Capacity, Security and Inclusion Key to Counter Conflicts in Africa, says Dr Cilliers of ISS

August 05, 2015

New Delhi: Giving a snapshot of the trend of armed conflicts in Africa, Executive Director, Institute for Security Studies (ISS), Pretoria, South Africa, Dr Jakkie Cilliers, today said that lack of state-capacity for effective and legitimate government control, security and inclusiveness in African states is the biggest source of instability in Africa. Dr Cilliers was delivering a talk on ‘Armed Conflict in Africa: Current Trends and Future Scenarios’ at the Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (IDSA) on August 5, 2015.

Africa’s current and future stability rests on its ability to address the continent’s conflict burden. The region needs socio-political reforms along with large scale democratisation to achieve greater stability and security in the continent, insisted Dr Cilliers.

Placing Africa’s conflicts in a global context, he pointed out that Africa has experienced an increase in armed violence since 2010, potentially reversing the gains made after the collapse of the Berlin Wall. He also mentioned that when scaled with the size of its population, Africa has much more conflict as compared to the rest of the world presently. Within Africa, the ‘conflict burden’, i.e., the fatalities per 100,000 people were highest in Libya, followed by Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Nigeria and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Dr Cilliers said that contrary to other regions, Africa shows a high level of ‘non-state conflict’, involving various armed groups and factions fighting one another, and not involving the government. Highlighting the high level of violence during elections in several African countries, he argued that this was almost certainly due to weak and unconsolidated governance.

Further, characterising prominent aspects of armed conflict in Africa Dr Cilliers pointed out that the conflicts in the continent are normally fought on the peripheries of the states. The insurgents are militarily weak and factionalised and the number of non- state actors involved in the violence has increased. Many insurgent groups in Africahave strong transnational characteristics as they move relatively freely across borders and in between states, with a growing nexus between organised crime, illicit arms smuggling, and terrorist groups.

Despite these challenges, African countries have demonstrated impressive growth rates and are likely to surpass their European and Asian counterparts in years to come.

Former Director, United Services Institution of India (USI), Lt Gen Satish Nambiar (Retd) presided over the session.