The Middle East and the Horn of Africa are distinct but interdependent Regional Security Complexe... more The Middle East and the Horn of Africa are distinct but interdependent Regional Security Complexes (RSCs) whose security interaction and beyond has increased over the last two decades. Recent interactions between the two RSCs, particularly the increased involvement of Middle Eastern and Gulf states, have raised concerns about the Horn of Africa's peace and security. This paper examines the impact of the Middle East and Gulf States' involvement on peace and security in the Horn of Africa using RSC Theory (RSCT). The findings indicate that the Middle East and Gulf States' involvement, rooted in rivalry and competition, has become a source of instability and conflict in the Horn of Africa. These extra‐regional powers have played a critical role in escalating conflicts and instilling insecurity in the region by focusing solely on their national security, geopolitical, and economic interests. Their destabilizing impact is particularly visible in Ethiopia, Somalia, and Sudan.
Kwame Nkrumah’s Pan-African dream of establishing African High Command meant to protect the newly... more Kwame Nkrumah’s Pan-African dream of establishing African High Command meant to protect the newly created postcolonial African states in 1961 did not borne fruit because most of African states opposed and rejected it due to the perceived threat it posed on their sovereignty. However, the failure of the Organization of African Unity (OAU) dealing with the prolonged conflicts in the continent, the horrific Rwandan genocide incident of 1994, and the belief that without peace, development and prosperity could not take root in Africa provided reasons for the shift from the OAU to the African Union (AU) in 2001 and revived Nkrumah’s idea of African wide security force, which eventually brought to existence the African Standby Force (ASF) in 2002. Since then the ASF has achieved some successes in responding timely to conflicts in Africa despite the fact that its efforts were largely concealed by various challenges that it faced. Research works that have so far been done in the subject lack...
This chapter attempts to situate Ethiopia’s economic growth of the past decades in the context of... more This chapter attempts to situate Ethiopia’s economic growth of the past decades in the context of the debate over whether Africa is really rising. It argues that both the narratives of Africa’s development “successes” and “failures” that have put forth to explain Africa’s reality since 2000 could not explain Ethiopia’s reality alone but in combination. Ethiopia has recorded phenomenal economic growth (averaging 10%) over the past decade. This coupled with the government pro-poor policies has enabled it to make significant progress on human development indicators and poverty reduction. Yet‚ Ethiopia remains a poor country grappling with several development challenges.
Kwame Nkrumah’s Pan-African dream of establishing African High Command meant to protect the newly... more Kwame Nkrumah’s Pan-African dream of establishing African High Command meant to protect the newly created post-colonial African states in 1961 did not borne fruit because most of African states opposed and rejected it due to the perceived threat it posed on their sovereignty. However, the failure of the Organization of African Unity (OAU) dealing with the prolonged conflicts in the continent, the horrific Rwandan genocide incident of 1994, and the belief that without peace, development and prosperity could not take root in Africa provided reasons for the shift from the OAU to the African Union (AU) in 2001 and revived Nkrumah’s idea of African wide security force, which eventually brought to existence the African Standby Force (ASF) in 2002. Since then the ASF has achieved some successes in responding timely to conflicts in Africa despite the fact that its efforts were largely concealed by various challenges that it faced. Research works that have so far been done in the subject lack inclusiveness in terms of what constitute these challenges. In line with such gap, the analysis of the data obtained from the literature, confirms that the challenges that the ASF grappled with range from political, financial, material to technical.
South Sudan as a state has borne out of the protracted civil wars that have been waged for decade... more South Sudan as a state has borne out of the protracted civil wars that have been waged for decades in the Sudan. Despite it won its independence after a long and bitter struggle on 9 July 2011, the much expected peace dividends of the independence and the democratization process that has been set in motion since the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) in Kenya in 2005 could not be sustained for long. After three years of independence and respite from long and bloody civil wars and the miseries that it causes, South Sudan has reverted to another episode of civil war. Based on literature review, this article examines the problems and challenges of the current conflict in South Sudan and illustrates windows of opportunity for managing it. The findings of the analysis suggest that, first, the South Sudan civil war transcends structural, proximate, and regional causes, and second, the empirical strength of the existing and implemented solutions for managing the conflict and bringing about durable peace seem to be weak.
Key Words: South Sudan, Conflict, Problems, Challenges, Windows of opportunity
The Horn of Africa is considered as one of perhaps the most insecure regions in the world as a re... more The Horn of Africa is considered as one of perhaps the most insecure regions in the world as a result of intra-and-inter states conflicts that have been fought for decades in almost all the region’s states and consumed millions of lives and material resources. Causes of conflict and insecurities to the Horn of Africa states and/or regimes cut across the three major sources of conflict formations, i.e. national, regional, and international. The predominantly internal sources of conflicts in the region traverse through what have been left as colonial legacies (such as arbitrarily drawn colonial boundaries and inherited embryonic state institutions and structures) and the post-independence years’ political and economic malaises (such as leaders’ autocratic nature, inappropriate economic policies, and unfair distribution of economic wealth of the state; ‘politics of domination and exclusion’; weak center-periphery relations; and frequent droughts and famines). These sources of intra-states conflicts and insecurities in the Horn easily acquire regional current due to historical and ethno-cultural factors and the culture of mutual interference of states to each other’s affairs in the region, which is dictated either by each government’s desire of dealing with its own internal conflicts or by the needs to promote the vested interests of external powers. The interplay between national and regional sources of conflicts and insecurities has therefore created fissures for the interventionism of external forces, which ultimately makes the Horn of Africa region an epicenter where the national and global security threats are met. Such dynamics web of security threats to the Horn of Africa states and its implications for the Horn ‘prisoners of geography’ – landlocked states – is missed in the existing literature due to that research works on the subject fall either into the internal or external verities of security threats and hence are short of looking at their interplay and its effects on the Horn of Africa landlocked states – Ethiopia, South Sudan and Uganda. The Copenhagen School’s basic theoretical postulates are used to examine how the predominant internal nature of security threats to the Horn states mutate into and assumes regional dimension to become a constraint for various dimensions of landlocked states’ security.
The Middle East and the Horn of Africa are distinct but interdependent Regional Security Complexe... more The Middle East and the Horn of Africa are distinct but interdependent Regional Security Complexes (RSCs) whose security interaction and beyond has increased over the last two decades. Recent interactions between the two RSCs, particularly the increased involvement of Middle Eastern and Gulf states, have raised concerns about the Horn of Africa's peace and security. This paper examines the impact of the Middle East and Gulf States' involvement on peace and security in the Horn of Africa using RSC Theory (RSCT). The findings indicate that the Middle East and Gulf States' involvement, rooted in rivalry and competition, has become a source of instability and conflict in the Horn of Africa. These extra‐regional powers have played a critical role in escalating conflicts and instilling insecurity in the region by focusing solely on their national security, geopolitical, and economic interests. Their destabilizing impact is particularly visible in Ethiopia, Somalia, and Sudan.
Kwame Nkrumah’s Pan-African dream of establishing African High Command meant to protect the newly... more Kwame Nkrumah’s Pan-African dream of establishing African High Command meant to protect the newly created postcolonial African states in 1961 did not borne fruit because most of African states opposed and rejected it due to the perceived threat it posed on their sovereignty. However, the failure of the Organization of African Unity (OAU) dealing with the prolonged conflicts in the continent, the horrific Rwandan genocide incident of 1994, and the belief that without peace, development and prosperity could not take root in Africa provided reasons for the shift from the OAU to the African Union (AU) in 2001 and revived Nkrumah’s idea of African wide security force, which eventually brought to existence the African Standby Force (ASF) in 2002. Since then the ASF has achieved some successes in responding timely to conflicts in Africa despite the fact that its efforts were largely concealed by various challenges that it faced. Research works that have so far been done in the subject lack...
This chapter attempts to situate Ethiopia’s economic growth of the past decades in the context of... more This chapter attempts to situate Ethiopia’s economic growth of the past decades in the context of the debate over whether Africa is really rising. It argues that both the narratives of Africa’s development “successes” and “failures” that have put forth to explain Africa’s reality since 2000 could not explain Ethiopia’s reality alone but in combination. Ethiopia has recorded phenomenal economic growth (averaging 10%) over the past decade. This coupled with the government pro-poor policies has enabled it to make significant progress on human development indicators and poverty reduction. Yet‚ Ethiopia remains a poor country grappling with several development challenges.
Kwame Nkrumah’s Pan-African dream of establishing African High Command meant to protect the newly... more Kwame Nkrumah’s Pan-African dream of establishing African High Command meant to protect the newly created post-colonial African states in 1961 did not borne fruit because most of African states opposed and rejected it due to the perceived threat it posed on their sovereignty. However, the failure of the Organization of African Unity (OAU) dealing with the prolonged conflicts in the continent, the horrific Rwandan genocide incident of 1994, and the belief that without peace, development and prosperity could not take root in Africa provided reasons for the shift from the OAU to the African Union (AU) in 2001 and revived Nkrumah’s idea of African wide security force, which eventually brought to existence the African Standby Force (ASF) in 2002. Since then the ASF has achieved some successes in responding timely to conflicts in Africa despite the fact that its efforts were largely concealed by various challenges that it faced. Research works that have so far been done in the subject lack inclusiveness in terms of what constitute these challenges. In line with such gap, the analysis of the data obtained from the literature, confirms that the challenges that the ASF grappled with range from political, financial, material to technical.
South Sudan as a state has borne out of the protracted civil wars that have been waged for decade... more South Sudan as a state has borne out of the protracted civil wars that have been waged for decades in the Sudan. Despite it won its independence after a long and bitter struggle on 9 July 2011, the much expected peace dividends of the independence and the democratization process that has been set in motion since the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) in Kenya in 2005 could not be sustained for long. After three years of independence and respite from long and bloody civil wars and the miseries that it causes, South Sudan has reverted to another episode of civil war. Based on literature review, this article examines the problems and challenges of the current conflict in South Sudan and illustrates windows of opportunity for managing it. The findings of the analysis suggest that, first, the South Sudan civil war transcends structural, proximate, and regional causes, and second, the empirical strength of the existing and implemented solutions for managing the conflict and bringing about durable peace seem to be weak.
Key Words: South Sudan, Conflict, Problems, Challenges, Windows of opportunity
The Horn of Africa is considered as one of perhaps the most insecure regions in the world as a re... more The Horn of Africa is considered as one of perhaps the most insecure regions in the world as a result of intra-and-inter states conflicts that have been fought for decades in almost all the region’s states and consumed millions of lives and material resources. Causes of conflict and insecurities to the Horn of Africa states and/or regimes cut across the three major sources of conflict formations, i.e. national, regional, and international. The predominantly internal sources of conflicts in the region traverse through what have been left as colonial legacies (such as arbitrarily drawn colonial boundaries and inherited embryonic state institutions and structures) and the post-independence years’ political and economic malaises (such as leaders’ autocratic nature, inappropriate economic policies, and unfair distribution of economic wealth of the state; ‘politics of domination and exclusion’; weak center-periphery relations; and frequent droughts and famines). These sources of intra-states conflicts and insecurities in the Horn easily acquire regional current due to historical and ethno-cultural factors and the culture of mutual interference of states to each other’s affairs in the region, which is dictated either by each government’s desire of dealing with its own internal conflicts or by the needs to promote the vested interests of external powers. The interplay between national and regional sources of conflicts and insecurities has therefore created fissures for the interventionism of external forces, which ultimately makes the Horn of Africa region an epicenter where the national and global security threats are met. Such dynamics web of security threats to the Horn of Africa states and its implications for the Horn ‘prisoners of geography’ – landlocked states – is missed in the existing literature due to that research works on the subject fall either into the internal or external verities of security threats and hence are short of looking at their interplay and its effects on the Horn of Africa landlocked states – Ethiopia, South Sudan and Uganda. The Copenhagen School’s basic theoretical postulates are used to examine how the predominant internal nature of security threats to the Horn states mutate into and assumes regional dimension to become a constraint for various dimensions of landlocked states’ security.
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Keywords: African Standby Force, Organization of African Unity, African Union, Challenge, Success
Sudan. Despite it won its independence after a long and bitter struggle on 9 July 2011, the much expected peace
dividends of the independence and the democratization process that has been set in motion since the signing of the
Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) in Kenya in 2005 could not be sustained for long. After three years of
independence and respite from long and bloody civil wars and the miseries that it causes, South Sudan has reverted
to another episode of civil war. Based on literature review, this article examines the problems and challenges of the
current conflict in South Sudan and illustrates windows of opportunity for managing it. The findings of the analysis
suggest that, first, the South Sudan civil war transcends structural, proximate, and regional causes, and second, the
empirical strength of the existing and implemented solutions for managing the conflict and bringing about durable
peace seem to be weak.
Key Words: South Sudan, Conflict, Problems, Challenges, Windows of opportunity
Keywords: African Standby Force, Organization of African Unity, African Union, Challenge, Success
Sudan. Despite it won its independence after a long and bitter struggle on 9 July 2011, the much expected peace
dividends of the independence and the democratization process that has been set in motion since the signing of the
Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) in Kenya in 2005 could not be sustained for long. After three years of
independence and respite from long and bloody civil wars and the miseries that it causes, South Sudan has reverted
to another episode of civil war. Based on literature review, this article examines the problems and challenges of the
current conflict in South Sudan and illustrates windows of opportunity for managing it. The findings of the analysis
suggest that, first, the South Sudan civil war transcends structural, proximate, and regional causes, and second, the
empirical strength of the existing and implemented solutions for managing the conflict and bringing about durable
peace seem to be weak.
Key Words: South Sudan, Conflict, Problems, Challenges, Windows of opportunity