prospects: The 2007 Revision Population Database,” available at http://esa.un.org/ (accessed May 10, 2010).

¹⁴World Bank. World Bank Development Indicators, 2008 (Washington, DC, 2008).

¹⁵See William Easterly, The Elusive Quest for Growth: Economists' Adventures and Misadventures in the Tropics (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2001).

¹⁶See Robert Lloyd, “Zimbabwe: The Making of an Autocratic ‘Democracy,’” Current History (2002): 219–224.

¹⁷See I. William Zartman, Collapsed States: The Disintegration and Restoration of Legitimate Authority (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1995).

¹⁸An excellent analysis of state collapse is in Robert I. Rotberg, When States Fail: Causes and Consequences (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004).

¹⁹Transparency International, Corruption Perceptions Index 2007, http://www.transparency.org/policy_research/surveys_indices/cpi/2007 (accessed May 10, 2010).

²⁰See Michael T. Klare, “The New Geography of Conflict,” Foreign Affairs 80, no. 3 (May/June 2001): 49–61.

²¹See Amy S. Patterson, The Politics of AIDS in Africa (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2006).

²²An interesting essay on this tension between state building and democratization is Mohammed Ayoob's “State Making, State Breaking, and State Failure,” in Managing Global Chaos: Sources of and Responses to International Conflict, ed. Chester A. Crocker, Fen O. Hampson, and Pamela R. Aall (Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace, 1996), 37–52.

²³Exact figures are difficult to obtain and these figures should be considered best estimates. Other sources present slightly lower percentage figures for Africa's Christian population and slightly higher for the Muslim population.

²⁴The topic of cultural fault lines is covered in Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of the World Order (New York: Touchstone, 1996).

²⁵BBC News, “Q&A: Uganda's Northern War,” August 29, 2006, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/3514473.stm (accessed May 10, 2010).

²⁶Figures are estimates for the years presented and may not be accurate. https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2176rank.html?countryName=Nigeria&countryCode=ni®ionCode=af&rank=7#ni

²⁷See Lansana Gberie, A Dirty War in West Africa: The RUF and the Destruction of Sierra Leone (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2006).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Robert B. Lloyd

ROBERT B. LLOYD is an associate professor of international relations at Pepperdine University and head of its International Studies Program. The author of numerous scholarly articles on international conflict management and negotiation, democratization, and Africa, he is a member of the editorial board of the Journal of the Middle East and Africa.