African Security Issues

As a comprehensive resource for readers interested in contemporary security issues in Africa, this compelling book details the impact of complex challenges in Africa and explains why addressing them grows increasingly important. Presenting both general overviews and specific case studies, this book introduces contemporary security issues in Africa, home to more than thirty of the fifty most fragile nations in the world. It covers the past three decades of conflict on the continent, focusing on such topics as weak and failing states, ethnic conflict and civil wars, natural resources and environmental security, political violence and terrorism, piracy and maritime security, food security and poverty, international responses, and future prospects. The core of the book comprises detailed analysis of the nexus between culture, politics, and security in Africa, while the volume as a whole examines key regional and transnational security issues affecting Africa and their implications at the state, regional, and international levels. The book explores the dynamic role that African nations play in influencing international security and investigates and articulates factors heightening the importance of Africa's role in international affairs.

Provides a context for understanding West Africa's security dilemmas, highlighting the link between failures of economic development, governance, and democratization on the one hand and military insecurity and violent conflicts on the other.

This new Handbook examines the issues, challenges, and debates surrounding the problem of security in Africa. Africa is home to most of the world's current conflicts, and security is a key issue. However, African security can only be understood by employing different levels of analysis: the individual (human security), the state (national/state security), and the region (regional/international security). Each of these levels provides analytical tools for understanding what could be called the "African security predicament" and these debates are animated by the "new security" issues: immigration, small arms transfers, gangs and domestic crime, HIV/AIDS, transnational crime, poverty, and environmental degradation. African security therefore not only presents concrete challenges for international security but provides a real-world context for challenging conventional conceptions of security. Drawing together contributions from a wide range of key thinkers in the field, the Routledge Handbook of African Security engages with these debates, and is organized into four parts: Part I: The African security predicament in the twenty-first century; Part II: Understanding conflict in Africa; Part III: Regionalism and Africa; Part IV: External influences. This Handbook will be of great interest to students of African politics, human security, global security, war and conflict studies, peacebuilding, and IR in general.

As African nations emerge more fully from the immediate postinde-pendence era, there is a pressing need to examine their security concerns from both African and global perspectives. Issues of strategic access and resources, superpower and regional conflict, economic growth and internal stability, and the role of African nations as a significant blo

The U.S. has a growing strategic interest in Africa at a time when the security landscape there is dominated by a wide range of irregular, nonstate threats. Organized criminal activities, particularly kidnapping, human smuggling and trafficking in persons, weapons smuggling, and environmental and financial crimes, are increasingly brazen and destructive. This paper provides an overview of Africa¿s irregular, nonstate threats, followed by an analysis of their strategic implications for regional peace and stability, as well as the national security interests of the U.S. The conclusion highlights a number of new and innovative tools that can be used to build political will on the continent to confront these security challenges. Map.

Since independence, the West African sub-region has been an arena for a number of large-scale conflicts and civil wars, as well as simmering and low-intensity uprisings. Contrary to perceptions, West Africa in its post-independence history has experienced fewer conflict events and fatalities from conflict than the other sub-regions on the continent. The turn of the millennium has witnessed the recession of large-scale and conventional conflict, and it has ushered in new and emerging threats. The specters of religious extremism, maritime piracy, and narcotics trafficking threaten to undermine some of the progress achieved in recent years. The Challenge of Stability and Security in West Africa critically examines the key drivers of conflict and violence, and the way in which they impact the countries of the sub-region. In addition to emerging threats, these drivers include the challenges of youth inclusion, migration, sub-regional imbalances, and extractives, as well as challenges related to the fragility of political institutions and managing the competition for power, reform of the security sector, and weakness of institutions related to land management. The book explores how the sub-region, under the auspices of the regional organization ECOWAS, has become a pioneer on the continent in terms of addressing regional challenges. The Challenge of Stability and Security in West Africa also identifies key lessons in the dynamics of resilience in the face of political violence and civil war drawn from CÃ ́te d'Ivoire, Liberia, and Sierra Leone, that can be useful for countries around the world in similar situations. It incorporates knowledge and findings from leading experts and provides insights from academics and development practitioners. Finally, the book identifies possible policy and programmatic responses and directions for policy dialogue at the national and international levels.

Through the lens of human security their book examines the continent's most pressing security challenges--from identity conflict and failing states to terrorism, disease, and environmental degradation--and in doing so provides a comprehensive look at the complexities of building peace and stability in modern-day Africa.

Research Paper (postgraduate) from the year 2015 in the subject Politics - Region: Africa, , course: Development and Governance, language: English, abstract: This paper seeks to show that institutional reforms are urgently needed in the area of security (physical security, human security & state security) especially as the general idea that the inability of most African states during their developmental stage to ensure national cohesion, as relevant as it might seem, is being overtaken by other emerging factors notably their inability to control boundaries and provide their citizens’ right to life of which freedom is a very important component. These perceived weaknesses of most States in Africa epitomize the concept of failed states. This paper proposes a merger between human security and state security as the contemporary security breaches are multidimensional and in a State’s bid to adequately roll out measures to tackle the latter, it is only rational that the situation will be analyzed holistically. To address this issue our article adopted the following problematic: «What could be done to ensure that the culture of peace, conflict prevention and resolution in the wake of the numerous security challenges lead to development and by extension sustainable development?»