Panel 41: Conflict and Conflict Management as Decisive Factors in Modern Africa

Violent conflict is wide-spread in today’s Africa and a serious obstacle for development. Current disciplinary research on the issue increasingly shows its diverse and multidimensional character. While there are some serious attempts of generalizations, case studies also reveal that particular conflict dynamics are usually idiosyncratic. In this interdisciplinary panel we want to bridge this gap and uncover underlying medium- and long-run structures contributing to the prevalence of the problem.

At first, in Violence Structures in Historical Perspective, the long-run nature of conflict dynamics is shown form an economic and social historical perspective. This approach is integrating the concepts of (post-)colonial exploitative resource cycles, structural violence and greed-grievance-patterns in explaining the vulnerability of certain African regions for conflicts. A second contribution provides a Case Study of the Greater Congo Region on the basis of this approach. Thirdly, The Development of African Conflict Management since 1963 shows that conflict management within the OAU never worked. The African Heads of State and Government ignored the concept in favor of the principles of the organization: sovereignty and non-interference. Finally, in African solutions for African problems: A wishful thinking, the multilayered structure of conflicts in Africa with particular focus on the international level is discussed. Thereby it is shown that the rapid integration of Africa into the current international system has substantially contributed to the intensification of conflicts.

Hence, conflict and conflict management increasingly emerge as decisive for African politics, economies and societies, and due to their multilayered structure the question “on whose terms?” conflict, intervention and conflict management take place, is all too obviously important, if not crucial for Africa’s future.