Mohamoud's work considers the underlying causes for the breakdown of the state across both time and space. Time is considered across the triple history - the pre-colonial, colonial and post-colonial processes. Space is used in the sense of taking the whole of Somalia as a unit of analysis. This approach enables the discovery of different structural crises over a period of time and examines these cumulative effects on the current upheavals in Somalia. Among the approaches, State Collapse and Post-Conflict Development in Africa covers the constraints in the harsh material environment; the subsistence pastoral mode of existence; the colonial intervention and the subsequent division of the land into five parts; Cold War geopolitics; decades of armed struggles; and the post-colonial crisis of governance. Dr. Abdulla (Awil) Mohamoud runs SAHAN, an academic research and consultancy agency, which conducts policy oriented research and fact finding missions abroad, mainly in Africa, undertakes evaluation and monitoring activities, provides training and offers advisory services on integration and multi-cultural issues. He holds an MA degree from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, and earned his PhD at the University of Amsterdam. Mohamoud has served regularly as an election observer in UN, EU, Council of Europe and OSCE missions to conflict and war-torn societies (to East-Timor, Kosovo, Nigeria, Serbia, and Zimbabwe).

State collapse is one of the major threats to peace, stability, and economic development in sub-Saharan Africa today. In a collapsed state the regime finally wears out its ability to satisfy the demands of the various groups in society; it fails to govern or to keep the state together. The collapse is marked by the loss of control over political and economic space. A collapsed state can no longer perform its basic security and development functions and has no effective control over its territory and borders. Efforts to avoid drawing other nations into a wider conflict created by the collapse of a state—and creating favorable conditions for reconciliation and reconstruction of a failed state after it has collapsed—present major challenges. In April, 2008 the Cornell Institute for African Development called a symposium on ‘Failed and Failing States in Africa: Lessons from Darfur and Beyond’ to address these critical issues. Key contributions to the symposium are brought together in this volume. Taken together these essays represent a significant discussion on the challenges presented by the presence of failing states within Africa.

Nowhere in the world is the demand for peace more prominent and challenging than in Africa. From state collapse and anarchy in Somalia to protracted wars and rampant corruption in the Congo; from bloody civil wars and extreme poverty in Sierra Leone to humanitarian crisis and authoritarianism in Sudan, the continent is the focus of growing political and media attention. This book presents the first comprehensive overview of conflict and peace across the continent. Bringing together a range of leading academics from Africa and beyond, Peace and Conflict in Africa is an ideal introduction to key themes of conflict resolution, peacebuilding, security and development. The book's stress on the importance of indigenous Africa approaches to creating peace makes it an innovative and exciting intervention in the field.

Some of the bloodiest conflicts occur on the African continent. An Afrocentric perspective is therefore a suitable starting point for research into the possible strategies for post-conflict peacebuilding. The authors of this book consider the problems around the concept of ‘post-conflict’ and the blurring of military and civilian roles, analysing the UN roles in the DRC and Sierra Leone, as well as the African Union Mission in Burundi. The main context of the book, however, is the South African Army’s strategy for PCRD in Africa, which was developed with the African Union’s 2006 Post-Conflict, Reconstruction and Development Needs Assessment Guide in mind. This book emanates from this plan. It therefore also explores South Africa’s policy imperatives to integrate development projects and peace missions, involving the military as well as civilian organisations. While this book is not intended as an instruction manual, it hopes to ignite an understanding of the particular processes required to develop a sustainable and cohesive post-conflict peacebuilding strategy within the African environment.

Peacebuilding in Africa: The Post-Conflict State and Its Multidimensional Crises argues that building enduring peace in post-conflict states in Africa requires comprehensive, state-specific approaches that address the multidimensional crises that generated civil conflict and instabilities in these countries. Contributors examine states such as Burundi, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Liberia, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, South Sudan, and Sudan to demonstrate that peacebuilding projects in each of these states must address the cultural, economic, political, and social root causes of their respective underlying civil conflicts. In addition, contributors prove that peacebuilding projects must be shaped by the centrality of human security: the respect for ethno-cultural diversity, the advancement of human material well-being, the protection of political rights and civil liberties, and the redesigning of the military and security architecture to ensure the safety of all citizens from both internal and external threats.

Post-conflict reconstruction is not a new phenomenon but can be linked to the Marshall Plan after the Second World War. Reconstruction efforts in the Balkans, Afghanistan and Iraq, have seen a revival of the concept in the early 21st century. In Africa, post-conflict reconstruction has become more prominent as a result of the peace processes in the DRC, Sudan, Burundi and the Comoros. As a result, the African Union and NEPAD have formulated policy frameworks to deal with post conflict reconstruction and development. As part of the UN's reform, its new Peacebuilding Commission is another institution which takes responsibility for post-conflict reconstruction. This publication focuses on a number of themes including, gender and post-conflict reconstruction, the transformation of war economies into peace economies, elections in Africa in the context of post conflict reconstruction, constitutional negotiations and power-sharing arrangements, and the predicament of ethnic identities in the DRC. The NEPAD framework is also analysed in detail. All of these themes serve as indicators for Africa of the lessons to be learnt from the post-conflict reconstruction processes already in progress.