The Nordic Africa Institute – Publications

This Policy Note focuses on the gendered consequences of the militarisation of the Horn of Africa. Despite being in different ‘moments’ of conflict, the countries of this region share features of extreme social, economic and political violence, which impact negatively on their citizens. Protracted refugee and refugee-like conditions, extreme disinvestment in social programmes, increasing militarisation and political repression adversely affect women, thereby further entrenching gender disparities. Concerted national and international efforts and resources should support local democratic initiatives to find political solutions to these protracted conflicts and advance the struggle against sexual and gender-based violence and discrimination.

The COVID-19 pandemic had disruptive consequences for MENA countries’ agri-food value chains that exacerbated poverty and jeopardized food security. This study examines the relationship between individuals’ perception of contracting COVID-19 and their experience of food insecurity, using longitudinal data from the Combined COVID-19 MENA Monitor Household survey. It also investigates the underlying mechanisms of COVID-19 concerns and explores coping strategies employed by households to identify vulnerabilities in food security. The results provide compelling evidence of a strong association between individuals’ concern about the virus and various dimensions of food security, particularly reduced purchasing power and decreased meal frequency. Notably, this association follows an inverted U-shaped curve, with food insecurity initially increasing as worry grows, but declining after individuals contract the virus. High levels of concern were also linked to significant income decreases and worsening economic conditions. Moreover, individuals with higher concerns were more likely to rely on specific coping strategies, particularly spending savings and obtaining funds from relatives or friends. These findings underscore the need for government interventions during disease outbreaks and economic downturns to focus on alleviating individuals’ worry and fear to facilitate informed decision-making that minimizes food insecurity consequences. Additionally, the findings emphasize the need to strengthen social protection systems during public health and economic challenges to ensure food security for vulnerable populations. 

The generally held belief is that government spending on education and research and development is to bring about direct impacts on the advancement and sustainability of an economy. Nonetheless, this evidence is not prevalent within industrialized and third-world economies, particularly among the foremost ten carbon dioxide releasing economies. Therefore, the OLS and the DEA are used to estimate the relationship between government public spending on research and development plus green economic advancement, utilizing data from several countries between 2008 and 2018. The findings reveal a varying green economic expansion indicator, which is a result of inadequate government programs to deliver results. Subsequently, for types of expenditure where formal juxtaposition can be made, such as RE compared with conventional energy, the authors detect that multipliers on green cost are almost twofold their traditional sources. The point approximate of the multipliers is 1.1–1.7 for green energy financing and 0.4 and 0.7 for conventional energy financing, depending on time and modeling. These results passed all the required sensitivity analyses. They provided backing to the bottom-up analysis, which reveals that controlling global warming, including preventing biodiversity extinction, works hand in hand with creating economic development and advancement. 

The democratic opening presented by Nigeria’s successful transition to civil rule (June 1998 to May 1999) unleashed a host of hitherto repressed or dormant political forces. Unfortunately, it has become increasingly difficult to differentiate between genuine demands by these forces on the state and outright criminality and mayhem. Post-transition Nigeria is experiencing the proliferation of ethnic militia movements purportedly representing, and seeking to protect, their ethnic interests in a country, which appears incapable of providing the basic welfare needs of its citizens.

It is against the background of collective disenchantment with the Nigerian state, and the resurgence of ethnic identity politics that this research interrogates the growing challenge posed by ethnic militias to the Nigerian democracy project. The central thesis is that the over-centralization of power in Nigeria’s federal practice and the failure of post-transitional politics in genuinely addressing the “National Question, has resulted in the emergence of ethnic militias as a specific response to state incapacity. The short- and long-term threats posed by this development to Nigeria’s fragile democracy are real, and justify the call for a National Conference that will comprehensively address the demands of the ethnic nationalities.

This discussion paper examines the linkages between gender and gender inequality in the context of conflict, sexual violence and HIV transmission, and their impact on postconflict reconstruction in Sierra Leone and Liberia. It makes two critical contributions to a gendered perspective on post-conflict transitions in West Africa. First, it notes that contrary to conventional wisdom, post-war transitions to relative peace have made little difference to women’s exposure to chronic sexual violence, with potential implications for increased HIV transmission. Second, the study interrogates those assumptions linking war-related sexual violence to high HIV prevalence in post-conflict contexts, by showing that despite over a decade of armed conflict, Liberia and Sierra Leone had adult HIV prevalence rates that were among the lowest in West Africa. This paper goes beyond generally held notions of the sexual and gender dimensions of civil wars in Africa and points to a gap in, and key challenge for studies and policies on post-conflict reconstruction in Africa.

The evidence is incontrovertible that Liberia (with its two civil wars, 1989-97 and 2000-03) and Sierra Leone (with its 1991-2001 war) have emerged from two of the most inhuman, ferocious and cruel conflicts in the post-Cold war era. The scale of destruction, rape, mayhem, arson and torture perpetrated during these wars was among the greatest in Africa’s postcolonial history. Women, especially adolescents and young adults, were exposed to extreme sexual brutality at a time when a growing heterosexually-driven HIV pandemic was occurring in the West African sub-region. Both countries also experienced an economic and social collapse that resulted in human development indicators on employment, income, health, education, women’s status and child well-being that are among the lowest in the world. Protracted armed conflicts, as witnessed in Liberia and Sierra Leone and beyond, expose women and girls to unprecedented levels and forms of sexual violence. Moreover, the expectation that the transition from war to peace will lead to significantly reduced sexual violence against women (SVAW) is often disappointed. Instead, post-conflict transitions tend to produce a change in the predominant forms of sexual violence and the profile of its perpetrators. The extended and interlinked conflicts in these neighbouring countries relate at a fundamental level to the persistent denial of citizenship rights to particular population sub-groups over several decades. Within such landscapes of severe social, economic and political marginalization and deprivation, women and girls were bound to suffer more than men and boys during and after the wars as a result of long-established and deeply entrenched patriarchal structures and ideologies in both countries. The persistence of SVAW during post-conflict transitions tends to increase the risk of HIV infection among younger women relative to the phase of armed conflict. A key causal factor is men’s highly exploitative, transactional and cross-generational multiple sexual activities. Thus far, the dominant responses to this complex of issues in post-conflict West Africa have lacked a nuanced understanding of the underlying drivers of sexual violence and its intersections with women’s higher risk of HIV infection.The policy responses to the challenges of post-conflict reconstruction and peace-building in West Africa have generally focused more on traditional security, physical infrastructurere building and economic revitalization issues than on such highly gendered human security concerns as sexual violence and violations of reproductive rights. Left unaddressed, these persisting or worsening human security challenges, affecting at least half their populations, make sustainable peace and development in post-conflict Liberia and Sierra Leone nearly impossible.

Filmed seminar in the 'Sudan: North in the shadow of the South' series, held 19 April 2012. Dr. Yasir Awad, Life & Peace Institute, and Dr. Buthaina Ahmed Elnaiem, University of Juba/Bahri, Sudan, give give their views on the capacity of civil society in Sudan today and tell about current possibilities and initiatives within peacebuilding. The film is 60 minutes long.

This chapter describes domestic politics, foreign policy and socioeconomic developments in Côte d’Ivoire during 2021. Following the turbulent electoral year of 2020, which had also posed the challenges of mitigating the effects of the global COVID-19 pandemic, the year 2021 is characterised as marked by political appeasement and socio-economic recovery. Politically, the most significant event was the legislative and Parliamentary election, which turned out to be much less fraught than the 2020 presidential vote. Nevertheless, an unforeseen government reshuffling and the emergence of a new alliance within the opposition suggested the new fault lines in Ivorian politics moving forward.

Despite an encouraging overall economic outlook and relative political stability, municipal, regional, and senatorial elections in 2023 consolidated a worrying tendency towards the entrenchment and domination of the ruling Rally of Houphouëtists for Democracy and Peace (RHDP) in Côte d’Ivoire. With a hotly contested 2025 presidential election looming on the horizon, the prospect of incumbent president Alassane Ouattara seeking a fourth consecutive term seemed to be on the cards, already stirring resistance and mobilisation among the divided and increasingly marginalised opposition. With the military take-over in Niger, the Ouattara administration also faced a shifting sub-regional political climate, in which foreign policy relations with Sahelian neighbours Mali and Burkina Faso seemed to deteriorate and little progress was made in the fight against regional jihadist extremism. At the same time, domestic security remained stable as major infrastructure investments were being finalised ahead of the African Cup of Nations football championships, hosted by Côte d’Ivoire for the first time since 1984. The Ivorian cocoa sector was the centre of international attention as unprecedented drops in production drove global selling prices to a record high.

Contemporary forms of precarity, migration, connectivity, and sociality have transformed what it means to be a man in many African communities. Responding with agency and creativity to various incentives and constraints, Africans have adapted practices pertaining to labour, marriage, and sexuality to the exigencies of modern life amid the impacts of European colonialism, rapid urban growth, economic hardship, and political conflict. Drawing upon ethnographic and historical research to study settings in East, West, and Southern Africa, the articles in this special issue review the social changes that have taken place regarding men's roles and assess prospects for the emergence of counter-hegemonic masculinities.

Report from four public seminars on the conflict in Somalia, held during October and November 2007 in Stockholm, Sweden with Nuruddin Farah, Somali Novelist, Roland Marchal, Senior Research Fellow at the Centre d’Études et de Recherches Internationales, Paris, Asha Hagi, member of the Somalia Transitional Federal Parliament and civil society activist, Jens Odlander, Swedish Ambassador for the Somali Peace Process, Shane Quinn, Programme officer at the Life and Peace Institute, Sweden, and Sahra Bargadle and Hayan Ismail from the swedish-somali Diaspora. Marika Fahlén, Special Advisor for the Horn of Africa at the Swedish Ministry for Foreign Affairs acted as moderator for the panel discussion.The seminars were jointly organized by the Life and Peace Institute, The Nordic Africa Institute and ABF Stockholm.

Development donors have supported thousands of environmental initiatives in Africa over the past quarter century. The contributors to this provocative new collection of essays assess these projects and conclude that environmental programmes constitute one of the major forms of foreign and state intervention in contemporary African affairs. Drawing on case study material from eight countries, the authors demonstrate clearly that environmental programmes themselves often have direct and far-reaching consequences for the distribution of wealth and poverty on the continent.

Individual essays in the collection theorise specific forms of environmental intervention; the degree of historical discontinuity that exists between contemporary and past environmental policies and practices; the effect environmental programmes have had on localised systems of knowledge and value regimes; the strategies of accumulation that have been spun out of heavy donor and state investment in environmental programmes; and the numerous social, cultural and political-economic dislocations these initiatives have produced in African environments all across the continent.

Many critics of customary land rights systems call for conversion of customary tenure to leasehold. This policy note argues for a middle way forward. By formalising the collective ownership of customary land in two levels, primary and secondary rights, instead of converting it to exclusively individual leasehold estates, Zambian authorities can enhance the rights of primary claimants, without excluding secondary land rights holders from their livelihood bases.

La complexité grandissante des environnements sécuritaires impose unhaut niveau d’exigences vis-à-vis des opérations de paix africaines etcomplique les efforts de long terme pour la consolidation de la paix etle renforcement de l’État. Les expériences de l'Union africaine (UA) etdes sous-régions au cours de la dernière décennie montrent qu’unmodèle africain des opérations de paix a émergé, qui est en contradictionavec les scénarios et les hypothèses multidimensionnelles demission qui sous-tendaient originellement le cadre de la Force africaineen attente (FAA).

Increasingly complex security environments are placing high demands on African peace operations, and complicating efforts at long-term peace- and statebuilding. From the experiences of the African Union (AU) and the sub-regions over the last decade, an African model of peace operations has emerged that is at odds with the mission scenarios and multi-dimensional assumptions that underpinned the original framework of the African Standby Force (ASF).

Over the past decade, the Nordic countries – Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden – have strengthened their relationship with African states and societies by supporting the African Peace and Security Architecture and promoting African involvement in conflict prevention, mediation, peacekeeping, and peacebuilding efforts. This report offers an overview of the partnership between African and Nordic countries in peace and security from 2012 to 2021. It features original case studies on Nordic country cooperation with African actors and institutions, across an array of efforts, including support to peace processes, building capacity and training for inclusive conflict management, contributing to peace operations, and advancing gender equality, climate adaptation and resilience. It also includes perspectives on cross-cutting themes such as women, peace and security, youth, countering violent extremism, and partnership with the African Union. The report aims to be a resource for the policy community, mapping African-Nordic cooperation, in pursuit of peace and security in Africa.

Au cours des dix dernières années, les pays nordiques (Danemark, Finlande, l’Islande, Norvège et Suède) ont renforcé leurs relations avec l’Afrique en soutenant l’Architecture africaine de paix et de sécurité (APSA). Ce rapport donne un aperçu de leur coopération entre 2012 et 2021 en matière de paix et de sécurité, et présente plusieurs études de cas dans ce domaine. Cette coopération peut se manifester de différentes formes : soutien aux processus de paix, renforcement des capacités et formation pour une gestion inclusive des conflits, contribution aux opérations de paix, promotion de l’égalité des sexes, adaptation au climat et amélioration de la résilience. Le document offre une réflexion sur des thèmes transversaux (femmes, paix et sécurité, jeunesse, lutte contre l’extrémisme violent et partenariat avec l’Union Africaine), et présente à la communauté politique une cartographie de la coopération entre les pays africains et nordiques afin d’aboutir à la paix et la sécurité en Afrique.

How does rapid urban growth affect risks of communal violence in cities? In rapidly growing cities, poor planning and weak institutions combined with an unregulated influx of migrants can create a potent recipe for violent mobilization. In addition, politicized identity groups often compete for resources and interact in close proximity in urban areas. Despite a growing research agenda on the relationship between rapid urban growth and urban violent unrest, findings remain inconclusive. One explanation for the disparate conclusions is that the theoretical pathways connecting urban growth and unrest largely fail to consider both the violence-generating and violence-stemming effects of urban growth. With a focus on conflict-ridden societies, we theorize processes through which urban growth influences different aspects of group relations in the city, and thereby contribute to prevent, suppress or generate communal violence. To illustrate the framework, we draw on insights from Nairobi, Kampala and Addis Ababa. By paying attention to processes, we are able to identify a range of developments associated with city growth which in turn have different implications for communal violence.

Policymakers at the local/city government level are crucial to continental integration projects like the African free trade agreement and the free movement protocol. However, they are not represented in the African Union (AU) and other international bodies where such projects are negotiated and designed. City-to-city cooperation between Africa’s two major economic hubs, Lagos and Johannesburg, would not only unleash strategic synergies and drive continental integration, but would also leverage private-sector involvement and influence other cities to enter into similar cross-border partnerships.

This briefing paper provides an overview of what is "social equity" and how it's applicability for climate-resilient agriculture in the context of the need for transformative adaptation.

Small-scale gold mining sustains millions of people’s lives and yet it stimulates environmental harms and social conflicts. Global environmental crises drive calls for fundamental change to how people live on the planet. For small-scale gold mining, this raises questions about whether current dynamics can provide a basis for sustainability transformations. Proposing the notion of gold lifeways to focus on the lived experience of mining and gold resources as relational phenomena, we ask what sustainability looks like from different miners’ perspectives and probe the practice dynamics of current transformation. Our methodology is social science-led and transdisciplinary. From multi-sited and trans-regional research between South America and Africa, we draw cases from Suriname, Guinea Conakry, and Uganda. Our study finds that gold lifeways give expression to different strands of sustainability: sustaining everyday life in mining; discourses framing mining practices; and government repression of mining. Hence, as our empirical data demonstrates, miner perspectives on sustainability gain content not in isolation, but as part of gold lifeways embedded within different contexts and shaped by societal dynamics. Ultimately, the transformative potency of small-scale gold mining is located in personal lives and precarious dynamics rather than glittering promises of a sustainable future.

This book analyses the new and difficult roles of regional organizations in peacemaking after the end of the Cold War and how they relate to the United Nations (UN).

Regional organizations have taken an increasingly prominent role in international efforts to deal with international security. The book highlights the complex interaction between the regional and sub-regional organizations, on the one hand, and their relations with the United Nations, on the other. Thus, the general issues of UN and its authority are scrutinized from legal, practical and geopolitical perspectives. Taking on a broad geographical focus on Africa, the Arab world and Europe, the book also provides an extensive range of case studies, with detailed analysis of particular situations, organizations and armed conflicts.

The authors scrutinise the heterogeneous relationship between the different organizations as well as the challenges to them: political resources, legal standing, financial assets, capabilities and organizational set up. Moreover, they investigate whether regional organizations, as compared to the UN, are better suited to deal with today’s intra-state conflicts. The book also aims to dissect the evolution of these institutions historically – in relation to Chapter VIII of the UN Charter which mentions the resort to 'regional arrangements’ for conflict management – as well as more generally in relation to the principles of international law and UN principles of peacemaking.

This book, written by a mixture of established scholars, diplomats and high-level policymakers, will be of great interest to students as well as practitioners in the field of peace and conflict studies, regional security, international organisations, conflict management and IR in general.

This article explores how the protection of civilians is being militarized by African policymakers and diplomats. I draw on practice approaches to analyze what social groups are doing when they claim to “protect civilians.” I show how innovative protection mechanisms can be seen as a function of officials and diplomats coping with the changing circumstances of increasingly militarized politics in Africa. Specifically, accountability mechanisms for unintended and intended civilian harm by African security operations have originated in connection with this development. I argue that these are results of anchoring practices, which means that everyday informal interactions in one context become linked to another context. I argue that these emerging accountability mechanisms represent a new combination of practices, with the potential of changing the routine activities and mutual learning between policymakers and diplomats.

What does it mean to be human in the aftermath of mass trauma and violence? When victims and perpetrators of gross human rights violations live in the same country, and sometimes as neighbours, what strategies can help individuals and communities deal with trauma in a way that restores dignity to victims and enables perpetrators to be accountable for their crimes? This essay explores these questions. Examples that illustrate attempts to create sites for listening, for moral reflection and for initiating the difficult process of dialogue at community and individual levels after mass trauma and violence are discussed. It is argued that in the aftermath of historical trauma, restoring human bonds requires a new vocabulary of re-humanization. This new mode of being human calls for a “reparative humanism” that opens towards a horizon of an ethics of care for the sake of a transformed society.

Food systems need to focus more on health, prosperity, and environmental sustainability. This requires changes in what, where, how and by whom food is produced, marketed, and consumed. Interdisciplinary research and transdisciplinary collaboration are needed. Stakeholders need to agree on their respective roles, values, responsibilities and modus operandi so that research better responds to real-world challenges and opportunities. This viewpoint argues that this is especially the case in the Global South post Covid-19. Without these changes, there will continue to be unrealistic expectations of impact from agricultural research, and disappointment when these are not realised.

Climate change will have a largely detrimental impact on the agricultural sector. Reduced yields will lead to greater food insecurity and a rise in food prices. In response, researchers have developed agricultural technologies and practices, commonly known as climate-smart agriculture (CSA). Scaling or large-scale farmer uptake of CSA is often seen as the responsibility of development practitioners. This, however, encourages a false dichotomy between knowledge generation through “research” and practice-based “scaling.” Such binary thinking poses two dangers. Firstly, when faced with donors’ understandable wish to see impact on the ground, agricultural research organizations succumb to “mission drift” and engage in “development work,” for which they have little comparative advantage. Secondly, because scaling is seen as a “development” as opposed to “research” issue, the contribution that research can make to understanding effective scaling is overlooked. We propose that agricultural research-for-development (AR4D) can contribute more to scaling by conceptualizing the process as a multifaceted one that catalyzes three interconnected and complimentary pathways: technology development, capacity development, and policy influence, each overseen by interdisciplinary research teams. We use our experience from rice-based systems in South and Southeast Asia to illustrate how a combination of all three pathways is required to enhance scaling of CSA.

Climate risk management is part of the response to the threat of climate change. Much effort has focused on the promotion on climate-resilient agriculture. There continues to be undue focus on technology solutions per se and not enough attention on the coupling of technologies and socio-economics and how they become embedded in ecological systems underpinning smallholder agriculture. In this perspective, we argue that an intertwined social–ecological–technological systems approach to climate risk management is needed to ensure that climate-resilient agriculture contributes more to the realization of goals of the Paris Agreement and the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. Furthermore, in line with broader policy thinking on the need for transformative change toward sustainably living on the planet and “leaving no one behind,” a greater focus on transformative adaptation is required. Transformative adaptation tackles the root causes of vulnerability including unevenly distributed power relations, and extant networks of control and influence. There are, however, relatively few examples of moving from the theory of transformative adaptation to practice. Three recent practical examples of transdisciplinary approaches, that we have direct experience of as researchers, provide lessons for initial ways forward as part of climate risk management initiatives. Examples from Vietnam, East and Southern Africa, and Guatemala illustrate the importance of inter- and transdisciplinary responses whereby the inequalities underlying unequal power structures may be addressed, enabling farmers to pursue climate risk management pathways that contribute to climate resilience and human development, as epitomized by the Sustainable Development Goals.

In response to the climate crisis, there has been much focus on climate-smart agriculture (CSA); namely, technologies and practices that enhance adaptation, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and contribute to food security; the so-called triple win. Success has tended to be measured in terms of the number of farmers adopting CSA with less focus given to the impacts especially on human development. CSA can inadvertently lead to‘maladaptation’ whereby interventions reinforce existing vulnerabilities either by beneftting powerful elites or by transferring risks and exposure between groups. Such maladaptive outcomes often stem from overly technical adaptation programming that is driven by external objectives and discounts the social and political dynamics of vulnerability. Increasingly a more nuanced picture is emerging. This reveals how a failure to contextualize CSA in relation to the structural socioeconomic dynamics associated with agricultural systems that render some categories of farmer especially vulnerable to climate change, undermines CSA’s contribution to reducing rural poverty and increasing equity. In response, there is a growing focus on transformative orientations that pursue a more deep-seated approach to social, institutional, technological and cultural change in order to address the structural contributors to vulnerability and diferential exposure to climate risk. Addressing these questions requires a robust consideration of the social contexts and power relations through which agriculture is both researched and practiced. For agriculture to be transformative and contribute to broader development goals, a greater emphasis is needed on issues of farmer heterogeneity, the dangers of maladaptation and the importance of social equity. This entails recognizing that resilience encompasses both agroand socio-ecological dimensions. Furthermore, practitioners need to be more cognizant of the dangers of (i) benefting groups of already better of farmers at the expense of the most vulnerable and/or (ii) focusing on farmers for whom agriculture is not a pathway out of poverty. The success of these approaches rests on genuine transdisciplinary partnerships and systems approaches that ensure adaptation and mitigation goals along with more equitable incomes, food security and development. The greater emphasis on social equity and human well-being distinguishes climate-resilient from climate-smart agriculture.

The Kenya crisis came largely as a surprise, at least to outsiders. Was it possible to see it coming? Is Kenya a special case, or are there reasons to expect similar crises in other ”stable” African nations with politics, ethnicity and inequality forming an explosive blend?

This short exploratory note will approach these questions by taking a look at opinion poll datafrom the Afrobarometer 2005 and 2003. Were any signals of what was coming already there,before our eyes?

Droughts have severely affected the pastoral production system resulting in hunger, massive loss of livestock, acute water shortages, and drought-related conflicts. This study aimed to understand the drought adaptive mechanisms from a gender perspective in Modogashe Ward, Kenya. To achieve this, the study investigated the impacts of droughts and the various ways in which men and women cope and adapt to the impacts. Due to the homogeneousness in sociocultural and economic activities in the Ward data was obtained from 60 respondents comprising 30 males and 30 females through a stratified random sampling method. One respondent, either the husband or wife, was chosen per household. Both men and women rely on pastoralism as the main source of livelihood. Thus, the impacts and adaptation mechanisms were similar for both genders. However, due to the attachment of men to livestock, the impacts and adaptation mechanisms revolved around environmental factors while those of women revolved around the provision of household basic needs. Furthermore, the study area had limited adaptation mechanisms options resulting in similar coping and adaptation strategies among men and women but with minor variations in the preferred strategies. The variations in the preferred strategies were a reflection of the existing gender roles within the social construct of the community. Men were inclined toward measures that promote livestock keeping while women preferred measures that enhanced the provision of household basic needs. The findings from this study highlight the significant role of gender dimensions driven by the local socio-cultural settings in influencing the uptake of drought adaptation practices and strategies among communities.

This NAI Discussion Paper critically explores the concepts, norms and practices of reconstruction and peace building in post-conflict West Africa, drawing largely on the case of Liberia and Sierra Leone. It provides an up-to-date analysis and critique of the impact of the UN-led praxis and practice of peace building in the post-conflict states in the region. The material in this study covers the context of post-conflict reconstruction and peace building in West Africa; the evolution and analysis of the global peace building regime; the architecture of peace building in West Africa; the ‘un-making’ of peace building in Sierra Leone. It also interrogates the basic assumtions that underpin international peace building in Africa, noting that at best, it is designed to promote stability and security rather than a deeper and more sustainable popular and socially rooted peace.