John Kiyaga-Nsubuga focuses on Yoweri Museveni and his National Resistance Movement regime's attempt to bring peace to Uganda. John Prendergast and Mark Duffield look at Ethiopia's long civil war and the role of liberation politics and external engagement. Bruce Jones studies the ethnic roots of the civil war in Rwanda. Elwood Dunn explores political manipulation and ethnic differences as causes of civil strife in Liberia. John Saul examines the role of Western powers in establishing peace in Mozambique. Hussein Adam describes the collapse of the authoritarian regime in Somalia and the subsequent rise of inter-clan and sub-clan rivalry. Taisier Ali and Robert Matthews argue that the forty-year conflict in Sudan is much more complex than the usual view that it results from the pitting of the Arab, Islamic North against the African, Christian South. Shifting the focus to how internal unrest may be managed, Hevina Dashwood examines government initiatives undertaken to maintain stability in Zimbabwe and Cranford Pratt describes the policies and institutions developed by Nyerere that enabled Tanzania to avoid ethnic, regional, and religious factionalism and intra-elite rivalries. James Busumtwi-Sam explores multilateral third-party intervention, highlighting the changing role of the OAU and the United Nations and their effectiveness in averting war. The concluding chapter draws together findings from the individual case studies and incorporates them into the larger corpus of the literature.

Since 1960, many African countries have been devastated by civil wars. Today, it is estimated that around 20 percent of Africas more than 1 billion people are affected, either directly or indirectly, by ongoing conflict. The widespread unrest has been a major reason the people of Africa have been unable to fully reach their potential. This book analyzes past and current conditions in Africa to shed light on the historical, cultural, governmental, religious, ethnic, and ideological factors that have caused civil wars to occur. Conflicts like the long-running war in Sudan, the unrest in Liberia and Sierra Leone, and the state failure in Somalia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo are explained. The final chapter discusses ways future civil wars might be avoided.

Sudan's post-independence history has been dominated by long, recurring, and bloody civil wars. Most commentators have attributed the country's political and civil strife either to an age-old racial and ethnic divide between Arabs and Africans or to colonially constructed inequalities. In The Root Causes of Sudan's Civil Wars, Douglas H. Johnson examines historical, political, economic, and social factors to come to a more subtle understanding of the trajectory of Sudan's civil wars. Johnson focuses on the essential differences between the modern Sudan's first civil war in the 1960s, the current war, and the minor conflicts generated by and contained within the larger wars. Regional and international factors, such as humanitarian aid, oil revenue, and terrorist organizations, are cited and examined as underlying issues that have exacerbated the violence. Readers will find an immensely readable yet nuanced and well-informed handling of the history and politics of Sudan's civil wars.

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.

Ever since the end of World War II, and even more so since 1960, when 17 African colonies became independent of colonial rule, the African continent has been ravaged by a series of wars. These wars have ranged from liberation struggles against former colonial powers to power struggles between different factions in the aftermath of independence. They have ranged from border wars between newly independent states to civil wars between ethnic groups. As with many conflicts, outside forces were drawn into these wars, and major powers outside the continent intervened on one side or the other for a variety of reasons: political ideology, Cold War considerations, ethnic alignments, and stemming the flow of violence. Whether referring to Algeria's struggle for independence from French colonial rule, Nigeria's internal struggles to achieve a balanced state after the British departure, the Rwandan genocide of 1994, or the current ethnic cleansing in Darfur, The A to Z of Civil Wars in Africa covers all of the wars that have occurred in Africa since independence. This is done through a chronology broken down by country, an introductory essay, a bibliography, and cross-referenced dictionary entries covering the wars, conflicts, major political and military figures, child soldiers, mercenaries, and blood diamonds.

This book examines the causes, course and consequences of warfare in twentieth century Africa, a period which spanned colonial rebellions, both World Wars, and the decolonization process. Timothy Stapleton contextualizes the essential debates and controversies surrounding African conflict in the twentieth century while providing insightful introductions to such conflicts as: African rebellions against colonial regimes in the early twentieth century, including the rebellion and infamous genocide of the Herero and Nama people in present-day Namibia; The African fronts of World War I and World War II, and the involvement of colonized African peoples in these global conflicts; Conflict surrounding the widespread decolonization of Africa in the 1950s and 1960s; Rebellion and civil war in Africa during the Cold War, when American and Soviet elements often intervened in efforts to turn African battlegrounds into Cold War proxy conflicts; The Second Congo Civil War, which is arguably the bloodiest conflict in any region since World War II; Supported by a glossary, a who’s who of key figures, a timeline of major events, a rich bibliography, and a set of documents which highlight the themes of the book, Africa: War and Conflict in the Twentieth Century is the best available resource for students and scholars seeking an introduction to violent conflict in recent African history.

The contributors not only study state breakdown but compare the consequences of post-communism with those of post-colonialism.

A mere two years after achieving independence, South Sudan in 2013 descended into violent civil war, refuting US government claims that the country’s succession was a major foreign policy success and would end endemic conflict. Worse was to follow when the international community declared famine in 2017. In the first book-length study of the South Sudan civil war, John Young draws on his close but critical relationship with the rebel SPLM-IO leadership to reveal the true dynamics of the conflict, and exposes how the South Sudanese state was in crisis long before the outbreak of war. With insider knowledge of the histories and motivations of the rebellion’s chief protagonists, Young argues considerable responsibility for the present state of South Sudan must be laid at the door of the US-led peace process. Linking the role of the international community with the country’s opposition politics, South Sudan’s Civil War is an essential guide to the causes and consequences of the violence that has engulfed one of Africa’s most troubled nations.

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.

A “gripping” story of the Angolan Civil War and how it evolved into a Cold War struggle between superpowers (New York Journal of Books). Lasting over a quarter of a century, from 1975 to 2002, the Angolan Civil War began as a power struggle between two former liberation movements, the MPLA and UNITA—but became a Cold War struggle with involvement from the Soviet Union, Cuba, South Africa, and the United States. This book examines the height of the Cuban-South African fighting in Angola in 1987–88, when three thousand South African soldiers and about eight thousand UNITA guerrilla fighters fought in alliance against the Cubans and the armed forces of the Marxist MPLA government, a force of over fifty thousand men. Fred Bridgland pieced together the course of the war, fought in one of the world’s most remote and wild terrains, by interviewing the South Africans who fought it, and many of their stories are woven into the narrative. This classic account of a Cold War struggle and its momentous consequences for the participants and the continent now includes a new preface and epilogue. “Highlights just how much political and social considerations dictate the outcome of war . . . A highly detailed work of military history, The War for Africa can tell us a lot about the nature of counter-insurgency warfare and how small states can become contested battlegrounds between superpowers.” —New York Journal of Books