Regional Reconciliation in Africa : The Elusive Dimension of Peace and Security

Abstract

Africa has endured the debilitating effects of cyclical violent conflict for several decades. Despite the existence of well-intentioned policy frameworks and the use of significant resources to stabilise countries, conflicts in the region have remained resistant to resolution. Africa’s crises demonstrate that conflicts have a tendency to spill across borders, affecting communities in more than one country. These cases challenge reductionist understandings of traditional interstate and intra-state wars across the continent. The regional nature of conflicts means that the notion of ‘civil war’ is anachronistic, with increasingly limited descriptive utility.This paper argues that unless concrete efforts are geared towards dealing with the past and promoting regional reconciliation in Africa, the consolidation of peace and security will remain an elusive quest. More specifically, if state resources were deployed in equal measure to lay the foundations for regional reconciliation, this would ultimately be a more effective way to stabilise countries and improve relations with their neighbours. In fact, the pursuit of regional reconciliation could contribute towards the fulfilment of the incomplete project of decolonisation across Africa.