Conflict in the Africa Region  | |  Africa region (AFR)
AFR Countries with USAID missions
Countries experiencing violent,
armed conflict* within the last 5 years
* At least 250 conflict-related deaths
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Overview
Violence on the continent continues to inhibit social and political progress and limit economic growth.
In Central Africa, recurrent ethnic violence has been compounded by competition over land and valuable natural resources. In the Great Lakes region, there are hundreds of thousands of refugees and internally displaced persons, a dire situation that could be further exacerbated by continuing political upheaval and institutional weakness. In the eastern part of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), a seemingly intractable conflict has involved as many as six countries at once, displacing millions and claiming more lives than any other conflict since World War II. However, political developments in 2007 demonstrate signs of peace for Central Africa. Burundi saw a peaceful political transition; DRC held the first free and fair elections in 40 years; and Uganda marked an end to over twenty years of hostilities between the Government and the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) as well as the beginning of a peace negotiation.
Despite progress in the earlier part of the decade in the Horn of Africa, the end of the Ethiopia-Eritrea border war and a peace agreement in Sudan, little progress has been made in obtaining durable peace. Violence in Darfur has spread to Chad and the Central African Republic (CAR), undermining regional stability and threatening the fragile north-south peace agreement. Recurrent drought and desertification in the Horn continues to destabilize the region. Somalia, without a central government since 1991, is labeled as a physical safe haven in the 2006 Country Reports on Terrorism. Other weak states in the region are also at risk for terrorist activity.
In West Africa, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Guinea, and Cote d'Ivoire have been engulfed in a complex regional conflict fed by government corruption and competition over the control of natural resources. In Nigeria, disputes over land have contributed to violence between Christians and Muslims in the North, while endemic corruption and ethnic tensions have led to clashes in the Niger Delta over oil revenues. Yet, with the recent democratic election of General Obasanjo, hopes remain high for the fledgling democracy, despite reports of electoral fraud. Stability in the Sahel is threatened by the presence of extremist groups and a foreign terrorist organization that merged with al-Qaeda in September 2006. Northern Mali was also labeled as a potential safe haven for terrorists, traffickers, and smugglers in the 2006 Country Reports on Terrorism due to the region's remoteness and harsh desert climate that discouraged effective assertion of central government control. Despite these challenges stability is returning to Mauritania, as evidenced by the successful implementation of a June 2006 constitutional referendum, municipal and legislative elections in November, 2006, and presidential elections in March of 2007. These elections occurred as part of the political transition in Mauritania following the 2005 coup d’etat.
Although stability in Southern Africa has improved, the new found peace in Angola is threatened by an insecure ex-combatant demobilization and reintegration process. Meanwhile, land-related issues have brought Zimbabwe to the brink of collapse and could destabilize Namibia and South Africa in the future. Despite the different nature of conflict across Africa’s regions, the root causes of its conflicts are often similar. Colonialism left Africa with a system of arbitrary national borders that cut across numerous tribal and ethnic boundaries. A lack of social and economic development has left African countries vulnerable to conflict, which has further undermined economic development. The end of the Cold War bequeathed large stockpiles of weapons to countries with strong cultural divisions. Violent struggles have also stemmed from mismanagement of natural resource wealth, and have been exacerbated in many instances by endemic corruption and inequitable systems of property rights. In the coming decades, high HIV/AIDS rates threaten domestic and international security.
Our Work: Country & Regional Highlights
BurundiDCHA/CMM has been actively engaged in Burundi on a number of issues including peace education, engaging the private sector in peace-building and mitigating land-related conflict. In July 2005, DCHA/CMM and other USAID offices worked together to identify the patterns of fragility in Burundi and develop appropriate responses to them.
Democratic Republic of Congo
DCHA/CMM supports several programs in multiple provinces of the DRC, including Ituri, South Kivu, Maniema and Katanga provinces. The objectives of the programs include promotion of social cohesion and reconciliation through community-driven reconstruction, building local capacity for decision-making and conflict resolution, and promoting good governance and countering corruption. Some of these programs explicitly support local reconciliation efforts and help communities peacefully manage the return of ex-combatants. One such program uses participatory theatre, to encourage communities work through common issues of reintegration. In addition, to promote the long-term consolidation of peace and democracy in the country, DCHA/CMM supported the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars (WWICS) to strengthen the collaborative capacity of key Congolese leaders, from all social and institutional sectors. Taking into account the role that competition over natural resources has played in fomenting war in the DRC; DCHA/CMM is also working with USAID/DRC to engage the mining sector in advancing peace, security and sustainable development.
Guinea
Through the Peace-building and Livelihood Opportunities for Youth Program, DCHA/CMM is providing funds to undercut the causes of youth delinquency and build community capacity to prevent violence in the Forest Region of Guinea. This program engages youth and communities to address the root causes of conflict while simultaneously developing communities’ capacity to act as “buffer zones” against cross-border conflict dynamics. The program provides life-skills and small-business training, creates and implements conflict prevention and resolution courses, and disburses micro-grants.
The Horn of Africa
In the Horn of Africa, USAID is collaborating with the Regional Combined Joint Task Force for the Horn of Africa (CJTF-HOA) and U.S. Embassies on counter-terrorism initiatives. These initiatives are based on a CMM funded assessment of extremism which identified and analyzed the sources of instability and extremism in the Horn. Efforts merge CJTF-HOA’s comparative advantage in building or rehabilitating infrastructure such as schools, clinics and wells (hardware), with USAID’s comparative advantage in providing educational and medical training and resources, developing instructional materials, and building institutional capacity (software). In Somalia, DCHA/CMM is supporting the peace and reconciliation process.
Malawi
DCHA/CMM is supporting a Story Workshop to encourage journalists and local media personnel to develop stories and radio dramas that will encourage inter-religious dialogue. These stories will be broadcast as part of a larger USAID conflict management project.
Mali
Based upon a USAID assessment, several projects are working to counter extremism in northern Mali. One project engages communities, especially youth who are prone to violence, in producing local radio programs that convey positive messages to disenfranchised populations in the north.
Nigeria
DCHA/CMM recently participated as a part of a US interagency team to look at issues of Muslim Outreach in Northern Nigeria. In light of declining development indicators in the north of Nigeria, the US government would like to place greater emphasis on assistance to the north. The assessment team sought to improve the US government's understanding of the key challenges facing northern Nigeria, to identify areas in which the US can cooperate more effectively with Muslim populations in Northern Nigeria, and to better understand the sensitivities that surround US government programming in Northern Nigeria. The team will make recommendations to help US government agencies better target resources, building on shared interests and values with northern Nigerians.
The Sahel
In the Sahel region of Africa, representatives from DCHA/CMM, other USAID offices, and the U.S. European Command (EUCOM) conducted the Agency’s first extremism and counter-terrorism assessment of Niger, Chad and Mauritania from January through March 2005. A number of factors, including remoteness, porous borders, proximity to known terrorist groups, large marginalized and/or disenfranchised populations, and exclusion from political processes were identified as key causes of instability. As part of this groundbreaking collaboration among U.S. agencies, the assessment’s recommendations are now being implemented. Programmatic examples include: youth development, former combatant reintegration, education, rural radio and media programs, peace-building/conflict management, and small-scale infrastructure projects (e.g. well drilling, school construction).
From October through November 2006 and in January of 2007 an interagency team comprised of members from the State Department, USAID offices, EUCOM, and The Department of Defense's Special Operations Command Europe (SOCEUR) participated in a Trans-Sahara Counterterrorism Partnership (TSCTP) assessment in Mauritania. This interagency assessment updated the 2005 Mauritania portion of the 2005 Sahel Assessment (see above) and produced an action plan with detailed recommendations for all TSCTP related activities implemented by USAID, Defense and the State Department for the next 12-18 months (military-to-military and other assistance to armed services remains exempt).
Sudan
DCHA/CMM supports an innovative cross-border conflict program that addresses the drivers of conflict in the troubled border region between Upper Nile, Sudan and Gambella, Ethiopia. The program promotes stability in the border region by linking communities on both sides of the border around common strategies for improved trade and livelihoods.
DCHA/CMM also funds programming in the volatile “three areas” region which is the frontline of hostilities between Northern and the Southern Sudan. This programming addresses conflict between pastoralist and agricultural communities over land by strengthening natural resources management and dispute resolution in the rural areas of Blue Nile State, encouraging cooperation between farmers and nomads and between rural communities and state and local government.
Uganda
DCHA/CMM supports peace initiatives at the national and community levels in Northern Uganda, an area devastated by the two-decades long Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) insurgency. Through a mix of peace-building and reconciliation activities, including special attention to economic growth and access to justice, these programs work to build an integrated, coordinated and holistic strategy for peace and development at the grassroots and regional level in northern Uganda and then link them to the national level in Kampala.
DCHA/CMM also collaborated with the Africa Bureau and USAID/Uganda in formulating a post-conflict Northern Uganda Recovery and Reconciliation Strategy, particularly in reviewing options and identifying activities that address cross-border issues for recovery and reconciliation in Uganda and Sudan.
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