Author: MIL-OSI Publisher

Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Leonor Oliveira Toscano, PhD Candidate in Political Science, University of Oslo

Kenya has been praised as a “model for the world” when it comes to peacebuilding efforts to manage outbreaks of violence within its borders. The country has systematically put in place a peacebuilding architecture rooted in a history of local peace initiatives. These date back to the early 1990s.

Over this period, the Wajir Peace and Development Committee emerged in the country’s north-eastern region. The committee successfully addressed decades of inter-clan violence in Wajir, an arid county bordering Somalia. It also inspired the emergence of numerous local peace committees across the country.

These committees have been set up in some other African countries – like Ghana, South Africa, Sierra Leone and Burundi – and continue to contribute informally to local peacebuilding in these states.

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Read more: Training local leaders in mediation can reduce violence: positive results in Nigeria

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In Kenya, the committees became institutionalised after post-election violence in 2007-08 and a mediation process led by former UN secretary general Kofi Annan. They now form part of the national peacebuilding architecture.

Violence triggered by the contested 2007 presidential election outcome resulted in the killing of more than 1,000 people. The mediation process led to a power-sharing agreement signed by the presidential contenders Mwai Kibaki and Raila Odinga.

The country’s peacebuilding architecture is now supported by several policies and frameworks. These include the constitution of 2010. The system that’s been built has the capacity to connect a wide variety of peacebuilding actors – both state and non-state, formal and informal – at all levels of society. This helps resolve conflict and build resilience.

The Kenyan government initiated a review of the peacebuilding architecture in 2023. It involved a lengthy consultation process and high levels of participation among Kenyans. The National Steering Committee on Peacebuilding and Conflict Management led the way, assisted by an independent panel of 13 peacebuilding experts.

Released at the end of 2024, the review looked at the strengths and weaknesses of the architecture.

It offers a vision for building a robust peacebuilding system, along with an actionable roadmap. One lesson is that Kenya can use the capacities and unique approaches of different peacebuilding actors. At the local level, peace committees showed that they made contributions to early warning systems and building confidence in communities.

However, insufficient resources and a consistent focus on electoral violence prevent the system from addressing other drivers of conflict.

The strengths

Local peace committees, with membership typically drawn from ordinary citizens, religious groups or local civil society organisations, play a crucial role. They support dialogue around conflict issues. They promote trust and understanding, and can build a constructive environment for conflict resolution.

Their information gathering feeds into the regional Intergovernmental Authority on Development’s Conflict Early Warning and Response System (CEWARN) to prevent election violence. Local peace committees have contributed to negotiating local disputes. They have also helped de-polarise ethnic identities and facilitated local peace agreements. One example was the Modogashe Declaration. It sets ground rules to solve conflict and local disputes over pasture, water access and cattle rustling.

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Read more: Kenya violence: 5 key drivers of the decades-long conflict in the north and what to do about them

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We are researchers in Norway on a project focusing on civilian agency, local peace and resilience building. Our own interviews with committee members in Nakuru – a county greatly affected by the violence in 2007-08 – found that peace committee members continued to work together and share conflict-sensitive information with local stakeholders. These include administration officers and religious leaders, and covered periods during and after the 2022 elections.

Further, local peace committees can offer women valuable opportunities for participation in conflict management. This contributes to their protection, for example from sexual violence.

The weaknesses

Despite these successes, Kenya’s peacebuilding architecture faces pressing challenges.

First, local peace committees aren’t perfect. They can be manipulated by politicians seeking to build local support. They can also compete with traditional actors such as elders in conflict resolution.

Kenya’s institutionalisation of local peacebuilding strengthened information flow across all levels. But it also threatens to undermine local peacebuilding agency and autonomy. Formalising local peace committees can spur an unhealthy monetisation of peacebuilding, with some members joining for financial gain. This threatens to erode the voluntary character of peacebuilding as a common good and undermine genuine priorities for peace.

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Read more: How women in Kenya mobilised for peace after surviving violence

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Second, elite-level politics in Kenya creates the persistent risk of electoral violence. This diverts attention and resources away from other long-standing causes of conflict. The drivers of violence in Kenya are varied and region specific. They include disputes over access to land, and marginalisation of ethnic and religious communities. Climate change threatens to worsen competition and conflict between pastoralists and farming communities.

Our analysis of event data from Armed Conflict Location & Event Data shows that communal violence is the deadliest form of political violence in Kenya. For their part, fatalities related to election violence have decreased. This underscores the urgent need to consistently invest in prevention and local peacebuilding beyond narrow electoral periods.

Fatalities in Kenya by type of armed violence: 2010-2023

Electoral competition can escalate violence between pastoralists and farmers, but it’s the persistence of communal conflicts that represents a serious threat. Communal violence particularly affects Kenya’s arid and semi-arid areas in the Rift Valley, eastern and north-eastern regions.

What next

Our interviews with local peace committee members show that funding for their activities diminishes outside election years. This hampers their capacity to address conflict outside these periods.

Yet research has shown that local peacebuilding can build social resilience against recurrent communal violence. Peacebuilding interventions grounded in local realities are also vital for countering insurgent violence. This is especially important as counterterrorism operations by state forces often trigger cycles of violence rather than resolving underlying issues.

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Read more: Drivers of electoral violence in Kenya: red flags to watch out for

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Our research finds that Kenyans place significant trust in local peacebuilders, such as community leaders, elders and women. The review of the country’s peacebuilding architecture proposes a 40% quota for women, youth and people with disabilities in local peace committees.

However, quotas alone may not be sufficient to address the political and cultural challenges that entrench inequality.

Ultimately, political elites need to transform Kenya’s “win at all costs” politics. This way, the country’s mediators and peacebuilders can address the deep social and economic grievances that underpin cycles of violence.

– Kenya’s peacebuilding efforts hold valuable lessons for the rest of the world, but gaps remain
– https://theconversation.com/kenyas-peacebuilding-efforts-hold-valuable-lessons-for-the-rest-of-the-world-but-gaps-remain-257761

Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Olivier Walther, Associate Professor in Geography, University of Florida

What’s the connection between roads and conflict in west Africa? This may seem like an odd question. But a study we conducted shows a close relationship between the two.

We are researchers of transnational political violence. We analysed 58,000 violent events in west Africa between 2000 to 2024. Our focus was on identifying patterns of violence in relation to transport infrastructure.

Anecdotal evidence suggests that roads, bridges, pipelines and other transport systems are increasingly attacked across west Africa, but little is known about the factors that explain when, where and by whom.

Violence in west Africa involves a complex mix of political, economic and social factors. Weak governance, corruption, urban-rural inequalities and marginalised populations have been exploited by numerous armed groups, including transnational criminal networks and religious extremists.

West Africa has been one of the world’s most violent regions since the mid 2010s. In 2024 alone, the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data initiative recorded over 10,600 events of political violence in the region. These ranged from battles between armed groups, explosions and other forms of remote violence, to attacks on unarmed civilians. An estimated 25,600 people were killed. This has been the status quo in the region for nearly a decade.

The results of our study show that 65% of all the attacks, explosions, and violence against civilians recorded between 2000 and 2024 were located within one kilometre of a road.

Only 4% of all events were located further than 10km from a road. This pattern was consistent across all road types but most pronounced near highways and primary roads.

We think the reason for this pattern is that there is fierce competition between state and non-state actors for access to and use of roads.

Governments need well-developed road networks for a host of reasons, including the ability to govern, enabling economic activity, and security. Roads enable military mobility and reduce potential safe havens for insurgents in remote regions.

Insurgent groups also see transport networks as prime targets. They create opportunities to blockade cities, ambush convoys, kidnap travellers, employ landmines, and destroy key infrastructure.

Our research is part of a long line of work that explored the role of infrastructure in relation to security in west Africa. Our latest research reinforces earlier findings linking the two. Transport networks have become battlegrounds for extremist groups seeking to destabilise states, isolate communities and expand their influence.

The network

The west African road network is vast, estimated at over 709,000km of roads by the Global Roads Inventory Project. It compares unfavourably with other African regions. For example, paved roads remain relatively scarce in west Africa (17% of the regional network) when compared with north Africa (83%).

Poorly maintained roads impose costs on west African countries. They increase transport time of perishable goods, shorten the operational life of trucks, cause more accidents, and reduce social interactions between communities.

Still, significant variations in road quality are found across the region. The percentage of paved roads ranges from a high of 37% in Senegal to just over 7% in Mali. Nigeria has the largest road network in west Africa with an estimated 195,000km, but much of it has deteriorated because of poor maintenance.

Road-related violence is on the rise

We found that road-related attacks have been on the rise since jihadist groups emerged in the mid-2010s. Only 31 ambushes against convoys were reported in Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali and Niger from 2000-2015, against 497 from 2016-2023.

Attacks frequently occur along the same road segments, such as around Boni in the Gourma Mounts, where Jama’at Nusrat ul-Islam wa al-Muslimin (JNIM) conducted nine attacks against Malian forces and Wagner mercenaries between 2019 and 2024.

Violence was the most clustered near roads in 2011, with 87% of all violent events located within 1km of a road. Our analysis shows that, though still high, there’s been a decline post-2000: 59% in 2022 and 60% in 2024. This evolution reflects the ruralisation of conflict in west Africa. As jihadist insurgents target rural areas and small towns more and more, an increasing share of violent events also occurs far away from roads.

We’ve studied the root causes of west Africa’s violence for nearly a decade, documenting the ever-intensifying costs paid by its people. In the process, we’ve uncovered overlooked aspects of the turmoil, including the centrality of the road networks to an understanding of where the violence is happening.

The most dangerous roads of west Africa

Our findings show that violence against transport infrastructure is very unevenly distributed in west Africa and that specific road segments have been repeatedly targeted. This was particularly the case in the Central Sahel, Lake Chad basin, and western Cameroon.

For example, the 350km ring road linking Bamenda to Kumbo and Wum in Cameroon is the most violent road in west Africa, with 757 events since 2018, due to the conflict between the government and the Ambazonian separatists.

The longest segments of dangerous roads are in Nigeria, particularly those connecting Maiduguri in Borno State to Damaturu, Potiskum, Biu and Bama.

In the central Sahel, the road between Mopti/Sévaré and Gao is by far the most violent transport axis, with 433 events since the beginning of the civil war in Mali in 2012. South of Gao, National Road 17 leading to the Nigerien border, and National Road 20 heading east toward Ménaka have experienced 177 and 139 events respectively since the Islamic State – Sahel Province (ISSP) intensified its activities in the region in 2017.

In Burkina Faso, all the roads leading to Djibo near the border with Mali have experienced high levels of violence since the early 2020s.

Building transport infrastructure to promote peace

Roads are an important part of state counterinsurgency strategies and a strategic target for local militants. Yes, as our work highlights, transport infrastructure is largely ignored in debates that emphasise more state interventions as a means of combating insecurity. Sixty years after the independence of many west African countries, road accessibility remains elusive in the region.

Peripheral cities such as Bardaï, Bilma, Kidal and Timbuktu, where rebel movements have historically developed, are still not connected to the national network by tarmac roads.

The duality of the transport infrastructure, as both a facilitator and target of violence, has put government forces at a disadvantage. Regular forces are heavily constrained by the sparsity and poor conditions of the road network, which makes them vulnerable to attacks without necessarily allowing them to project their military power over long distances.

Rather than building transport infrastructure, states have focused on strengthening security by investing in military bases. The military coups in Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger have further reinforced this trend, with the creation of a joint force by the countries of the Alliance of Sahel States.

Strengthening security has taken precedence over developmental support for peripheral communities, who experience the worst of the violence.

– Highways to hell: west Africa’s road networks are the preferred battleground for terror groups
– https://theconversation.com/highways-to-hell-west-africas-road-networks-are-the-preferred-battleground-for-terror-groups-258517