Peacebuilding, Power, and Politics in Africa

Foreword

ix Foreword A d e k e y e A d e b A J o Executive Director, Centre for Conflict Resolution, Cape Town, South Africa it was fortuitous that, after five years, i was able to take time out from my position as the executive director of the Centre for Conflict resolution (CCr), in Cape town, South Africa, in 2008/9 to spend a five-month sabbatical in the wonderful surroundings of the Centre of African Studies (CAS) at Cambridge university in england. in pursuit of its panAfrican vision,the overall theme of CCr’s Africa program in 2008–12 was “Peacebuilding in Africa,” with a book planned specifically to assess the continent’s peacebuilding challenges. under the dynamic supervision of devon Curtis, CAS was itself preparing a book project on the same topic. this volume is the result of the fruitful marriage of both projects between an African institution and a european institution, involving scholars from Africa, europe, and north America, as well as an indian-Australian scholar. Several of the authors have practical experience of peacebuilding in Africa. thematic debates involving issues of mediation, governance, the security sector, disarmament, and demobilization are combined here with assessments of African and global institutions, bolstered by rich case studies spanning the great lakes region, Southern Africa, West Africa, and the Horn of Africa. this is truly a unique volume, which we hope scholars, civil society activists, and practitioners around the world working on peacebuilding issues in Africa will find useful. A seminar at the university of Cambridge in march 2009 helped shape the conceptual and empirical contents of this project. five months later, CCr organized and largely funded a policy seminar in gaborone, in cooperation with the universities of botswana and Cambridge, attended by about forty scholars and practitioners. my colleagues at the Centre for Conflict resolution deserve particular praise for the flawless organization of this logistically challenging meeting.Commissioned papers were presented at the seminar over three days, and authors received feedback to revise their chapters in a rigorous editing process. A few more chapters were commissioned based on gaps identified at the gaborone seminar. We thank all the authors for cooperating so efficiently with this arduous process. i particularly acknowledge the contributions x AdeKeYe AdebAJo of devon Curtis, who did the most to shape and edit the book (including spending a few weeks in Cape town in 2010 completing this project ). i also thank the director of CAS, megan vaughan, for supporting this collaboration. devon Curtis’s co-editor and former CCr colleague, gwinyayi dzinesa, also deserves recognition for his contributions.i take this opportunity to pay tribute to glenn Cowley, former publisher of the university of kwaZulu-natal Press, with whom CCr published seven important books on Africa’s post–Cold War international relations. At the gaborone seminar in August 2009, he skillfully chaired a session on how to turn the papers into a coherent edited volume. glenn unfortunately died in may 2011, and his great warmth, experience, and insights will be sorely missed. CCr, one of the very few centers of excellence on the un’s role in Africa, has established its expertise in this important area, organizing important policy seminars since 2004 on critical peacebuilding challenges in Southern, West, eastern, and Central Africa that involved key actors from the African union (Au), Africa’s regional organizations, civil society, the un, and external donor representatives.the center has also published three books on un peacebuilding issues, as well as three other volumes covering issues of transitional justice in Africa, Africa’s human rights architecture, and the African union and its institutions. Peacebuilding was popularized in the 1992 publication, An Agenda for Peace, by the first African united nations secretary-general, egypt’s boutros boutros-ghali. Africa has since become the world’s most important peacebuilding laboratory, making this book particularly timely in assessing two decades of post–Cold War peacebuilding experiences on the continent. the concept of peacebuilding is often associated with the “second generation” of post–Cold War un missions in countries such as namibia, Angola, mozambique, and Somalia, where efforts were made to adopt a holistic approach to peace. more recent cases, also covered in this book, have involved the democratic republic of the Congo (drC), burundi, rwanda, Sierra leone, liberia, nigeria’s niger delta, and Sudan. not only are diplomatic and military tools employed in building peace; today’s peacebuilders also focus on the political, social, and economic causes of conflicts, as well...