Preserving Peace: How Africa has Escaped Conflict and Violence

Abstract

Sub-Saharan Africa has long been portrayed as a continent ‚ravaged by war‘. Yet, the fact that more than half of Africa’s 54 countries has neither experienced internal nor intrastate war between 1947 and 2015 calls such blanket proposition on ‘the African state’ into question. This is the case even more so, if one disaggregates data from the level of nation-states to the sub-national scale, as important regional variations can be observed with regard to the experience of war and peace, fragility and resilience. Thus, and given that the alleged structural causes of violent conflict are widely shared among and within African countries, the real puzzle is not necessarily why so many countries have succumbed to (civil) war, but why and how diverse states, regions, and communities have managed to either largely escape, contain, or recover from instances of large-scale violence. Consequently, this panel invites contributions that provide for a more nuanced understanding of conflict trajectories, and shed light on the currents underpinning the preservation and restoration of peace in sub-Saharan Africa.

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