This book explores the work of Nigerian author Amos Tutuola and how it can enhance our understanding of gender and peacebuilding in Africa. Critical feminist contributions on how a gender perspective can broaden inclusion in post-conflict processes, as well as change institutions and mindsets are surely innovative but have not succeeded in dislodging liberal peace as the means of dealing with conflict on the African continent. Such works also draw their critiques from largely rationalist, Western roots.Entering Tutuola’s world, where human and non-human characters change and interchange, allows scholars and practitioners to see peacebuilding as organic, reliant on multiple identities and interlocutors, and grounded in local knowledge. I contend that such an expanded lens that integrates exogenous and endogenous knowledge systems non-hierarchically is not only relevant to the peacebuilding context, but could also find application in other areas in need of decolonisation.

Africa has endured the debilitating effects of cyclical violent conflict for several decades. Despite the existence of well-intentioned policy frameworks and the use of significant resources to stabilise countries, conflicts in the region have remained resistant to resolution. Africa’s crises demonstrate that conflicts have a tendency to spill across borders, affecting communities in more than one country. These cases challenge reductionist understandings of traditional interstate and intra-state wars across the continent. The regional nature of conflicts means that the notion of ‘civil war’ is anachronistic, with increasingly limited descriptive utility.This paper argues that unless concrete efforts are geared towards dealing with the past and promoting regional reconciliation in Africa, the consolidation of peace and security will remain an elusive quest. More specifically, if state resources were deployed in equal measure to lay the foundations for regional reconciliation, this would ultimately be a more effective way to stabilise countries and improve relations with their neighbours. In fact, the pursuit of regional reconciliation could contribute towards the fulfilment of the incomplete project of decolonisation across Africa.

With only 13 per cent female representation in parliament, Ghana is lagging behind most other African states. A proposal for affirmative action is currently being debated. This policy note assesses the barriers to women’s political representation in Ghana, and gives recommendations on how the issue might be addressed.