Conflicts draining Africa

Lazarus Sauti

In a paper “Impact of Conflict in Africa”, Kathryn Touré, an expert in education, information and communication technologies, noted that since independence, few African countries have been spared violence and armed conflict, and recent events in countries such as Nigeria, the Central African Republic, South Sudan, Northern Mali and the Democratic Republic of Congo confirm that conflicts are still on the rise in Africa.

Recently, Nigeria’s militant Islamist group Boko Haram abducted more than 200 girls from a boarding school in the northern town of Chibok. An estimated 200 heavily armed militants arrived at night in 20 vehicles to steal supplies and kidnap the students.

In Central African Republic, there is a civil war between the Seleka rebel coalition and government forces. The conflict started on December 10, 2012, after rebels accused the government of President Francois Bozize of failing to abide by peace agreements signed in 2007 and 2011.

Furthermore, a conflict in South Sudan began on the evening of December 15, 2013, at the meeting of the National Liberation Council at Nyakuron, when opposition leaders Dr. Riek Machar, Pagan Amum and Rebecca Nyandeng voted to boycott the Sunday December 15, 2013 meeting of the National Liberation Council.

More so on January 16, 2012, several insurgent groups began fighting a campaign against the Malian government for independence or greater autonomy for northern Mali, an area known as Azawad.

The National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad, an organisation fighting to make Azawad an independent homeland for the Tuareg people, had taken control of the region by April 2012.

On March 22, 2012, President Amadou Toumani Toure was ousted in a coup d’état over his handling of the crisis, a month before a presidential election was to have taken place. Mutinous soldiers, calling themselves the National Committee for the Restoration of Democracy and State, took control and suspended the constitution of Mali.

As a consequence of the instability following the coup, Mali’s three largest northern cities – Kidal, Gao and Timbuktu – were overrun by the rebels on three consecutive days. On April 5, 2012, after the capture of Douentza, the MNLA said that it had accomplished its goals and called off its offensive. The following day, it proclaimed Azawad’s independence from Mali.

According to the Rule of Law in Armed Conflicts Projects, the eastern part of the Democratic Republic of Congo is experiencing a situation involving a serious humanitarian crisis. More people are internally displaced due to conflict in the country.

Most – if not all – countries that are affected by this scourge are poor, meaning conflict is a major obstacle to the economic transformation of Africa. Frankly, conflicts are leading to the squandering of natural and human resources that should have benefited the masses, while robbing African communities of their developmental potentials.

Oxfam, an organisation working to find lasting solutions to poverty and injustice throughout the world, believes on average, violent conflicts shrink a country’s economy by 15 percent. Oxfam added that military expenditure, medical costs, destroyed infrastructure and care for displaced persons are some of the obvious ways countries lose money to conflicts.

“Conflicts in Africa, since the end of the cold war till 2007, have cost the continent US$241 billion,” noted Oxfam in a report, adding that conflicts have both long and short-term impacts on African economies, with developmental, environmental and human well-being all affected – reducing quality of life, capabilities of people to live the kinds of lives they value.

Conflicts are not only taking precious lives of Africans but billions of dollars are also lost. In a 2013 report, HSBC Holdings, one of the largest banking and financial services institutions in the world, said apart from the economic and human cost of lives during Arab Spring uprising in Egypt, Tunisia and Libya for instance, the impact even in post-revolution states is obvious.

“We estimate the value of lost output will top US$800 billion by the end of next year (2014),” the HSBC report said. It also said GDP for these countries would be 35 percent lower at the end of 2014 than if there had been no Arab Spring.

These figures highlight the impact of conflicts not only to Arab Spring countries but to the continent of Africa.

After draining Africa financially, conflicts also fuel unemployment in the continent. For instance, the damage to the Arab Spring countries has not been to GDP alone as unemployment remains high.

In an economic outlook for Egypt, Africa Development Bank (AfDB) states that after the uprising in the country, youth are becoming poorer and many Egyptians living below the poverty line are still waiting to reap the full benefits of lasting social, political and economic change.

“The economic outlook for the rest of 2014 remains weak. Growth will remain fragile, the fiscal deficit unsustainably high, and public debt in excess of 100 percent of GDP…

“Against the backdrop of mounting political unrest and insecurity, socio-economic conditions continue to deteriorate: the unemployment rate is rising, especially among youth (39 per cent of the 20-24 age group are unemployed), and rural-urban income disparities remain wide,” AfDB stated.

Due to conflicts, Africa is fast becoming less attractive to potential investors.

In a blog, writer and freelancer Niyi Aderibigbe said, “Although Africa as a whole is enjoying improved Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) driven by improved environment for doing business in West and East Africa, same cannot be said about North Africa.”

It is well a known fact that education is a panacea to all social problems but violence and conflict threaten education and societal development on the African continent.

Accordingly, studies and actions should be included as part of prevention and reconciliation, and in the framework of peace building. African communities therefore require research-based actions.

Because of this, Senegalese Touré said that growing levels of violence and conflict in homes, schools and communities require research-based and community-supported action.

“As more and more initiatives are undertaken to institute democratic values, African researchers must also study how tradition promotes conflict and the value of traditional practices in conflict prevention and resolution.

“As rules and institutional mediation are not sufficient for peace we need to use ethnographic and other qualitative approaches to study lived experience. Above all, we need to value teachers as the most critical resource in education reconstruction and we need to listen to young people – for their voices are often silenced by those of adults.”

It is easy to create a conflict-free continent. It is easy to have a Nigeria without Boko Haram bombings in the North, South Sudan without civil war and Mali without the political crises. But to achieve this, Africa needs leaders with strong credentials, who are not afraid to champion a new era of development.

These leaders should steer Africa to greater economic heights by embracing political stability.

The good news is that the African Union has lofty ambitions not only to stop conflict on the continent, but also to make sure that lasting peace is achieved through post-conflict reconstruction and development efforts.

In a statement, the African Union said: “…The AU and the Regional Economic Communities (RECs) have put enormous efforts in the facilitation of negotiations for peaceful resolution of existing conflicts and the effective implementation of peace agreements, as witnessed in, among others, Burundi, the Central African Republic (CAR), the Comoros, Côte d’Ivoire, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Liberia, Sierra Leone, the Sudan and Somalia.

“It was in this context that the AU saw the necessity to ensure that peace agreements are effectively complemented by sustained post-conflict reconstruction and peace building efforts, with a view to addressing the root causes underlying their outbreak.

“It is in this respect that the Executive Council urged the Commission to develop an AU Policy on Post-Conflict Reconstruction based on the relevant provisions of the Peace and Security Council Protocol and the experience gained so far in the years of managing peace processes in Africa, dating as far back as the former Organisation for African Unity (OAU) years. A good number of consultations took place and in July 2006, the AU Post Conflict Reconstruction and Development (PCRD) Policy was finally adopted.”

The AU policy on PCRD is intended to serve as a guide for the development of comprehensive policies and strategies that elaborate measures that seek to consolidate peace and prevent relapse to violence, promote sustainable development and pave the way for growth and regeneration in countries and regions emerging from conflict.