› › West Africa S Trouble Spots And The Imperative For Peace Building

West Africa's Trouble Spots and the Imperative for Peace-Building

Author : Osita Agbu

Publisher : African Books Collective

Page : 116 pages

File Size : 14,86 MB

Release : 2007-10-15

Category : Political Science

ISBN : 2869784244

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Book Description

This monograph highlights the necessity for taking preventive measures in the form of peace-building as a sustainable and long-term solution to conflicts in West Africa, with a special focus on the Mano River Union countries. Apart from the Mano River Union countries, efforts at resolving other conflicts in say, Guinea Bissau, Senegal, C?te d'Ivoire and Nigeria, have suffered from a lack of attention on the post-conflict imperatives of building peace in order to ensure that sustainable peace is achieved. Given the often intractable and inter-related nature of conflicts in this region, it argues for the need to revisit the existing mechanisms of conflict resolution in the sub-region with a view to canvassing a stronger case for stakeholders towards adopting the peace-building strategy as a more practical and sustainable way of avoiding wars in the sub-region. Peace-building in consonance with its infrastructure is a more sustainable approach to ensuring regional peace and stability and, therefore, ensuring development for the peoples of West Africa. Dr Osita Agbu is currently a Senior Research Fellow at the Nigerian Institute of International Affairs, Lagos. His areas of specialization include Peace and Conflict studies, Governance and Democratization and Technology and Development. He was until recently, a Visiting Research Fellow at the Institute of Developing Economies, Chiba, Japan.



Great Books Written by Africans across the Academic Disciplines

Author : Emmanuel D. Babatunde

Publisher : Cambridge Scholars Publishing

Page : 546 pages

File Size : 48,43 MB

Release : 2022-07-04

Category : History

ISBN : 1527585778

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Book Description

This volume is the first text to provide a comprehensive account of the great books across the academic disciplines written by Africans born in the continent and those who became naturalized citizens of African countries. These great books are those that have had a powerful, important or affecting influence on the author of a chapter in this book, as an individual, and on society. The books included here are mostly of the storytelling type and, thus, not representative of most of the academic disciplines. This volume allows each contributor to write a chapter on a discipline showcasing five great books written by African authors. Each selection is appraised and suggestions made by other experts in a discipline, while every chapter entails an introduction to the topic, a conceptual discussion of the discipline, a book-by-book review of the five books, and a conclusion and recommendations for research using the selected books.



Hot Spot: Sub-Saharan Africa

Author : Toyin Falola

Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Page : 213 pages

File Size : 11,23 MB

Release : 2010-07-01

Category : History

ISBN :

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Book Description

This book provides an extensive examination of the major conflicts in the extremely volatile region of sub-Saharan Africa and their ramifications throughout the continent and beyond. Conflict has been a critical factor in the making of contemporary Africa, and its study is key to understanding the continent's tortuous history. Hot Spot: Sub-Saharan Africa analyzes the area's major, post-independence conflicts intense enough to threaten national, regional, or international security. This work defines conflict broadly to encompass political instability and state failure, ethno-religious tensions, government and political corruption, economic mismanagement and poverty, cult violence, and youth gangsterism. Thematically organized chapters examine the origins and development of explosive hot spots—including Sudan, Somalia, Rwanda, and Democratic Republic of Congo—in West Africa, Nigeria, Southern Africa, the Horn of Africa and Central Africa, and the Great Lakes region. The book also explores outside factors that have impacted African conflicts, such as superpower Cold War manipulation and foreign influence and intervention.



Territoriality, Citizenship and Peacebuilding

Author : Kelechi A. Kalu

Publisher : Adonis & Abbey Publishers Ltd

Page : 650 pages

File Size : 26,74 MB

Release : 2013-06-29

Category : Reference

ISBN : 1912234599

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Book Description

Civil conflicts in Africa range from few interstate wars to several intrastate conflicts characterized by secessionist movements, irredentism, coups and counter coups, genocide, wars of liberation to resource-based wars. The varied causes of conflicts in the continent's diverse and complex social formations are seen in ethnic terms and include struggles for economic/environmental resources, poor institutions of governance and issues of identity such as religion, language and racial differences. The core issue addressed in this volume is how to understand and explain the structural and analytical reasons for persistent civil conflicts in Africa. The core assumption is that most civil conflicts in Africa erupt largely because of the nature of state formation in the continent. Other significant variables that are explored as explanations for the persistent instances of civil conflicts in sub-Saharan Africa and the slow efforts at nation-building across the continent include issues of territoriality, climate change, ethnicity, ideological incongruities, institutional problems, the nature of postcolonial state, unreformed governance and economic structures, and corruption.This book also examines some sources of unresolved issues of territoriality and explains their connections to political violence and socio-political and cultural tensions across sub-Saharan Africa. It offers suggestions on how scholarly research and policies could help mediate if not mitigate future territorially-based conflicts in Africa.



West Africa and the U.S. War on Terror

Author : George Klay Kieh

Publisher : Routledge

Page : 236 pages

File Size : 13,66 MB

Release : 2013-05-07

Category : Political Science

ISBN : 1136251200

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Book Description

Since the terrorist attacks on the American homeland on September 11, 2001, fighting the menace has become the frontier issue on the U.S.’ national security agenda. In the case of the African Continent, the United States has, and continues to accord major attention to the West African sub-region. This book : Evaluates where we can place West Africa within the broader crucible of the U.S. war on terrorism Establishes the key elements of the U.S.’ counter-terrorism policy in West Africa? Examines the U.S. counter-terrorism strategies in West Africa, and evaluates if they are being pursued both at the bilateral and multilateral levels in the region Interrogates the relationship between stability in the sub-region and the waging of the U.S.’ war on terrorism. Specifically, the book examines the crises of underdevelopment—cultural, economic, environmental, political, security and social—in the sub-region, especially their impact on shaping the conditions that provide the taproots of terrorism. Clearly, addressing these multidimensional crises of underdevelopment is pivotal to the success of the U.S. war on terrorism in the sub-region. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of terrorism, homeland security, African Studies, conflict management, and political violence.



Marginality and Crisis

Author : Akanmu G. Adebayo

Publisher : Lexington Books

Page : 296 pages

File Size : 19,17 MB

Release : 2010-05-25

Category : Political Science

ISBN : 0739145584

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Book Description

Marginality and Crisis: Globalization and Identity in Contemporary Africa extends the scope and understanding of the effects of globalization and its forces on Africa. With each chapter written by specialists who recognize that the future of Africa is entwined with that of the rest of the world, this volume explains with fresh vigor the new thinking on the historical specificity, value, opportunity, and shortcomings of globalization for a continent many regard as marginalized and in crisis. In the face of much pessimism, several questions have engaged the attention of this young generation of African scholars: Where is Africa in relation to globalization? Where are the things that make Africa Africa (such as economy, politics, culture, identity, and human relations) headed? Are Africa's communities helpless against global forces or empowered by new avenues of access? How do scholars and policymakers engage the problems of globalization vis-^-vis Africa's ethnic, linguistic, and other identities? What are the economic and political trajectories in various countries and localities? An invaluable source for scholars, students, and the general reader, the essays in this book have confidently and clearly explored and explained the crises that have engulfed the continent in the age of globalization. Unlike other works that have dwelt only on the continent's victimhood, this volume identifies key areas in which Africa can become more proactive and outward-looking in response to the forces and values that take the globe as their reference points.



Inclusive Peacebuilding

Author : Herbert Bangura

Publisher :

Page : 151 pages

File Size : 13,87 MB

Release : 2015

Category : Peace-building

ISBN : 9789198287509

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Book Description



Nigerian Federalism

Author : Ibeanu, Okechukwu

Publisher : Safari Books Ltd

Page : 376 pages

File Size : 11,99 MB

Release : 2016-11-25

Category : Political Science

ISBN : 9788431992

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Book Description

Nigerian Federalism: Continuing Quest for Stability and Nation-Building explores the nature of and the debate over a number of recurrent issues, such as the “origins of Nigerian federalism, the number of state units in the federal system, fiscal issues, political parties, distributional issues, and intergovernmental relations” in Nigerian federalism since the establishment of protofederalism under the Richards Constitution, 1946 seventy years ago. In exploring the issues, the book seeks to answer the question, “what accounts for the persistence of Nigerian federalism, despite the serious discontents that the debate throws up now and again?” The book offers a reinterpretation, which argues that the demand for true federalism, which anchors the major trend in the age-long debate on the structure of Nigerian federalism, is ahistorical and therefore static. The book uniquely emphasises the need to periodise the practice of Nigerian federalism into four major phases. Based on the periodisation, two cardinal propositions emerge from the various chapters of the book. First, in spite of separatist and centrifugal threats to its existence, Nigerian federalism has typically never sought to eliminate diversity, but to manage it. In this sense, the construction of Nigeria’s federal system from its earliest beginnings shows clearly that it is both a creature of diversity and an understanding that diversity will remain ingrained in its DNA. Secondly, Nigeria’s federal practice has not sought to mirror any model of “true federalism”, be it in the United States, Canada or elsewhere. Instead, Nigeria’s federal system has been a homegrown, if unstable modulation between foedus and separatus, a constantly negotiated terrain among centripetal and centrifugal forces and between centralisation and decentralisation. Consequently, a historical, periodised understanding of Nigerian federalism is inevitably essential. It is this historical and theoretical-methodological approach to explaining and understanding Nigerian federalism that gives the book its unique character. The book is for the general reader as well as for students, including researchers of Nigerian federalism and of Nigerian constitutional and political development, policymakers, and political parties.



Elections and Governance in Nigeria's Fourth Republic

Author : Agbu, Osita

Publisher : CODESRIA

Page : 198 pages

File Size : 34,40 MB

Release : 2017-05-03

Category : Political Science

ISBN : 2869786395

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Book Description

Elections and Governance in Nigeria’s Fourth Republic is a book about Nigerian politics, governance and democracy. It at once encompasses Nigeria’s post-colonial character, its political economy, party formation since independence, the role of Electoral Commissions, as well as, indepth analyses of the 1999, 2003 and 2007 general elections that involved extensive fieldwork. It also presents aspects of the 2011 and 2015 general elections, while discussing the state of democratic consolidation, and lessons learned for achieving good governance in the country. It is indeed, a must read for students of politics, academics, politicians, statesmen and policy makers, and in fact, stakeholders in the Nigerian democracy project. The book stands out as a well-researched and rich documentary material about elections in Nigeria, and the efforts so far made in growing democracy.



Laws and Societies in Global Contexts

Author : Eve Darian-Smith

Publisher : Cambridge University Press

Page : 433 pages

File Size : 49,63 MB

Release : 2013-01-31

Category : Law

ISBN : 0521113784

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Book Description

This text promotes a more global sociolegal perspective that engages with multiple laws and societies and diverse sociolegal systems based on very different historical and cultural traditions, interacting on multiple local, national, and global levels. The approach to global legal pluralism seeks to provide a framework for envisioning new global governance regimes that move beyond state-based solutions to deal with trenchant transnational challenges.