Since the 1990s, African militaries have been on the receiving end of US, British, and French peacekeeping training. Other Western countries like Canada and Germany are beginning to increase their support in this area. Little has been done by African leadership to mobilize internal resources to enhance the capacity of Africa’s political and military institutions for actual post-war reconstruction. As a result, war torn countries remain fragile, sometimes threatening the security of entire regions.

Recognizing this, Madala-Routledge and Liebenberg have proposed the creation of an African Action Plan for Developmental Peacekeeping and Reconstruction that involves governments creating political, socio-economic, and military mechanisms to address the causes of war and challenges of building peace. One way to achieve this is to assess more effective ways for how military aid in Africa could be used.

To prevent future outbreaks of war, conflict, civil strife, and to stabilize conflict prone countries, external peacekeeping initiatives are insufficient. Creating internal and external initiatives to increase Africa’s capacity for post-war reconstruction would make this attainable. There are four ways African leaders could accomplish this. African leaders should consider broadening the role of African militaries in the actual reconstruction phase of war torn countries. They should seriously consider adopting Developmental Peacekeeping as Africa’s model for peace operations, apply Developmental Peacekeeping to “stable” African countries to prevent future conflict and address such issues as ethnicity, regionalism, nationality, and citizenship that continue to fuel conflict in Africa.

Broadening the role of African militaries and peacekeepers beyond security to include physical reconstruction is an enormous, but attainable task. In Africa there is a desperate need for specialized military division similar to the US Army Core of Engineers or the UK’s Royal Engineers in each African state that could be deployed to rebuild war torn African countries. For this to be a truly African owned enterprise, Africa’s leaders and policy makers would need to promote greater collaboration between the continent’s economists, academia, labor sectors and military. Africa has intellectual capacity lacks technology.

The international community could fill that gap through bilateral military cooperation agreements that include initiatives designed to transfer technical expertise in economic reconstruction to African militaries. The US, British, and French governments are best placed to take on such a task as they provide the bulk of military aid to African governments. Uniformity for technical transfers to each African country would have to be established in coordination with the AU, and Africa’s regional organizations.

Nationhood, Citizenship and Ethnicity

For unity in any society, race, gender, and religious differences that perpetuate inequalities  must be continually minimized.  Inequality is minimized when the state and people create institutions to do so.  History has proven that when there is a societal perception that ordinary citizens can effect political change, access economic resources for their development, and be protected against the excesses or abuses of the state; the micro identity of the individual begins to peacefully co-exist with a common national identity.

In Africa, micro identities continue to dominate politics, largely because African states did not undergo the economic, political, and cultural processes that unified hard states (Western states).  Hard states like the US have created laws that prevent ethnicity or race from being a factor for political representation and resource distribution. The rule of law in the US political system acts as a protective mechanism against discriminatory practices.  This does not mean that racial discrimination no longer occurs in the US. However the laws and institutions in place can be used by the public to petition the state in the event of discriminatory practices. Africa lacks such systems.

Hard states correct themselves over time. The discriminatory practices that have created societal divisions, war, and civil strife have been corrected by laws. Correction did not occur instantaneously, it resulted from cultural/paradigm shifts that emerged over the course of hundreds of years. For instance, the abolition of the North Atlantic slave trade took hundreds of years before it was realized. The same can be said for the amount of time it took for women in the US to earn the right to vote, and African Americans to be considered more than three fifths of a human being.  A greater lapse of time occurred before the term “crimes against humanity” began to take hold.

These paradigm/cultural shifts ushered in a new order that promoted political stability based on religion, race, and gender pluralism throughout the Western world. In Africa however, no paradigm shift relating to governance and pluralism has occurred. States continue to politicize ethnicity—a carry over from colonial rule—despite their claim of ascribing to democratic principles. African leaders are neither apologetic for this nor do they pursue policies that seek to correct the economic neglect and political misrepresentation resulting from this carry over. Consequently, ordinary citizens continue to be insufficiently protected from excesses of the state under a façade of democracy.