'I Feel the Other': Differences and Commonalities in Moslem, Christian and Traditional Cultural Perceptions of Peace in West Africa

Across the states of West Africa, both francophone and Anglophone, there are frequent violent internal conflicts between Muslim groups to the North and Christian groups to the South. Such conflicts are fueled by different views of the nature and requirements of peace. Yet there are also older African cultural and religious traditions which survive, alongside or partially integrated with these introduced religions, and offer alternative and, upon occasion, integrative views of peaceful relations between local groups across the contemporary religious divide. Drawing on survey materials relating to Sierra Leone, Liberia, Ivory Coast, Ghana, and Nigeria, this paper examines both the Muslim/ Christian divide and the role of the deeper African religious traditions in their contributions to conflict and peacebuilding alike. Whilst there is a considerable repertoire of traditional methods of dealing with conflict inside ethnic groups, practical experience suggests that scaling up such peace building activities is often impeded by differences across ethnic boundaries. It is therefore important to examine the extent to which there are deeper African commonalities, which are shared across ethnic groups despite superficial stylistic distinctions. This paper concludes with a discussion of the extent to which the Southern African philosophical concept of ‘ubuntu’ has an equivalent in West Africa.