Ethnic Conflicts In Africa

In this book, Donald Rothchild analyzes the successes and failures of attempts at conflict resolution in different African countries and offers comprehensive ideas for successful mediation. The book demonstrates how negotiation and mediation can promote conflict resolution, along with a political environment that fosters development.

From Darfur to the Rwandan genocide, journalists, policymakers, and scholars have blamed armed conflicts in Africa on ancient hatreds or competition for resources. Here, Tsega Etefa compares three such cases—the Darfur conflict between Arabs and non-Arabs, the Gumuz and Oromo clashes in Western Oromia, and the Oromo-Pokomo conflict in the Tana Delta—in order to offer a fuller picture of how ethnic violence in Africa begins. Diverse communities in Sudan, Ethiopia, and Kenya alike have long histories of peacefully sharing resources, intermarrying, and resolving disputes. As he argues, ethnic conflicts are fundamentally political conflicts, driven by non-inclusive political systems, the monopolization of state resources, and the manipulation of ethnicity for political gain, coupled with the lack of democratic mechanisms for redressing grievances.

The resurgence and frequency of violent conflicts and tensions require analyses taking account of the factors that have shaped the history of ethnic identities and warring groups. Citing cultural differences as the ubiquitous precursor hinders such understanding. This fifteen-nation study of conflicts in Africa shows that the capacity or failure to manage such conflicts is determined by changes brought about by the trajectories of historical events. Colonialism erected structures that ruptured the dynamics which had controlled opposing inter-ethnic relations and interests. The post-colonial era witnessed further manipulation and disintegration of ethnic identities and groups, thus making the state central to the dynamics of ethnicity in Africa. The studies book explain how the positive and negative aspects are transformed in the pre-colonial, colonial and post-colonial histories of African states and groups.

In this book, Donald Rothchild analyzes the successes and failures of attempts at conflict resolution in different African countries and offers comprehensive ideas for successful mediation. The book demonstrates how negotiation and mediation can promote conflict resolution, along with a political environment that fosters development.

The book is aimed at students and scholars of conflict, Africa, ethnic politics, and religion. It may also appeal to religious and political leaders. It proposes a new perspective on how ethnicity and religion shape political outcomes and violence in Africa, adding psychological elements to standard political science arguments.

This book focuses on the problem of ethnic conflict in Africa and seeks to explain its root causes. The main thesis of the book is that ethnic political mobilization is essentially a function of deeply-felt grievances on the part of the groups so mobilized.

III, 484P : 23CM.