West African Studies Conflict Networks In North And West Africa

Conflicts in North and West Africa have become more violent and widespread than in the past. They have also become more difficult to resolve due to the complex relationships between a growing number of belligerents with diverging agendas. This report maps conflict networks and the evolution of rivalries and alliances in 21 North and West African countries.

Women make a significant contribution to West Africa's food economy, perpetuating a long tradition of commerce and participating in cross-border trade and regional outreach. Their activities face numerous obstacles but also present important opportunities, highlighted in this report through an unprecedented relational and spatial analysis of social networks. The study focuses on the rice sector in the Dendi region (Benin, Niger and Nigeria) and on the regional governance networks that support women's entrepreneurship. It confirms that Nigeria occupies a privileged position due to its demographics and growing urbanisation. The report proposes the development of innovative public policies based on the reinforcement of the social capital of women and policy approaches that promote better integration of the initiatives undertaken by governments, international and non-governmental organisations to empower women and strengthen their resilience.

This monograph highlights the necessity for taking preventive measures in the form of peace-building as a sustainable and long-term solution to conflicts in West Africa, with a special focus on the Mano River Union countries. Apart from the Mano River Union countries, efforts at resolving other conflicts in say, Guinea Bissau, Senegal, C'te d'Ivoire and Nigeria, have suffered from a lack of attention on the post-conflict imperatives of building peace in order to ensure that sustainable peace is achieved. Given the often intractable and inter-related nature of conflicts in this region, it argues for the need to revisit the existing mechanisms of conflict resolution in the sub-region with a view to canvassing a stronger case for stakeholders towards adopting the peace-building strategy as a more practical and sustainable way of avoiding wars in the sub-region. Peace-building in consonance with its infrastructure is a more sustainable approach to ensuring regional peace and stability and, therefore, ensuring development for the peoples of West Africa. Dr Osita Agbu is currently a Senior Research Fellow at the Nigerian Institute of International Affairs, Lagos. His areas of specialization include Peace and Conflict studies, Governance and Democratization and Technology and Development. He was until recently, a Visiting Research Fellow at the Institute of Developing Economies, Chiba, Japan.

This publication examines the role of border regions in shaping patterns of violence since the end of the 1990s in North and West Africa. Using the innovative OECD Spatial Conflict Dynamics indicator (SCDi), the report looks at the growing relationship between political violence and borderlands at the regional level, by analysing more than 170 000 violent events between January 1997 and June 2021 and through the exploration of case studies in the Central and Eastern Sahel.

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.

Governance and Crisis of the State in Africa explores the problems and challenges of disruptive conflicts and conflict management in West Africa. Based on a robust analysis of a large stock of theoretical and empirical studies on the nature of the state in Africa and the incidents of state failure, fragmentation and collapse, the author argues that a major explanation of state weakness in Africa is the lack of the imperatives of good governance - itself rooted in the trajectory of the emergence of these states. Using the recent internal wars and ongoing conflicts in some West African states such as Liberia, Sierra Leone, Guinea, Guinea- Bissau and Cote d'Ivoire as case studies, the author explains how the use of inappropriate methods of conflict management exacerbates these conflicts and the crisis of the nation-state in Africa. ________________ John Emeka Akude holds a PhD in political science from the University of Cologne, Germany where he teaches African Politics, Politics of Development and International Political Economy. His research interests include political economy, the state and economic development, conflict studies, state collapse and war economies as well as the transformation of political order. His publications include "Krisen und Krisenmanagement in Afrika", Zwischen Wunschdenken und Ohnmacht: Der Anspruch der Afrikanischen Union auf Konfliktmanagement in Afrika", "Bad Governance and State Collapse in Africa" as well as "Weak States and Security Threats in West Africa". He is a member of the Working Group on the Transformation of Political Order at the Chair of International Relations, University of Cologne, Germany.

North and West Africa are undergoing rapid urbanisation. While cities and urban areas have always been sites of conflict, given their political and economic importance, many insurgencies, rebellions and separatist movements are associated with rural areas.

This book explains the structure and geographical and organisational mobility of criminal and migratory movements in the Sahara and the Sahel with a view to helping establish better development strategies for the region.