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Africa Program: Third Phase

The International Peace Academy (IPA) established the Africa program under the leadership of Olara Otunnu in 1992 to draw attention to the particular issues surrounding Africa’s conflicts and need for political and economic reform. After 12 years, the program remains a vital bridge between the United Nations (UN) and African organizations and leaders. Notably, the Africa Union’s chair, Alpha Oumar Konaré, and the Executive Secretary of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), Mohammed Ibn Chambas, have sought IPA’s assistance in determining their organizations’ priorities and activities.

Building on its earlier work, the Africa Program has the following objectives:

To consolidate strategic partnerships with African institutions and actors;
To assess the impact of these partnerships on strengthening the capacity of sub-regional organizations to manage and resolve conflicts more effectively;
To follow-up on past policy recommendations from seminars and task force meetings;
To address emerging political and economic developments on the African continent with the establishment of the African Union (AU) and the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD); and
To provide a platform for African civil society to address international policy making bodies, particularly the UN.

Context

The two projects currently managed by the Africa program, Strengthening Africa’s Security Mechanisms and Actors and Peacebuilding in Africa, assess the impact of citizenship, governance, and the role of international and regional actors on the incidence of wars, failed states, and humanitarian crises on African states and civil society. The projects enable continental and sub-regional organizations and actors to connect to the international policy making community, share information on best practices, undertake joint initiatives, and establish plans of action. Both programs prioritize the new peace and security initiatives of the AU , the creation of closer linkages between African regional organizations and the UN, and the new development framework – NEPAD . These issues are also prominent on the agenda of the UN, including the High Level Panel Report on Threats, Challenges, and Change, and the Progress Report of the Millennium Development Goals. Moreover, since the 1990s, when the UN began to significantly engage in peacekeeping operations, Africa has been a central focus. From 1990 to 2005, the UN has established 41 peacekeeping missions – of which 19 were in Africa. Today, the need for the IPA Africa program continues, as Africa remains the focus of the UN peacekeeping and peacebuilding activities: Africa has 7 of the 16 UN peacekeeping missions and 6 of the 11 joint peacekeeping and political missions, that are active in 2005 [1].

Strengthening Africa’s Security Mechanisms and Actors
The project on Strengthening Africa’s Security Mechanisms and Actors focuses on increasing the capacity of Africa’s sub-regional organizations and of Africa’s political leadership to respond to political and humanitarian crises. Under this project, policy seminars and task force meetings in Africa’s sub-regions are organized, in partnership with Africa-based policy institutions, to evaluate Africa’s security challenges and progress toward political, social, and economic reforms. Importantly, government officials, scholars, military experts, and representatives from civil society attend these policy seminars and task force meetings.

Peacebuilding in Africa
The Peacebuilding in Africa project offers a platform for civil society to provide the UN and associated academic and non-governmental organizations with relevant and up-to-date information on emerging humanitarian and political crises on the continent. Its main activities are policy fora that the Africa Program organizes in New York. The Project on Peacebuilding in Africa has convened nearly 40 policy fora, expert meetings, and Civil Society Dialogues in New York between July 2000 and the first quarter of 2005. Meetings were held on Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Ghana, Ethiopia/Eritrea, Angola, Rwanda, Western Sahara, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Zanzibar, and the Organization of African Unity/African Union. Most of the meetings prominently featured African civil society actors. Other topics included the peacebuilding role of civil society actors in West Africa’s Mano River Union,NEPAD, the politics of land reform in Zimbabwe, and HIV/AIDS as a security threat in Africa.

Ruth Forbes Young Civil Society Fellowship
The Ruth Forbes Young Civil Society Fellowship, is a central component of the Peacebuilding in Africa project. The fellowship program brings one civil society activist to IPA annually, as a means to strengthen the networks between the international policy making community and civil society organizations in Africa. The 2004 – 2005 fellow, Mr. Batabiha Bushoki, is from the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) [2]. The capstone event of the fellowship program is the Civil Society Dialogue, an event that brings a number of civil society activists from Africa to New York for a half-day meeting that attracts representatives from the UN, academic, non-governmental, and other policy-making communities. This year’s Civil Society Dialogue takes place on April 19, 2005.

The Africa Program works to:

Serve as a useful guide to Africa’s regional organizations and actors in assessing their strengths and weaknesses in the area of conflict prevention, management, and resolution;
Identify the key factors required to maximize the potential of Africa’s fledgling security mechanisms and to provide tangible support for the efforts of regional organizations at strengthening their political and military institutions;
Share comparative experiences between, and learn policy lessons from, the African Union, the New Partnership for Africa’s Development and sub-regional organizations, such as the Economic Community of West African States, Southern African Development Community, Intergovernmental Authority on Development, East African Community, and the Economic Community of Central Africa States;
Encourage the involvement of civil society actors in developing and shaping Africa’s regional security mechanisms and to facilitate the development of civil society networking within Africa;
Serve as a valuable resource for external actors and donors involved in assisting the development of Africa’s security mechanisms;
Create networks of knowledgeable and interested Africans able to influence developments on their continent through interaction among themselves; and
Provide a resource for scholars and students of conflict management in Africa, particularly since there exists a paucity of knowledge on the continent’s institutions and actors engaged in the field of conflict management.

Output
A number of books, occasional papers, and reports have been published from the policy seminars, task force meetings, and selected policy fora. Forthcoming publications include books on peace and security issues in the Great Lakes region, the governance challenges in East Africa and the Horn, and the prospects for peace in Sudan.

[1] United Nations, “United Nations Peacekeeping,” available from http://www.un.org/Depts/dpko/dpko/index.asp ; United Nations Peacekeeping,” available from http://www.un.org/Depts/dpko/dpko/index.asp and “United Nations Political and Peacekeeping Missions,” available from http://www.un.org/peace/ppb.pdf.

[2] Mr. Bushoki follows two other civil society fellows – Augustine Toure from Liberia (2001-2002) and Arthur Bainomugisha from Uganda (2003-2004).

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