DEVELOPMENT-RELATED CONFLICTS: A POLICY FRAMEWORK FOR SUB-SAHARAN AFRICAN COUNTRIES

Abstract

INTRODUCTION:There are conflicts in Sub-Saharan Africa in which development issues are neither causal factor nor part of causal factor. Nevertheless, sub -continent is not short of development-related conflicts. The littering of sub -continent with development-related conflicts is a well-known phenomenon. The double-tragedy of relationship between conflicts and development is that: on one hand conflicts can cause, or contribute to, underdevelopment; and on other hand, underdevelopment can cause, or contribute to, conflicts. For instance, as Paul Collier (2004) says, the relationship between civil and failures in development is strong and goes in both directions: civil powerfully retards development; and equally, failures in development substantially increase proneness to civil war (1).Some countries on sub-continent have direct or indirect linkages with development issues, and development issues are causally linked or at least have correlation with conflicts. Examples include resource-conflicts in Niger-Delta (Nigeria), Cabinda (Angola), Katanga (Democratic Republic of Congo), etc (Abumere, 2014: 137-38, 146, 151). The question is; in view of linkage between conflicts and development issues in sub -Saharan Africa, is there any resource, whether security apparatus or development policy, that is necessary and sufficient for dealing with such conflicts?In responding to above question, following hypotheses were formulated. First, there is no one resource that is at once necessary and sufficient; while each resource is necessary, none is sufficient. Second, while one of resources might be sufficient sometimes, generally none of resources is sufficient. Third, consequently we should neither jettison any one resource nor exclusively rely on any one resource. Fourth, then if both resources were to be combined, dealing with development - related conflicts on sub -continent will become tractable. In order to narrow down our subject matter and to contextualise hypotheses: conflicts focused on are intra -state conflicts in Sub-Saharan Africa; and development issues focused on are unemployment and underemployment in Sub-Saharan Africa.Throughout discussion, theoretical analysis is relied on. Admittedly, any sort of work like this one often requires empirical methods. Nevertheless, aim of this paper is to do a theoretical analysis which will serve as foundation for future empirical works. This paper is in three sections. The first section presents a parsimonious and cursory overview of conflicts in sub-Saharan African countries. This overview is neither aimed at a detailed description nor a historical analysis of conflicts. Rather it is aimed at giving readers insights into nature of such conflicts in Sub -Saharan Africa. Then second section discusses linkage between such conflicts and certain issues of development namely unemployment and underemployment in Sub -Saharan Africa. While third section of paper proposes a policy and proffers a strategy for resolving or managing such conflicts in Sub -Saharan Africa in which unemployment and underemployment are contributory factors.A PARSIMONIOUS AND CURSORY OVERVIEW OF INTRA-STATE CONFLICTS IN SUB-SAHARAN AFRICAN COUNTRIES:African countries are not just plagued by ordinary conflicts; many of them have actually been plagued by civil wars and are currently being plagued by terrorism. Whether it was civil wars in Libya, Angola, Liberia, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Ethiopia (Eritrea's secession), Sudan (South Sudan's secession), South Sudan, etc or genocide in Rwanda, or Al -Qaeda in Islamic Maghreb, Al-Shabaab in Somalia and Kenya, and Boko Haram in Nigeria, Niger, Chad and Cameroun, continent had reasons and still has reasons to be worried.Focusing on Sub -Saharan Africa, we have litany of cases. …