This Special Issue of Kujenga Amani features articles based on presentations by current and former APDD fellows at the virtual panel on “Non-State Actors, Inequality, and Conflict Dynamics in Africa: What Prospects for Sustainable Peacemaking and Peacebuilding?” This was organized as part of George Mason University’s (GMU) Carter School’s 2026 Fall Peace Week on the theme: Peacemaking and Peacebuilding in a Fragmented World, held from September 21 through September 25. The four articles in this issue include, “Non-state Actors, Deradicalization, and Sustainable Peacebuilding: Voices of Internally Displaced Persons in Northeast Nigeria” by Yunana Ahmed; “Stoking Conflict: The IMF, Policy Interference, and Youth-led Gen Z Protests” by Marion Ouma; “Environmental Governance, Resource Contestation and Peacebuilding: Comparative Evidence from Coastal Wetlands in Ghana” by Louis Frimpong; and “Governing Under JNIM in Mali, ‘Every Bullet Fired Sets Our Money on Fire’” by Mahamadou Bassirou Tangara.
These articles contribute new perspectives to ongoing debates on the connections between socio-economic inequalities and the changing nature and trajectories of violent conflict linked to struggles for power as well as accessing and controlling natural resources and critical minerals, involving Non-State Actors, States, and International Actors. They also feature some case studies that capture how climate change, the politics of social policy, internal displacement, emerging trends as well as extremist ideologies, banditry, and human mobilities, shape prospects for peace in conflict-affected areas. Contributors to this volume also explore the intersection(s) between deepening socio-economic inequalities in the context of demographic shifts, particularly the growing trend of non-state actors becoming more adept at using new technologies, social media, and sophisticated weaponry in waging new forms of war in West Africa’s Sahel, and organizing youth-led protests against international interventionist economic policies in Kenya. In conclusion, the various articles make a collective case for brightening the prospects for sustainable peacemaking and peacebuilding that are fundamentally underpinned by equity and social justice.