PaanLuel Wël Media Ltd – South Sudan

"We the willing, led by the unknowing, are doing the impossible for the ungrateful. We have done so much, with so little, for so long, we are now qualified to do anything, with nothing" By Konstantin Josef Jireček, a Czech historian, diplomat and slavist.

Civil wars: The picture in Africa

THE briefing in the most recent issue of The Economist’s print edition tackles the tricky subject of civil wars. As anyone familiar with Africa’s cold-war history might expect, the continent features prominently.  What is remarkable is how many African civil wars have ended since the fall of the Berlin wall. A map showing African conflicts two decades ago would show the continent aflame. Today we have Congo and Somalia, and most recently the Central African Republic, and perhaps Nigeria, though Boko Haram is still no match for Biafra, the secessionist state in south-eastern Nigeria which went to war in the 1960. Of course, civil wars can be hard to define. The Peace Research Insitute Oslo in Norway paints a slightly different picture to ours (see map). But their parameters too, show a marked decline in the number of African conflicts. Not so long ago civil wars raged in Mozambique, Angola, Sudan, Liberia, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Burundi, Guinea-Bissau, Ivory Coast, Chad and Uganda.

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