This is a cross-post from Items, a Social Science Research Council digital forum that renews and reimagines the Council’s former newsletter as a space for engagement with our work and with the social sciences more generally. Ebunoluwa O. Popoola was a Next Generation Social Sciences in Africa fellow in 2012. After six decades of oil production […]
Essays
Essays present critical analysis and debate on a pressing issue in African peacebuilding.
Conflict
Ending Impunity in the Central African Republic Still a Bridge Too Far
by Fonteh Akum and Simon Massock
At the end of July 2017, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) announced that the number of internally displaced people (IDPs) in the Central African Republic (CAR) had reached 600,000. The number of refugees, most of whom are in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and Cameroon, had reached 480,000. This recent […]
Conflict
A New Political Landscape of Petro-Insurgency in the Niger Delta
by Elias Courson
The Niger Delta has repeatedly produced natural resources that give the region a significant role in the global economy – from the slave trade in the sixteenth century to the palm oil trade in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and most recently, petroleum extraction since the mid-twentieth century. In Nigeria oil and gas, account for […]
Essays
The Media and Fresh Presidential Elections in Kenya: Some Emerging Issues
by Fredrick Ogenga
The place of the media in society in the run-up of events leading to the election, particularly how the election is represented to the citizens, will have far-reaching implications for post-election peace and security in Kenya. Current reports in Kenya’s mainstream media on the recent elections seem to lean towards the ruling coalition. Following the […]
Conflict
Security Implications of Hosting Refugees: The Case of South Sudanese Refugees in Gambella, Southwestern Ethiopia
by Fana Gebresenbet
This is a cross-post from Africa Up Close, the blog of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars Africa Program. Fana Gebresenbet Erda was a Wilson Center Southern Voices Network for Peacebuilding Scholar in 2014, and was an African Peacebuilding Network Individual Research Grantee of the Social Science Research Council in 2017. Ethiopia appears in […]
Essays
KhoiSan Rastafarianism: A Path to Peace in the Western Cape, South Africa
by Cynthia Alexandre-Brutus
To the untrained eye, Rastafarians represent an alien culture of violent and unkempt ganja-smoking individuals who seek to wreak havoc in their communities. However, on the contrary, Rastafarianism is one of the most novel religious and social movements to come out of the African Diaspora in the twenty-first century. At its founding in Jamaica, the […]
Conflict
The “Anglophone Problem” in Cameroon: Is Another Crisis Brewing?
by Abimbola Opanike
A new episode of what is commonly known as the “Anglophone problem” in Cameroon has been spurred by the demonstration of English-speaking lawyers, teachers, and students against the systematic marginalization of Anglophones in the legal and educational sectors in a supposed bilingual and bi-cultural country. The government’s response was initially characterized by Gestapo-style harassment and […]
Essays
Peacebuilding and the Academy in Africa
by Aaron Stanley
It is becoming increasingly clear that the effectiveness of peacebuilding in Africa is intertwined with the health of African higher education. Long-term peace in Africa will not be possible without greater African involvement, but African contributions will only be successful when they are grounded in strong research. In May 2017, Carnegie Corporation of New York […]
Democracy, Development and Governance
Military Humanitarianism and Africa’s Troubling “Forces for Good”
by Danny Hoffman
This article was concurrently published on Items, the SSRC’s digital essay forum, a space for engagement with the Council’s work and with the social sciences more generally. Monrovia, Liberia. August 20, 2014 ― Early in the morning, the Ebola Task Force, a joint operation led by the Armed Forces of Liberia (AFL), institutes a surprise […]
Essays
Gender Mainstreaming in Local Strategies for Conflict Transformation
by Fatma Osman Ibnouf
Conflict transformation implies multiple changes at different levels of society in order to deepen and sustain peace, and can be the result of individual or collective efforts. Since all conflicts reflect highly contextual dynamics, they require a thorough analysis of local conditions. Such an understanding increases the possibility of producing strategies that make the most […]