Benue State University, Makurdi

The Political Economy of Multilateral Conflict Management Efforts in Africa

N. M. Oluwafemi Mimiko

Abstract

A great deal of attention, is usually focused on the security crises that have broken out in quick succession in Africa since the end of the Cold War, and the multilateral management efforts of same. Such institutional responses are certainly in order, in so far as they serve to reduce the scale of human suffering attendant upon these. crises. Nevertheless, they neither ensure that the particular crises isolated for management do not erupt again after a momentary cooling off period, nor that new ones do not breakout. This reality calls for a new approach to security studies and inevitably, a fresh response to these crisis situations. By its very nature, conflict management as presently undertaken by the international community is largely curative and reactive. Its basic essence consists in the containment of full-blown crises, which since the end of the Cold War have tended to be intra-state in nature. This approach and orientation foreclose the possibility pf managing crises when it is just at its incipient stage. That is, rather than making multilateral efforts purely reactive and curative, as it were, they can and-should be made more proactive and preventive.

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