This is an overview of contributions to peace and security in Africa by the United States. It includes a brief identification of the public and private sector organisations that interest themselves in the issue, and the kinds of activity they currently undertake. This monograph also provides a brief assessment of the relative effectiveness of these programmes. However, the potential scope of the subject is very broad, more so than meaningfully can be addressed in a short treatment. To avoid over-generalisation, it reflects two measures to provide focus. Firstly, it addresses a limited period of time: the present, immediate past and immediate future. While the monograph will allude briefly to events and issues prior to 1990, it will concentrate on the present and will not endeavour to look into the far future.1

• What do Americans2 mean by ‘instability and insecurity’ in Africa, and how do they believe these conditions can be attenuated?
  
  
• Who in America cares about peace and security in Africa, and why?
  
  
• What are the activities of Americans currently engaged in promoting peace and security in Africa? (And are these likely to change in the foreseeable future?)
  
  
• How can Americans be induced to change the scope or nature of their current activities related to peace and security in Africa?

Many of Africa’s 53 or so states enjoy relative peace and have seen improvement in the quality of life of citizens over the past decade. However, most of Africa’s largest and potentially most influential countries — from Algeria to Nigeria to Sudan to Ethiopia to the Congos to Angola are wrenched either by internal conflict or war with neighbours. Their travail is shared by many of their neighbours.

Using the phrase ‘instability and insecurity’ is a way of characterising a variety of severe problems in parts of the African continent that disrupt traditional patterns of human relations and bring about difficult conditions of life over which societies have little control. The problems themselves are complex and multifaceted. They produce a pervasive fear and sense of insecurity, limit the quality of life for many, and deny Africans the ability to achieve their potential.

Africa’s problems of instability appear in different forms. Since the end of the Cold War, some regions have seen the violence of conventional warfare between national armies, or the more chronic conflict between national armies and well-armed insurgent groups. Refugees from violence in one country have been profoundly destabilising in others. Violence has occurred in the disagreements between ethnic or class-based groupings and between factions of religious zealots. In some countries, oppressive civil authorities routinely employ the coercive powers of the state to deny basic human rights to citizens. Elsewhere, lives, livelihood and property are continually threatened by violent criminality. Instability sometimes appears in the rage of populations suddenly possessed of an acute sense of victimisation. It is manifested at times in the unrest stimulated by rapid social and economic change, or sudden, severe deterioration in the conditions of life.

Insecurity in Africa is promoted by conditions that destabilise any society: lack of opportunity, exploitative relations of production, collapse of traditional social institutions, weak civil society, inept or unaccountable governance, infrastructural deterioration, ready availability of arms, and efforts of irresponsible opportunists to take advantage of these conditions. Instability is also a common result of problems from elsewhere (i.e. refugees), natural disaster, severe degradation of the environment, and disease. Profound instability and chronic violence, in turn, provide fertile breeding grounds for criminality, ethnic chauvinism and ideological fanaticism, thus compounding the problem.

• military interventions to halt ongoing violence or to facilitate transitions to peace by former adversaries;
  
  
• offers of good offices or forums in which combatants may negotiate an end to ongoing conflict;
  
  
• promotion of indigenous capacities to prevent or resolve conflict, or to halt violence when it occurs;
  
  
• material assistance to populations that are victims of violence, natural disaster and epidemic disease, including efforts to repatriate and resettle refugees;
  
  
• measures to improve general health and reduce environmental health threats;
  
  
• encouragement of sustainable economic development and economic opportunity, including measures to protect the natural environment and increase the productivity of agriculture;
  
  
• promotion of free enterprise economies with minimal state involvement;
  
  
• encouragement of humane, managerially competent, accountable governance, including professional law enforcement, justice for all members of society, and total subordination of security services to civil authority;
  
  
• encouragement of democracy, defined by open and regular elections, and multi-party political systems with parties defined by issues;
  
  
• strengthening of the capacity of states to manage national resources and distribute the goods and services of the state responsibly, efficiently and equitably;
  
  
• limitation of military establishments to small, technically proficient, apolitical, ethical forces, adequate to the defence of the state, with the smallest possible defence budget;
  
  
• assistance in combating transnational threats such as proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and conventional weapons as well as the threats posed by international criminal and terrorist groups;
  
  
• promotion of institutions that strengthen civil society; and
  
  
• assistance in providing the kind of education that best suits the development needs of the society and encourages responsible collective behaviour.