Non-State Actors, Inequality, and Conflict Dynamics in Africa: What Prospects for Sustainable Peacemaking and Peacebuilding?
This panel critically examines the role of non-state actors in the emerging conflict dynamics across Africa and its implications for peace, security and development on the continent and beyond. It engages with existing studies and debates on the changing nature, and trajectories of violent conflict linked to struggles for power, access to and control of natural resources and critical minerals, climate change and its attendant insecurities, extremist ideologies, banditry, and various forms of transnational trafficking. It interrogates the intersection(s) between deepening socio-economic inequalities in the context of demographic shifts and violent conflict, particularly the growing trend of non-state actors becoming more adept in the use of new technologies, social media and sophisticated weaponry in waging new forms of war in West Africa’s Sahel and the adjoining Coastal states, Central Africa, Sudan, South Sudan, parts of Ethiopia and Somalia. Apart from analyzing the current conflict trends and its impacts on Africa, the panel raises critical questions about the engagement of external and emerging powers with violent non-state actors, followed by the exploration of various potential pathways towards brightening the prospects for sustainable peacemaking and peacebuilding that are underpinned by equity and social justice.
Speakers:
- Dr. Yunana Ahmed, Gombe State University, Nigeria
- Prof. Mahamadou Bassirou Tangara, Université des Sciences Sociales et de Gestion de Bamako (USSGB), Mali
- Dr. Marion Ouma, University of South Africa (UNISA), South Africa
- Dr. Louis Kusi Frimpong, University of Environment and Sustainable Development, Ghana
