From Darfur to the Rwandan genocide, journalists, policymakers, and scholars have blamed armed conflicts in Africa on ancient hatreds or competition for resources. Here, Tsega Etefa compares three such cases—the Darfur conflict between Arabs and non-Arabs, the Gumuz and Oromo clashes in Western Oromia, and the Oromo-Pokomo conflict in the Tana Delta—in order to offer a fuller picture of how ethnic violence in Africa begins. Diverse communities in Sudan, Ethiopia, and Kenya alike have long histories of peacefully sharing resources, intermarrying, and resolving disputes. As he argues, ethnic conflicts are fundamentally political conflicts, driven by non-inclusive political systems, the monopolization of state resources, and the manipulation of ethnicity for political gain, coupled with the lack of democratic mechanisms for redressing grievances.

In this book, Donald Rothchild analyzes the successes and failures of attempts at conflict resolution in different African countries and offers comprehensive ideas for successful mediation. The book demonstrates how negotiation and mediation can promote conflict resolution, along with a political environment that fosters development.

This book focuses on the problem of ethnic conflict in Africa and seeks to explain its root causes. The main thesis of the book is that ethnic political mobilization is essentially a function of deeply-felt grievances on the part of the groups so mobilized.

The book is aimed at students and scholars of conflict, Africa, ethnic politics, and religion. It may also appeal to religious and political leaders. It proposes a new perspective on how ethnicity and religion shape political outcomes and violence in Africa, adding psychological elements to standard political science arguments.

This work, along with 'The Resolution of African Conflicts', clearly demonstrates the efforts by a wide range of African scholars to explain the roots, routes, regimes and resolution of African conflicts and how to re-build post-conflict societies.

This book offers a wide-ranging discussion of the roots and consequences of ethnic strife in Burundi, and provides the reader with an appropriate background for an understanding of Burundi's transition to multiparty democracy and the coup and violence that followed.

This book models the trade-off that rulers of weak, ethnically-divided states face between coups and civil war. Drawing evidence from extensive field research in Sudan and the Democratic Republic of the Congo combined with statistical analysis of most African countries, it develops a framework to understand the causes of state failure.

This book offers a rigorous comparative historical analysis of Kenya, Tanzania, Bolivia, Peru, and the United States to demonstrate how colonial administrative rule, access to resources, nation building and language policies, as well as political entrepreneurs contribute to the politicization of ethnicity.

This book develops and expands on theories that aim at explaining the root causes of ethnic and racial conflicts. The aim is to shift focus from research, policies and strategies based on tackling the effects of ethnic and racial conflicts, which have so far been ineffective as evidenced by the increase in ethnic conflicts, to more fundamental ideas, models and strategies. Contents extend across many disciplines including evolution, biology, religion, communication, mythology and even introspective perspectives. Drawn from around the world, contributors to the book are respected and experienced award winning authors, scholars and thinkers with deep understanding of their special fields of contribution. The book was inspired by the conditions in Kenya, where ethnic violence flared up with terrifying consequences following a disputed election in 2008. Although the conflict was resolved by the intervention of the international community, Kenyans – like many other Africans - continue to live in fear of ethnic conflicts breaking out with more disastrous consequences. The book will be useful to policy makers, NGOs and others involved in promoting peace. It will also be useful in guiding research and as a text book in universities and colleges.

The neighboring north Indian districts of Jaipur and Ajmer are identical in language, geography, and religious and caste demography. But when the famous Babri Mosque in Ayodhya was destroyed in 1992, Jaipur burned while Ajmer remained peaceful; when the state clashed over low-caste affirmative action quotas in 2008, Ajmer's residents rioted while Jaipur's citizens stayed calm. What explains these divergent patterns of ethnic conflict across multiethnic states? Using archival research and elite interviews in five case studies spanning north, south, and east India, as well as a quantitative analysis of 589 districts, Ajay Verghese shows that the legacies of British colonialism drive contemporary conflict. Because India served as a model for British colonial expansion into parts of Africa and Southeast Asia, this project links Indian ethnic conflict to violent outcomes across an array of multiethnic states, including cases as diverse as Nigeria and Malaysia. The Colonial Origins of Ethnic Violence in India makes important contributions to the study of Indian politics, ethnicity, conflict, and historical legacies.