1. Preventing Conflict and Promoting Peace and Security within NEPAD and the
African Union – Some Comments1
By
J. ‘Kayode Fayemi, Ph.D,
Centre for Democracy & Development
“For most people today, a feeling of insecurity arises more from
worries about the daily life than from the dread of a cataclysmic world
event. Job security, income security, health security, environmental
security, security from crime, these are the emerging concerns of
human security all over the world.”
UNDP, Human Development Report, 1994
I have been asked to make my intervention on the peace and security clusters
of the NEPAD document, focusing on the operational challenges and prospects for its
realisation. I would like to start by prefacing my presentation with a general comment.
There are many reasons why Africans should be enthusiastic about NEPAD’s wide
ranging vision for promoting good governance, conflict prevention, fair trade, debt
issue and poverty reduction. However, it is also important to question the neo-liberal
orthodoxy that has informed NEPAD whilst arguing for its grounding in historical
context. My presentation therefore examines the peace and security cluster of
NEPAD within the framework of the entire NEPAD Strategy document, highlight
what I consider to be good aspects of the cluster, providing a critical perspective of its
overarching order whilst emphasising the need for African ownership of the process
and products of NEPAD, especially in the context of a newly established African
Union (AU). In this context, my own view is that the official promoters of NEPAD
must recognise the need for genuine partnership with the African people if the vision
1
Being paper prepared for presentation at the CDD Seminar on NEPAD: Challenges and Prospects
held at the Royal Commonwealth Club, London in June 2002.
1

2. is to be translated into concrete initiatives, since the people have so far played little or
no part in NEPAD’s conception, design and formulation so far.
Whilst the original NEPAD document released after the October 2001 meeting
of its Heads of State Implementation Committee (HSIC) in Abuja recognised the
centrality of peace and security to Africa’s development agenda. By also stressing the
importance of governance to the development and security agenda, the NEPAD
document also attempts a holistic understanding of the linkage between governance,
security and development. Yet a deeper reading of the four key areas for policy
intervention in the document – a) Development of early warning systems; (b) Post
conflict reconstruction and development, including disarmament, demobilisation and
rehabilitation; c) Action to curb the illicit proliferation, circulation and trafficking of
small arms and light weapons on the continent and d) promotion of peace support
operations - reveals this link to be tenuous and superficial with very little attention
paid to a holistic peace building and human security approach to development. The
March 2002 meeting of the HSIC developed this cluster in a more comprehensive
manner by adding four key aspects – namely, 1) Support efforts to promote
democracy, good governance and respect for human rights through appropriate policy
and institutional reforms; (2) Enhance capacity to conduct thorough inclusive strategic
assessments of situations in regions affected by conflict, (3) Resource mobilisation for
the African Union Peace Fund and finally, the HSIC summit also pushed for the
ratification of the OAU Convention on Combating Terrorism as a means of
addressing the regional dimension of this problem.
The March 2002 meeting also addressed another critical cog in the wheel of
operationalising the peace and security cluster by acknowledging the unclear
relationship between NEPAD and the OAU Secretariat, especially the Conflict
Management Centre charged with the responsibilities for operationalising the
Mechanism for Conflict Prevention, Management and Resolution as well as the
relationship between the peace and security clusters of NEPAD and the security and
stability calabashes of the Conference on Security, Stability Development and
Cooperation in Africa (CSSDCA), already incorporated into the OAU since its
adoption at the Lome Summit of 1999. Also the relationship between Regional
Economic Communities(RECS) and NEPAD in the promotion of peace and security
also received some attention at the March meeting. I should state at this point that
2

3. extensive work has been done on the NEPAD document and the revised Central
Organ document of the Mechanism for Conflict Prevention, Management and
Resolution by a Committee of OAU Ambassadors with a group of experts leading to
the recommendation to consolidate both aspects into the work of a new organ of the
African Union to be known as the Peace and Security Council.
In my view, the most critical addition to the list of priority areas by the HSIC
at their March 2002 meeting were those underscoring the need to promote democracy,
good governance and respect for human rights through appropriate policy and
institutional reforms. Although this was an assumption that runs through the entire
NEPAD document, stating it explicitly as a priority area elaborates on the purpose,
object, and the mechanisms for the attainment of security and peace and moves the
peace and security cluster away from the traditional, military and state-centric focus
of the original priority areas. Democratising security to prevent conflict and build
peace also captures the very essence of human security and effectively links human
security to human development by underscoring the fact that both require democratic
governance in order to attain peace. This recognition of the need to re-conceptualise
‘security’ in a more responsive direction with a move away from the traditional
emphasis on national/state security to a focus on ‘human security’ with an expansion
in the scope of the concept from its narrow meaning of (physical security) to include
access to the means of life, the provision of essential goods, a clean and sustainable
environment as well as human rights and democratic freedoms is clearly
commendable.
Indeed, the increasing linkage drawn between security and development, on
the one hand rooting insecurity in conditions of underdevelopment, and on the other,
the recognition that security is an essential precondition and component of
development as well as the tendency to see defence and security as both a public
policy and governance issue (thus broadening the range of communities and
constituencies that can participate in this formerly restricted area) ought to be
welcome by all following these debates by African leaders in their quest to promote
NEPAD. Yet while it is now accepted that efforts to address Africa’s violent conflicts
must be linked to wider democratisation and sustained development efforts, the
challenge remains how to translate this new understanding into specific policies and
how to ensure effective implementation of these policies through the promotion of the
core values contained in them. This is even more so within the context of a New
3

4. Partnership for Africa’s Development that is keen to promote certain core values at a
time that these values are common to all countries and all peoples in the same
degrees.
The critical question therefore is to what extent is there a common perception
of security in Africa and is this common perception articulated and universally
shared? If it is, is it possible to identify the underlying consensus and the common
value systems in them. A cursory glance points to continuing tension between a
‘national security’ – nation building approach and a ‘human security’ – peace building
approach, yet there need not be a Manichean divide between the two. Yet, when a
country goes for one approach or the other, the values promoted are dissimilar. It is
therefore important to understand the causes and nature of conflicts in Africa in order
to know the values of security to be promoted on a regional, national and local basis.
Understanding the Causes, Nature and Context of Conflict in Africa
To understand the causes and nature of violent conflict, perhaps the most important
task is to examine in a more nuanced manner the historic roots and contemporary
trajectories of Africa’s violent conflicts and to move away from simplistic
interpretation of causes based on notions such as ‘greed’, ‘poverty’, or ‘ethnicity’.
Africa’s conflicts share a common backdrop of economic stagnation and faltering
democratic rule that undermined state capacity and legitimacy in the 1980s. Yet each
conflict has followed its own trajectory shaped by political and policy choices partly
made by African governments and partly imposed by the international context.
Among the most critical elements in understanding the new conflict equation arising
out of the 1990s political transition on the continent are:
• The shifts in global and geopolitical power relations; in particular the end of the
cold war and the withdrawal of the metropolitan security umbrella which paved
the way for serious challenges to some client regimes in a manner previously
considered impossible.
• With the demise of universalistic ideological battle between socialism and
capitalism, new forms of conflict emerged in the form of identity issues anchored
on religion and ethnicity in particular.
• The withdrawal of assistance by big states also resulted in the search for new
forms of sustenance leading to the exploitation of resources and criminal activity;
4

5. • Increasing availability and privatisation of instruments of violence, transforming
the military balance between the state and society.(A recent survey indicates that
the permanent members of the Security Council were together responsible for
81% of world arms exports from 1996 – 2000. The G8 nations sold 87% of total
arms exports to the entire world. US’ share of that is over 50 per cent and 68% of
arms supplied to the developing world comes from the United States.)
• New forms of violent and trans-national crime.(Hutchful:2002)
Yet in this context of internal cleavages and external fuelling of conflicts, one could
almost reach the flawed conclusion that the 1980s was a period of unbridled peace.
The truth is however more complex that this. Examined critically, the most important
lesson of the 1990s conflict in Africa is that the 1980s laid a solid basis for them
through the severe economic and fiscal compression exemplified by the structural
adjustment shocks of the period. It is no longer in doubt that the erosion of social
capital, political legitimacy and institutional weakening of many African states can be
directly linked to the policy choices that informed governance during this period.
- Decomposition of the security sector was a key component of this state
collapse.
- Equally, the State lost its central relevance due to the SAP’s agenda to
retrench it from basic services’ provision to the citizens;
- State militarism largely driven by the authoritarian culture which was
so widespread in the 1980s laid the basis for the new and more deadly
societal militarism represented by the warlords of the 1990s and the
violent nature of crime
In short, the nature of conflict and politics in Africa was in essence redefined
by the peculiar context of the 1990s and the nature of partnership between Africa and
its development partners. Addressing violent conflicts in Africa therefore requires
broadening the notions of security and developing multi-faceted responses. Four
pillars of peace and security ought to form the core of this agenda: 1) human security
as the bedrock for peace; 2) democracy and open governance; 3) transformation of
violent conflicts through political processes; and 4) collective security for all African
states.
5

6. At the heart of this conflict prevention agenda is the transformation of Africa’s
security establishments. Until recently, the mantra among donors is to emphasise
cost-cutting approach to dealing with security sector problems. However, the
solutions required are first and foremost political in nature and this relates essentially
to the deepening of democracy on the continent. To achieve this political consensus,
governance in the security sector which treats security actors as stakeholders in
processes of democratisation and administrative reform is central, both in terms of
long term containment of conflict and in terms of democratic consolidation. The
appropriate framework for achieving governance in the security sector is human
security. Yet, if conflict provides the framework, regionalism is the basic institutional
scaffolding that Africans should pay particular attention to since the gains of a human
security approach are best realised within a regional context, hence the importance of
NEPAD in the context of the new African Union.
Although regionalism has taken a much firmer root in Africa, crowned
recently by the launch of NEPAD, regionalism still faces a critical problem of
entrenchment in a region where efforts to build homogenous nation-states on the basis
of artificially constructed boundaries have resulted in forced unity through the
promotion of the principle of “non-interference”. Since sovereignty of the nation-state
is regarded as sacrosanct and non-derogable, states that have ceased to function as
states in the traditional sense of providing basic needs for the citizens still enjoy
support and assistance in development circles even when it is known that these states
are nothing but privatised entities. Even when regional and sub-regional mechanisms
put in place by Africans have developed autonomous capacity to handle local
conflicts in spite of the inherent challenges of regionalism, the critical issue for
NEPAD remains how best to address the legacy of the westphalian logic of
sovereignty as well as moving away from the regionalism of leaders in which regional
integration is only recognised as happening at the level of leaders with scant regard
paid to the rising regional consciousness at the level of the citizens and addressing the
regionalism of institutions in which several institutions are created, primarily ion
name only with little or no capacity to manage them. It is only when regionalism is
taken seriously as a response to globalisation that Africans can define a new
relationship with the International community.
The institutional and operational suggestions above will only have meaning if
it permeates the realities of the ordinary citizens. Although NEPAD acknowledges the
6

7. fact that poor people rate insecurity as a key cause of poverty, it seems clear that the
evidence for seeing poverty as a cause of armed conflict is generally weak in Africa.
The most poverty stricken parts of the continent are clearly not the most conflict
ridden. Yet, while it is true that inequality or relative deprivation rather than poverty
as in absolute deprivation is more to blame for conflict, it is important to take a far
more complex view of the causes of conflict in their economic, political,
environmental and cultural dimensions.
Clearly, poverty – as exemplified by the inequality arising out of unfair
sharing of global opportunities - remains the greatest threat to security and democratic
consolidation in Africa today and, at the broadest level, globalisation is resulting in
deep polarisation between rich and poor throughout the continent. Whereas
quantitative accounts of the problems do not always tell the whole story, even the
available statistics for the African continent paint a gory picture – especially in terms
of the impact of conflict on poverty on the continent.
Acknowledging the fact that an exclusive focus on the nation state has
prevented an understanding of regional specific determinants in the poverty-security-
development complex might help NEPAD promoters to address some of the policy
issues and possibilities that can make a difference. Having secured an understanding
of the nature and context of conflict on the continent, what are the prospects for
addressing the challenges and what should NEPAD leaders and actors do?
Prospects for addressing current challenges?
For a start, as we move towards the G8 summit in Canada and the first African
Union summit in Durban, South Africa, it is important to acknowledge that Africa’s
violent conflicts and security problems can only be resolved through genuine global
partnership. The 1980s were a testament to the dangers of ‘broad brush’ approaches,
characterised by the external imposition of macro-economic stabilisation and
structural adjustment programmes that were sufficiently inflexible to account for the
diversity of circumstances and need. Developing more ‘home grown’ approaches will
require donors to relinquish greater responsibility to Africa’s leaders and their people.
Given the different trajectories that we have seen on the continent, it is important to
develop a typology of African states in the post cold war transitions decade in order to
7

8. avoid the broad-brush strategies that did not work in the 1980s. It is possible to
identify in this context at least five categories of African states ranging from progress
to stasis, and in a few cases reversal, and requiring different responses from
development partners. It is possible to talk of 1) Consolidating states – South Africa,
Botswana, Ghana, Senegal, Benin; 2) Semi, Virtual or proforma democracies in
transition – Nigeria, Kenya, Burkina Faso, Cote d’Ivoire; 3) States in Conflict or
emerging out of conflict – Sierra Leone, DRC, Liberia, Eritrea, Rwanda, Burundi; 4)
States in relapse or remilitarisation – Zimbabwe, Togo, Guinea Bissau, Madagascar
and; 5) Authoritarian States or States that have collapsed – Somalia. I have identified
issues that are common to all the states in question below and why it is important to
respond to them differently, even if they are treated in a continuum. Ultimately, my
argument is that given the ‘glocal’ nature of the conflicts afflicting many of the states,
state rebuilding can only be reinforced in the context of regional integration supported
by global partnership. Equally, by arguing for an adoption of a peacebuilding
approach to national security, this should result in an assessment of each country’s
security environment with a view to evaluating the structures, roles and missions of
the different security forces.
Support for peace building and reconstruction: State rebuilding after state collapse
often requires a strong support for peace building and reconstruction measures. Peace
in this context has often been interpreted as mere absence of war and state rebuilding
is often seen only in terms of physical reconstruction. While physical reconstruction
may be a necessary departure point for state rebuilding, the defining characteristic of
state rebuilding from a human security approach is the presence of holistic security
and a model of conflict management, which emphasises the fundamentals of military
security, democratisation and consensus building, development, economic reform,
human rights and human dignity for the citizens to engage their rulers.
Therefore, although the conventional wisdom is to ignore it, the security
required in the immediate aftermath of conflict might also require higher rather than
lower security expenditure to enable the state and citizens cope with the impact of
conflict – rehabilitating refugees and the internally displaced, providing for a secure,
safe and enabling environment in which development initiatives can succeed and
reintegrating former combatants into society and economy. In situations where
8

9. conditions of poverty prevail after post war conflict, it is reasonable to predict a
correlation between the lack of development opportunities in terms of direct income
generation to survivors and an increase in criminality and conflict.
For policy makers, especially international donors who just want to “move the
money” because of the domestic pressure from disaster management and relief
agencies, there is always the pressing need to construe their role in terms of
immediate restoration of peace and stability, rather than security and development
through the promotion of common values and the rule of law. The concentration on
elections and elections monitoring in say Liberia, Sierra Leone and Nigeria in recent
times gave an impression that what mattered most was the election, not democracy
nor a recognition that elections are not enough to guarantee democracy and
development. Experience has since shown that while there are immediate tasks that
must be addressed in terms of peace building and reconstruction in every conflict
situation – disaster relief and management, repatriation and reintegration of refugees
and reduction in the proliferation of small arms and clearance of explosives, these are
not the most successful ingredients of a successful peace building strategy.
To promote sustainable security and peace building strategies therefore –
African leaders and international development agencies must take a comprehensive
look at peace building and reconstruction strategies treating them as a continuum with
short term (relief and emergency aid and creating a secure and enabling environment);
medium term (peace support operations) and long term (reconstruction, democracy &
development) components in an integrated manner. Donor countries should be
encouraged to foster greater coherence amongst their own policies at an inter-agency
level, as well as within their own regional structures (such as EU, OECD, etc). A
good example as we pointed out in the preceding section is the fact that arms sales
from developed countries is often at variance with the emphasis the same countries
place on conflict prevention and security sector governance.
Equally, in this respect, there is a need for stronger cooperation between the
Bretton Woods institutions, the UN Systems and other multi and bi-lateral
development agencies as well as independent development institutions to reduce the
overzealous focus on achieving fiscal discipline and macro-economic stability at the
expense of efforts to protect social spending. Donor responses have often involved
conditionalities relating to automatic decreases in military spending and reductions of
military and other security forces with no attention paid to the expensive nature of
9

10. security and the objective security threats that each country faces. Especially in post
conflict situations, this realization should inform international attitudes towards
security sector transformation on the one hand, and post conflict reconstruction on the
other.
Third, it is extremely important that international institutions should seize the
momentum provided by the weak capacity of the state to align external assistance
with local needs and efforts, not an opportunity to impose received wisdom and new
theories of development. This is extremely important in the context of recent claims
that NEPAD is Africa owned – a claim that is rejected by many Africans. Where state
institutional capacity is weak, an immense burden of responsibility is placed on IFIs
and development agencies in which real dialogue with the people and wide
consultations underscore whatever actions are taken. Finally, international donors
cannot ignore the international context in their response to peace building and
reconstruction efforts. How, for example, has the often convoluted linkage between
trans-national corporations, proliferation of arms and promotion of neo-liberal
globalising trends by the industrial world undermine the success of security and
development reforms in countries emerging out of conflict, especially within the
context of an unstable region in which domino effect is real rather than imagined.
These are some of the issues that are central to any discussion of the policy
lever on peace building and reconstruction efforts and the extent to which the
guideline document considers them critically would determine the possibilities of
success that might accompany critical intervention.
The Challenge of strengthening the territorial state: As has been argued above, this
thinking itself is a product of the state-centric notions of security that dominated
traditional thinking in the cold war era. Since the state is increasingly seen as
unrepresentative and illegitimate in Africa however, are there conditions under which
war might be seen to be a legitimate means of removing regime types that promote
conflicts and in which leaders have encroached upon common pool resources. To this
end, some questions might suffice in any consideration of complex political situations
rather than focus exclusively on state monopoly of means of coercion. This is not to
suggest that states do not have legitimate needs for security which might necessitate
legitimate procurement and monopoly of means of coercion, but this has to be
10

11. demonstrated to ensure that security is treated as common public good, not just
regime good. It may therefore be necessary to consider:
• Under which circumstances, if any, is war necessary to remove bad governments?
That is how do we distinguish between justifiable rebellion and needless conflict?
• How is regional economic and political co-operation built between and among
states to address the pathology of militarism?
• How can state-centric definitions of security be de-emphasised, and the role of
civil society in peace building increased in the quest for common values?
• How is democratic control of the military to be built in states undergoing political
transition or moving from war to peace – through parliamentary oversight,
effective institutions of governance and genuine interaction between the military
and the rest of society?
Acknowledging the need to ask these questions should help to address some of the
policy challenges posed for conflict transformation and security sector reform within
the NEPAD context and subject state monopoly of violence to international and
regional checks. Although there is evidence to suggest that African leaders and their
international partners now accept the argument about broadening the agenda, but the
commitment to the mutually reinforcing interaction between the values of democracy,
equity and sustainability still remain subordinate to the core need for macro-economic
stability and integration into the international political economy in the NEPAD
document. This is why many are still suspicious of the African leaders and their
development partners’ commitment to a human security approach in spite of the new
rhetoric about local ownership and social capital.
Promoting social coherence through civil society development and multi-cultural
tolerance:
If peace-building is taken as the sum total of activities that will support peace
making and conflict transformation: demobilisation, re-structuring of the local
security system – police and the military; resettlement of refugees and the internally
displaced persons; removal of dangerous weapons – mines and other unexploded
firearms, reconstruction of shattered infrastructure and humanitarian and disaster
11

12. relief – very few still advocate that this could be done with the exclusion of civil
society. Indeed, even African leaders and international development agencies now
see civil society as key to the successful implementation of these various aspects of
post-conflict peace building process. In discussing rights based approach to
governance and security sector transformation, local ownership and development of
social capital rests with the civil society, but it is important to place this within the
context of developing institutional mechanisms for the management of diversity and
difference and incorporating international human rights framework into domestic law.
Hence, the rights of the people to their resources should not be compromised at the
altar of encouraging foreign direct investment, especially where this undermines
environmental security.
Since states are usually products of war and rampage, it might sound far-
fetched to base the quest for tolerance on the notion of reclaiming the militarised
mind through the creation of structures capable of mediating conflict between
belligerent parties. Perhaps, an explanation of this construction is necessary here.
It is suggested that the military option now prevalent in several parts of the
African continent is the inevitable consequence of the acute nature of internal
contradictions and the almost total absence of democratic institutions that can
assist in the management of deep-rooted conflicts.
It was assumed in policy and development circles that support for neo-liberal
democracy will help achieve this objective, hence there was the enthusiasm for
democracy assistance and ‘good governance’ in the early 1990s and donor countries
made some efforts to move economic assistance away from former concerns about
stimulating economic growth to an emphasis on political objectives, including support
for processes of democratisation and building of civil society.
Although the above represented a shift from the days of the super-power
ideological rivalry, even this shift in the leadership’s thinking and IFIs’ assistance has
concentrated primarily on the reform of the public sector and involvement of the ‘civil
society’ to the extent that it promotes the neo-liberal paradigm, not on an alternative
vision of bottom-up reforms driven by societal consensus. The fact that many of the
transitions of the last decade in Africa now approximate to - at best electoral
democracies and at worst elected dictatorships, has raised new questions on how to
deepen the democratic content of current reforms in a process oriented, participatory
and accountable manner. At every level, the idea of constitutionalising
12

13. democratising polities that have largely functioned as ‘virtual’ democracies along
multifaceted lines is taking shape.
Today, the fact that the struggle for reconstituting the African state is taking
place in no fewer than twenty African states in Angola, Kenya, Nigeria, Zimbabwe,
Cote d’Ivoire, Swaziland and Lesotho, to mention but a few, underscores a
paradigmatic shift from constitutionality to constitutionalism, a situation where
constitutions are now seen as tools for building bridges between the state and civil
society, a social compact based upon a foundation of consensus among the constituent
elements within the polity and between them and the state in the quest for common
value systems. What has to be emphasised however for the purpose of NEPAD and
human security is the importance of an organic link between the constitution as a rule
of law instrument incorporating international human rights framework and primarily
concerned with restraining government excesses, and the constitution as a
legitimisation of power structures and relations based on a broad social consensus and
the values in diverse societies. In short, if NEPAD is to promote the mutually
reinforcing role of development, security and democracy, the task today is largely
between bridging the gap between “juristic constitutionalism” and “political and
socio-economic constitutionalism” in the search for common core values if the ‘New
Africa’ espoused in the NEPAD document is to have meaning and be accountable to
its citizens.
The core issues around values in NEPAD can only be addressed in the context
of principles and values to which all Africans willingly subscribe. Values of
representation, ownership, accessibility to all levels of government, accountability,
openness and collective responsibility. CSSDCA has been doing a lot of work on
developing a consensus driven value systems which is what would be the subject of
the peer review mechanism. NEPAD is also developing a similar mechanism in
preparation for the Durban summit of the African Union. While this is welcome by
all, the scepticism that has attended the search for common values to be promoted
across Africa has been informed by the anti-democratic and reprehensible behaviour
of some of the leaders who are at the forefront of the NEPAD campaign and their total
contempt for some of the supposed values to which they have committed themselves.
In spite of this general scepticism, constitutionalism as a social compact remains the
13

14. best route for forging the kind of value system and reorientation that can deepen our
democracy in order to prevent conflict and build peace.
Building assets that provide security against disasters and economic shocks:
Conventionally, the way most development agencies have promoted the
building of assets against disasters and economic shocks has been to focus on macro-
economic stability strategies like Structural adjustment reforms, electoral democracies
and support of measures that seek to provide the enabling environment for foreign
direct investment and the global integration of the economy – a mutual pursuit of
political and economic liberalisation. This is the fundamental principle guiding the
NEPAD document. So far, the logic of trickle down economics has failed to produce
an integrated world economy in which all zones are winners. Indeed, as Caroline
Thomas and Peter Wilkin argue,
In the process of globalisation, the continent (Africa) has quite literally been
left behind in terms of the distribution of the spoils of the process. The
promised advantages of economic restructuring, as hailed by the IMF, World
Bank and individual developed countries, have not been borne out. Foreign
investment fails to flow in; debt burdens continue; commodity prices fluctuate;
environmental degradation proceeds…and industrialisation fails to occur.
(Thomas & Wilkin: 1998).
This clearly contradicts the core assumption of globalization that wealth would
automatically be created when the free market gains universal acceptance in the
world. By arguing that the way to build assets against shocks is not via the creation of
local self sufficiency, but national economies should concentrate on what they can
contribute to the world economy, globalisation ignores the comparative advantage of
the North, locks African states further into relative powerlessness by creating
conditions for conflict which further weakens the mediatory role of the states.
Instead, it empowers those elites within the state who can form part of the convoluted
network in business and government capable of acting independently of the juridical
state. The fallout of this globalising trend is the unregulated trade in mineral
14

15. resources, proliferation of arms and narcotics and the illicit trade in narcotics all of
which ultimately undermine food security, environmental security and the security of
the individual – all factors responsible for conflict today. It has also helped in
deepening the rural-urban divide, fostered inter-generational strife occasioned by
youth frustration and exacerbated the scourge of refugees and the internally displaced,
all of which have moved the hapless below the poverty line and moved them closer to
violence and conflict.
In my view therefore, the greatest assets against shocks and disasters
ultimately lie with the development of human resources, better management of natural
resource endowment and respect for local ownership of the reform agenda whether in
determining the role of the State or in arriving at the most effective poverty inducing
mechanisms. In fairness, the NEPAD document pays some attention to this, but onlty
within the context of free and unregulated market. Hence, it is also useful to examine
and analyse individual situations on their merit, rather than assume that the market is
God. This is of course not to suggest that market has no role in reforming states
structures. It is to say that there are no universal models of the market as providing
the best assets against shocks and disasters, hence leaders and donor agencies must
learn from their own experiences of the market, security and public sector reforms in
formulating realistic policies that are not driven by dogma even as they admit that
certain assumptions undergird their work based on their State values and principles.
Conclusion: In pursuit of human security and human development in Africa
There is definitely a sense in which a deep feeling of disillusionment that is
widespread in Africa with the current democratisation and development agenda
threatens to undermine the whole campaign that NEPAD has generated. Indeed,
many feel that the hype is more than what the eventual product offers. Hence, one
can see a major opposition to the current slow pace of democratic and economic
development. Indeed, deepening democratic development remains an uphill task in
several African countries, especially in the aftermath of the global shock occasioned
by the 9/11 tragedy in America. There are indications that even the enthusiasm that
greeted the NEPAD initiative in the G8 countries has been enveloped in another
global shift which is now in favour of despotic peace in place of democratic, even if
15

16. unsettling, freedom. The greatest challenge of course is to understand that despite the
frustrations and impatience of the people with this democratic deficit, there is some
realisation that transitions are inherently unstable and unpredictable.
It is our hope that the leaders meeting in Kananskis, Canada this June and in
Durban next month will bear the above in mind as they prepare the Action Plan for
this much needed partnership for Africa’s Development – one that secures the world
and promote peace. Based on the above comments, a number of measures seem to
suggest themselves to us about how best to take the NEPAD Peace and Security
clusters forward in the context of the new African Union, especially in developing a
human security approach that promotes human development:
1. There is an urgent need for clarification of values and norms subscribed to by
Africans and adopted in a widespread manner by the citizens. (ECOWAS
Supplementary Protocol on Democracy & Good Governance adopted by the
Heads of Government in Dakar in December 2001 is a good example here)
2. There is a need for conceptual clarity through a comprehensive approach to
security sector reform in policy and development circles – one that recognises that
while there is no teleological link between elections and democracy, deepening
democracy offers the best chance of preventing violent conflict and building
durable peace
3. There is a need to recognise the challenge of strengthening regional integration
and promote regional mechanisms that can help sustain democratic development
and consolidation through the adoption of a regional approach to conflict
prevention;
4. Policy instruments must recognise the need to reconcile economic and social
development and enhance the input of non-state actors – in policy formulation to
enhance social capital rather than entrench the leverage of IFIs and donor agencies
on States;
16

17. 5. Recognition of legitimate security needs of nation-states must be factored into the
human security approach through the promotion of governmental and non-
governmental peacebuilding strategies
6. Policy instruments must problematise the link between globalisation and conflict,
rather than assume that it is always going to be positive in the promotion of pro-
poor growth in the search for and implementation of sustainable livelihood and
poverty reduction strategies;
7. Policy instruments must locate the security agenda within the democracy and
development framework and reflect the link between politics and economics, and
between security and opportunities;
8. There is the need for democratic governance, not just civilian control of military
and security establishments in democratising polities;
9. Human security approach is a process, whose results will not necessarily be
immediate, hence the need for a long term view by interested stakeholders and
anti-poverty strategists.
REFERENCES
Barry Buzan et-al, Security: A New Framework for Analysis, (Boulder, Colorado:
Lynne Rienner, 1998).
Caroline Thomas & Peter Wilkin (eds), Globalisation, Human Security & the African
Experience, (Boulder, Colorado: Lynne Rienner, 1998)
CODEP, Report on the outcomes of the consultation on globalisation and conflict for
the White Paper on International Development: Globalisation & Development
(London, June 2000)
17

18. DFID, Security Sector Reform and the Management of Military Expenditure: Risks for
Donors, High Returns for Development, Report on an International Symposium,
February 14-16, 2000.
J. ‘Kayode Fayemi, “Security Challenges in Africa”, Seminar: Indian Journal of
Opinion, Special Issue on African Transitions 490, June 2000.
E.Hutchful, Contribution to the ALF Project on Security and Demilitarisation in
Africa. Mimeo. December 2001.
Brendan Martin, New Leaf or Fig Leaf? The Challenge of the New Washington
Consensus. Report prepared for Bretton Woods Project and Public Service
International. 2000.
NEPAD Strategy Document – www.mapstrategy.org; www.nepad.org.za
UNDP, Human Development Report 1994
18