Introduction

Women’s peacebuilding has become particularly prominent in Africa, where widespread, long-lasting conflicts and political instability have led to diverse approaches, including grassroots and hybrid strategies, as well as the engagement of traditional leaders, youth, women, and minority groups, all aiming for lasting peace.1 Women’s roles in peacebuilding and conflict resolution have deep historical roots in Africa, embedded in the rich tradition of female leadership and authority in various African societies.2 Nevertheless, most scholarly and policy discussions on women and peacebuilding in Africa reference global policy frameworks like the United Nations Security Council Resolution (UNSCR 1325, 2000) on Women, Peace, and Security (WPS) and related regional mechanisms and National Action Plans (NAPs).

The UNSCR 1325 and related frameworks, especially those from the 1990s, have emphasized women’s inclusion in both high-level and grassroots peacebuilding programs, adopting a rights-based and functionalist approach aimed at fostering diversity and contributing to more effective and legitimate peace. This is particularly important, as women are often considered the most vulnerable victims in conflict situations.3 This links women’s participation in peacebuilding to empowerment—an expansion of women’s agency to contribute to sustainable peace and political stability in Africa.4

However, my field research in Ghana and Sierra Leone reveals that the narratives and practices of empowerment occur mainly through minimalist methods, such as civil society-led socialization of liberal norms, education and training, and economic programs, with a primary reliance on numerical representation strategies. This universalist approach presents two main weaknesses:  it overlooks essential insights into the culturally embedded roles and lived experiences of women, and reinforces gender stereotypes within African peace and security landscapes. This hinders meaningful learning and the potential for structural transformation through pragmatic strategies toward sustained inclusion and peace.

This essay contributes to current policy debates on WPS in Africa, using the concept of ‘African Ancestral Intelligence’ (AAI).5 AAI captures the wide range of indigenous and cultural norms and practices that historically maintained social order in precolonial African societies, and continue to play a vital role in resolving current conflicts.6 My research findings from Ghana and Sierra Leone suggest that a pragmatic integration of AAI into peacebuilding efforts could establish new channels for promoting meaningful women’s agency and strengthening societal resilience against relapse into violent conflict, while fostering conditions for durable peace.

Conflict and peacebuilding contexts (Ghana and Sierra Leone)

Ghana and Sierra Leone are both members of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), sharing a complex post-independence political history characterized by alternating periods of civilian and military rule. However, following the post-Cold War wave of democratization, both countries have since the 1990s practiced a multiparty system, although with varying challenges to democratic governance.7 The conflicts in Ghana and Sierra Leone are different, but interconnected. Sierra Leone’s conflict is characterized by a decade of large-scale, nationwide civil war (from 1991 to 2002), driven by competition over political power and natural resources.8 In contrast, Ghana’s conflicts have been sectional and recurrent, having escalated mainly in the early 1990s, usually linked to land and traditional authority disputes. Rooted in peculiar colonial policies, the conflicts primarily occur in the northern and southeastern regions, including notable areas such as Bawku, Bunkpurugu, Dagbon, Alavanyo-Nkonya, and Kpandai.9

Despite these differences, the underlying causes of these conflicts are broadly related to deep-rooted governance deficits in postcolonial states, which lead to various tensions and vulnerabilities, especially within the post-Cold War geopolitical conditions characterized by widespread political instability across the Global South.10 Thus, peacebuilding efforts in both countries have shown significant similarities, albeit with varying scopes of intervention. Sierra Leone has attracted more international peace interventions, with active involvement from Western and regional organizations. Conversely, Ghana’s peacebuilding efforts have primarily involved local institutions and organizations, often with external support. Despite some efforts to cultivate context-sensitive interventions, the two peacebuilding settings have broadly adopted liberal universalist norms and approaches to women’s inclusion in the last three decades.11

Appreciating Women’s Agency in Peacebuilding through African Ancestral Intelligence (AAI)

Field interactions with key local peacebuilding actors, including women and youth groups, traditional authorities, and other stakeholders in Ghana and Sierra Leone, reveal a more historically rooted understanding of women’s agency in peace and security. In Ghana, longstanding cultural roles of women, such as the ‘wise old lady’, who should be central to preserving community history and helping resolve disputes over traditional authority, have largely been overlooked.12 Similarly, in Sierra Leone, cultural practices and symbols—such as using green leaves to signal a permanent end of conflict, and the historical role of the ‘Maame Queen’ (queen mother) in all aspects of peacemaking—have been mostly confined to consultative roles.13

In both settings, however, ongoing efforts to build women’s agency, including through conflict analysis and early warning, mediation, and signing peace agreements, often follow mainstream liberal international norms on gender and development, which fail to fully recognize women’s role in resolving post-conflict vulnerabilities in Sierra Leone and conflict recurrence in northern and southeastern Ghana.

The findings suggest that fostering meaningful women’s agency—leading to resilient and substantial contributions to peacebuilding and lasting peace in Africa—must incorporate indigenous concepts such as the ‘wise old lady’ and the ‘Maame Queen,’ which are integral symbols for social order, and are ingrained in the worldview of African communities.14 The following statements encapsulate the various voices that push for more intentional strategies to promote women’s agency as understood from traditional wisdom. They reveal a deep challenge in existing women’s peacebuilding efforts, and recommend more deliberate reflections about fully embracing ancestral wisdom, as indicated:

[…] The challenge is that women have not been able to reach their potential in terms of agencies in peacebuilding because we have defined for them what it means to have agencies. So, we mostly assume that if we have a mediation and there are no women at the table then women have no agency…Let’s say, if I am holding a meeting and I bring 25 chiefs and 25 women into the room, we can spend four hours … They are present but they are not going to utter a word. Being at the table gives them the visibility alright…but there are more important traditional and cultural agencies that women have…we must look at how they can use it […]15

[…] So, for a very long time, women from the Limba and other ethnic groups in Sierra Leone were always part of the peace building and conflicts resolution processes, first using green leaves to stop wars and going through various rites and cross-cultural roles for the peaceful resolution of conflicts. They did not appear because of the need to stop wars, but it’s part of our tradition…but the traditional arrangements which made women end wars, sometimes permanently, have been ignored today.16

Some respondents further opined that liberal-oriented empowerment of women in peacebuilding has missed a step, failing to first understand women’s cultural positions through totems, myths/legends, rites, and everyday practices, and how women have exploited them to cause conflict. This view was shared by a respondent in the following statement:

[…] How receptive are we to different perspectives on women’s agency and their role in conflict among communities? For a long time, women have been seen merely as victims of conflict… but take the Bimbila conflict, for example. It was instigated by a woman who insulted her husband and cursed ‘the day she was born a woman.’ By doing so, she provoked the ‘weakness’ of her husband and his kinsmen in failing to retaliate for an attack during the chieftaincy conflict, and that their inaction in fighting will prevent her children from inheriting chieftaincy or land when they grow up…Her husband felt compelled and took up a gun, going out to fight, which contributed to the conflict in Bimbila. However, this is just one of the ways women can cause conflicts without even holding a gun. Still, we often overlook these social roles women play, and continue to view them solely as victims of conflict […]17

This statement connects AAI and WPS to the broader scope of peace and security, extending beyond just post-conflict peacebuilding. More importantly, it highlights key entry points for encouraging a more practical local focus in African peace and security, which is based on the culturally sensitive role of women both during conflict and in peace.

Conclusion

For decades, women’s participation in peacebuilding in Africa has been seen as an empowerment effort to strengthen their agency in promoting sustainable and legitimate peace. This aligns with SDGs 5, 10, and 16—principles that promote gender equality, reduce inequalities, and strengthen institutions.

However, the empirical studies in Ghana and Sierra Leone show that universal norms and standardized approaches to women’s peacebuilding often fail to recognize long-standing local methods of agency, preventing meaningful structural change. Therefore, in their current form, the WPS framework and its implementation within African communities limit locally driven opportunities for women’s agency and peace sustainment. This largely explains why peace remains elusive in many African contexts.

The main finding is that efforts to foster inclusive peacebuilding, predominantly involving women in contemporary Africa, must be grounded in historically significant Indigenous Knowledge Systems (IKS) and the related beliefs and practices of WPS. This means that diverse African cultures related to WPS should be prioritized, and peacebuilding efforts must specifically respond to local contexts and logics. In this context, broader peace initiatives at the local, national, and regional levels must incorporate relevant insights from Indigenous belief systems, which underpin peacebuilding efforts beyond typical hybrid arrangements.

This requires local governance strategies that rely less on external ideologies and are more rooted in the continent’s historical and cultural legacy, fostering inclusive and just institutions. The starting point for this transformative approach to WPS in Africa is to develop genuine policy engagements and pilot programs that primarily link inclusive peacebuilding to African traditional wisdom.

Acknowledgement

I thank my research participants for their time and support in various forms during the data collection process. I am also grateful for my local contacts, Emmanuel Moisop and Professor Ibrahim Bangura in Ghana and Sierra Leone, respectively. Additionally, I would like to express my deep appreciation to Professor Heidi Hudson for her insightful critique of the study’s design and conceptual approach.

Funding

This study was sponsored by the Social Science Research Council’s African Peacebuilding Network (APN) Individual Fellowship (2024/2025, No. SSRC-34990) with funding from the Carnegie Corporation of New York (CCNY).

Endnotes

  1. Lotze, W. (2020). Peacebuilding in Africa: The African Union’s Evolving Approach. The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Peace and Conflict Studies, 1-7.
  2. Adjepong, A. (2015). The role of African women in the political development of pre-colonial Africa: A historical analysis. Women in Development Essays in Memory of Prof. DO Akintunde, 17-39.
  3. Medie, P. A. (2019). Women and violence in Africa. In Oxford Research Encyclopedia of African History, 1-21.
  4. Gizelis, T. I. (2009). Gender empowerment and United Nations peacebuilding. Journal of Peace Research, 46(4), 505-523.
  5. See Njoh, A. J. (2016). Tradition, culture, and development in Africa: Historical lessons for modern development planning. Routledge.
  6. Adeyeri, J. O. (2021). Indigenous Knowledge for Conflict Resolution and Peacebuilding among Nigerian Communities. Journal of Religions & Peace Studies, 5(1), 13-19.
  7. Van de Walle, N. (2001, June). The impact of multi-party politics in sub-Saharan Africa. In Forum for Development Studies, 28(1), 5-42.
  8. M’cleod, H., & Ganson, B. (2018). The underlying causes of fragility and instability in Sierra Leone. Commission on State Fragility, Growth and Development case study. London: London School of Economics and Political Science, University of London. https://www.theigc.org/publications/underlying-causes-fragility-and-instability-sierra-leone.
  9. Suleiman, M. D. (2017). Global insecurity and local conflicts in Ghana. Peace Review, 29(3), 315-324.
  10. Gilbert, L. D. (2014). A retrospective examination of post-Cold War conflicts in Africa: Ended, abated, and prolonged conflicts. International Journal of Humanities and Social Science, 4(9), 151-162.
  11. Bereketeab, R. (2020). Peacebuilding in Africa: Popular progressive versus neoliberal peacebuilding. In Regional Economic Communities and Peacebuilding in Africa (pp. 35-54). Routledge.
  12. Interview, women’s peacebuilding agent and female traditional leader, Bawku-Ghana, 18/08/2024.
  13. Interview with a regional peacebuilding NGO representative, Freetown, Sierra Leone, 13 November 2024.
  14. Anyidoho, N. A. (2020). Women, gender, and development in Africa. In The Palgrave Handbook of African Women’s Studies (pp. 1-15). Palgrave Macmillan, Cham.
  15. Interview with a local peacebuilding NGO representative, Tamale, Ghana, 16/09/2024.
  16. Interview, youth peacebuilding agent, Bo-Sierra Leone, 14/11/2024.
  17. Interview with a local peacebuilding NGO representative, Tamale, Ghana, 16/09/2024.