Homegrown Solutions to Regional Insecurity Complexes in Africa

This issue of African Security covers some of the most consequential issues faced by states across the African continent. The first paper “Rejecting African Solutions to African Problems: The African Union and the Islamic Courts Union in Somalia” interrogates the subservience of the African Union to its partners. Jude Cocodia argues that such subservience negates the objectives of the African Union vis-à-vis maintaining peace. In this provocative piece, Cocodia argues that the steps taken by the African Union in Somalia demonstrate that the organization privileged the interests of its partners over the wellbeing of Somalis. His prescription calls on African policymakers to proffer homegrown solutions to the continent’ security challenges by “making local norms matter in governance.” This piece is a must-read for all scholars and practitioners working on the myriad problems that beset the African continent and reminds us all of the importance of considering indigenous modes of governing even when they run counter to Western prescriptions and the interests of outside donors. Farmer-herder conflicts have become existential security threats, particularly in West Africa. There are growing concerns that the level of violence perpetrated by herder groups has metamorphosed into terrorism in countries like Nigeria. The idea of stable and delimited ranching has been offered as a widely accepted solution to the problem of farmer-herder conflicts. However, in their paper, “Cattle ranching and farmer-herder conflicts in sub-Saharan Africa: Exploring the conditions for successes and failures in northern Ghana,” Abubakari Ahmed and Elias Danyi Kuusaana caution against uncritical acceptance of this solution. There are clearly facets of this ostensible policy solution that ought to be put into cognizance in term of its design and implementation. Ahmed and Kuusaana critically unpack the problem, arguing that negative public perceptions of the herders’ Fulani identity and corruption by local chiefs and security agents, particularly the police, tend to exacerbate variables such as the land tenure system and access to food and water sources. Ahmed’s position is certainly of relevance to ongoing scholarly and policy debates, particularly in those countries in West Africa where transhumance exists. West Africa is also the focus of the third piece in this issue. Kaderi Noagah Bukari, Patrick Osei-Kufuor and Shaibu Bukari investigate the politicization of chieftaincy positions and the traditional authority they represent. The paper “Chieftaincy Conflicts in Northern Ghana: A Constellation of Actors and Politics” problematizes the role of elite AFRICAN SECURITY 2021, VOL. 14, NO. 2, 107–109 https://doi.org/10.1080/19392206.2021.1961355