This situation may be the reason why many African conflicts may be silenced but remain largely unresolved. The conflict resolution community seems to pursue conflict resolution efforts in Africa from a variety of purposes and interests and with policies that are often replete with ambiguities and contradictions.

I am sure that none of you would want to rest content with the superficial kind of social analysis that deals mainly with effects and does not grapple with underlying causes (Martin Luther King Jr 1963). Making the claim that conflict resolution is more than the suppression or perhaps the elimination of overt violence, it argues that envisaging and/or imposing peace-keeping forces at every turn on various African conflicts does not provide the desired durable outcomes. It argues that the colonial factor ought to be a consideration in attempts to address African conflicts because the roots of many post-colonial conflicts in Africa remain buried in Africa’s past and, specifically, in the colonisation and de-colonisation processes. The article reconsiders the conflict management and conflict resolution debate and indicts former colonial powers and powerful organisations for maintaining colonial-style approaches to African conflicts at the expense of a desire to address the fundamental issues that divide the parties to the different conflicts. It claims that conflict in Africa does not always stem primarily from crises of national governance and the failure of governmental institutions in African countries to mediate conflict, and revisits the colonial factor as the root of many conflicts in Africa.

Abstractīy engaging the colonial factor in African conflicts, this article seeks to understand the ineffectiveness of efforts at conflict management in overcoming the disasters that brought the conflicts to the African continent.

Dr Fonkem Achankeng I is Assistant Professor in the Department of Human Services and Educational Leadership at the College of Education and Human Services, University of Wisconsin Oshkosh.

Armed conflicts in africa facts