52 participants, 12 African nations, 179 Tweets, two news articles, two podcasts and one radio interview, all trying to answer the question...
What next for peacebuilding in Africa?
A home for discussion, Wilton Parks offers an opportunity for peace through dialogue by facilitating events for opinion-formers to openly discuss challenging issues.
This second meeting in our series aimed to implement the actions decided at the first, as well as answer further questions about improving the peacebuilding framework of the continent.
Widely speaking, the aim was peacebuilding for Africa, by Africans. Holding this second event in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, opposed to our UK base in Sussex, allowed us and our partners to bring these continental issues to the continent itself.
The meeting featured 31 participants from 12 African nations: South Africa, Kenya, Ethiopia, Burundi, Nigeria, Lesotho, Zimbabwe, Sudan, Zambia, Cameroon, Egypt and Uganda. North American and European voices brought the total number of participants to 52.
This Shorthand article aims to provide a visual and interactive overview of the immediate outcomes from this event.
We are hugely grateful to our event partners The Carnegie Corporation of New York, The African Leadership Centre at King's College London, and The Social Science Research Council.
Podcast: Richard Burge in conversation with President Pierre Buyoya
The African Union in Mali and the Sahel
The meeting featured two additions to our podcast series. In the first, our Chief Executive, Richard Burge spoke to former leader of Burundi President Pierre Buyoya about the importance and advantages of African Union leadership in African peace processes, recurring violent extremism and how best to tackle 'home-grown' terror.
"The main instrument against violent extremists is the population, the reaction of the people. I think there is a potentiality among African Muslim populations to oppose violent extremism."
"Violent extremism is a global threat; … in Africa we are confronting actors who are Africans. The Sahel is destabilised by a terrorist group who came first from Algeria, then they recruited people in the Sahel, Mali, Niger, Mauritania and other countries…. Maybe the ideology is imported, but the actors are Africans."
The future of peacebuilding in Africa
The second podcast features Funmi Olonisakin, Monde Muyangwa and Comfort Ero who discuss what the priorities are for peacebuilding, what needs to change and who should lead the conversations.
"Too much emphasis on peacekeeping, managing conflict once it has broken out, and not enough emphasis on preventing conflict in the first place"
"African leaders have made a verbal commitment to peace on the continent, but they have not followed through in terms of bringing resources to the table to really own what we are trying to do in the peacebuilding space"
Immediate Outcomes
Intelligence sharing:
Policy recommendations and points raised at the Wilton Park meeting informed discussions at the #ALCMappingPeace Convening, held in Addis Ababa Thursday 17 – Friday 18 March 2016, attended by Professor Olonisakin and Dr Murunga.
As of 13 April, work has already begun to organise a bimonthly meeting with the heads of the intelligence and security services of the eleven countries of the Sahel, to improve coordination and increase intelligence sharing.
Wilton Park report: key points
- A wide range of issues was addressed concerning peace and security in Africa, including the challenge of conflict relapse, radicalisation and violent extremism in Africa, implementation of UNSCR 1325 and resourcing peacebuilding
- Peacebuilding is multi-dimensional in nature, and must go beyond the setting up of security systems to engaging with broader issues of governance and development
- We need to understand the relationship between global realities, concerns and priorities on one hand and those that are regional, national or local on the other
- Africa can finance its own development and peacebuilding on the continent if innovative measures are put in place to harness existing resources and supported by vigorous implementation
Digital peacebuilding
As well as energetic dialogue in the conference room, there was much digital discussion also: 179 Tweets from 28 accounts using #AfricanPeacebuilding featured in a passionate online debate, to the point where the hashtag trended in Kenya.
By the morning of the final day, #AfricanPeacebuilding had reached 935,342 accounts with 3,416,427 timeline deliveries.
You can a small selection view the 179+Tweets here...
ALC radio interview with President Pierre Buyoya
"Building peace should not just be left to the Executive arm of the government"
Read an article in Daily Nation by Godwin Murunga here.
Peacebuilding partnerships
Read an article by SSRC, a key partner on the meeting here.
African peacebuilding, global media
You can find an article by Modern Ghana here and an article on gov.uk here.
Persistent challenges, sustainable solutions
You can read our short write up of the event here.
The Wilton Park report
When released, our meeting report will also detail some of the immediate outcomes from the event, as well as summarising discussion.
It is essential that African voices contributing to peacebuilding initiatives at all levels are heard and recognised. The partnerships that made this event possible provide a platform from which these voices have a global audience.'
- Richard Burge, Chief Executive of Wilton Park
