Despite its encounters with the international community in the past five centuries, Africa’s socioeconomic, legal, and political development remains a source of grave concern for many observers and scholars. While some trace the source of the continent’s underdevelopment to the foundational problems embedded in its historical engagements with the western world, others maintain that the […]
After controlling Goma for 11 days, M23 has now left the city. This is, unfortunately, not the end of the conflict. Not only must a more lasting settlement be reached, but what happened when the Congolese army (FARDC) ran away and the world’s largest peacekeeping force, the United Nations Organization Stabilizing Mission in the Democratic […]
Partnership peacekeeping involves official or unofficial attempts by multiple actors to coordinate the objectives of their peace operations. In Africa, the last two decades have seen partnership peacekeeping become more and more common. This is the result of several interrelated trends, but perhaps foremost among them is the widespread recognition that no single international organization has either a monopoly on peacekeeping or the capabilities to deal with Africa’s conflict-management challenges alone.
In the momentous Security Council debate that took place in January 2012 on cooperation between the United Nations and regional organizations, the US Ambassador to the UN, Susan Rice, rebuked African members on the Council for suggesting that it formally mandate the African Union (AU) to take the lead role in maintaining peace and security […]
As the 2015 MDG benchmark approaches, there is much to reflect on especially with respect to Africa’s global revitalization in international relations. Undoubtedly, the rise of Southern actors (such as Brazil, China, India, the Gulf States, South Korea, and Turkey) as part of Africa’s political and economic landscape has set off a new wave of […]
The brouhaha over Chinua Achebe’s There Was A Country: A Personal History of Biafra, as throngs who hadn’t read the book stood up to vociferously vilify or champion it, represented a grave disservice to a book that is extraordinarily important, a carefully calibrated document that is at once a great labor of love and yet, […]
