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INTRODUCTION
In many parts of the continent recent and significant economic and political progress remains threatened by conflict, according to UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan's frank and bold assessment of the sources of conflict in Africa. His report to the Security Council, reproduced here to reach a wider readership, also addresses ways to prevent and address the conflicts, and how to lay the foundation for durable peace and economic growth following their resolution. "For the United Nations," says Mr. Annan, "there is no higher goal, no deeper commitment and no greater ambition than preventing armed conflict." Mr. Annan's analysis and resulting recommendations are based on the understanding that prevention of conflict begins and ends with the promotion of human security and human development. Chris Bakwesegha's article, which focuses on the Organization of African
Unity and democratization in Africa, provides valuable discussion of lessons
learned during the continent's ongoing democratization process. By the
beginning of the 1990s, he observes, "African leadership had read
the writing on the wall and had understood the message. Africans were
demanding freedom, justice, democracy and greater equality." The
leaders also admitted that "you can hold at bay the invasion of an
army; but you can never stop an idea whose time has come." The article
includes recommendations to further promote real democracy based on, among
other things, the principles of inclusion rather than exclusion, and strengthening
in a comprehensive way the OAU's election observations. Mohamed Sheikh Abdillahi's contribution candidly discusses the emergence of local NGOs in Somaliland (Northwest Somalia), which, he stresses, has suffered prolonged civil conflict "leading to the utter destruction of the country and the unravelling of its society." The local NGOs bear the marks of this "forced birth" in many of their weaknesses. However they have also played an important role in rehabilitation and reconciliation programmes, and they could potentially play a greater role in Somaliland's recovery and development process. Stella M. Sabiiti describes the Stop the Killing Campaign, launched by six NGOs in the Great Lakes Region, to strengthen support for the peaceful resolution of conflicts. The campaign's overriding operating principle, she says, is that "Africans must take responsibility for their action and their destinies." However the author also links achieving peaceful conflict resolution in the Great Lakes Region to discouraging the flow of arms and mercenaries from outside, and the need for collaboration with Northern NGOs and institutions, among other things. Pamphile Sebahara's insightful article on the creation of ethnic division in Rwanda focuses on understanding the stakes and processes leading up to the outbreak of conflict in the country. Using a sociological approach to ethnicity, the article traces a variety of interdependent factors that led to massacres claiming almost one million lives. "There is nothing inevitable or coincidental about ethnic division," says the author. "On the contrary, it results from the strategic moves of protagonists acting in the context of a given space and time." The article seeks to give an account of the facts, not to determine which of the protagonists is responsible, but with a view to guiding future action and restoring peace. Each passing year of the deadly tensions and conflicts in Burundi, according to Louis-Marie Nindorera, sees a perceptible and rapid deterioration in the country's overall standards of economic and social life. It is against this backdrop of permanent conflict and "sub-conflicts" (around issues such as family, property, succession and descent), that a new debate has begun on reinstating the traditional institution of Bashingantahe. Current moves to restore the institution, whose history and workings are described for the reader, are based on the belief that a return to traditional cultural values and methods of conflict resolution at the level of the smallest territorial unit could greatly contribute to restoring peace and stability in Burundi. Yusuf Bangura reviews the 1996 Sierra Leone Peace Accord with a view to understanding, among other things, its strengths, limitations and the key actors likely to gain or lose from the accord's implementation. In many ways, he says, the accord represented a variant of the power-sharing model, which has emerged as a standard mechanism for rebuilding societies sharply polarized and/or torn apart by unwinnable wars. For this reason the article's forthright analysis and concrete recommendations will be relevant for other negotiated peace accords. The aim of Voices from Africa is to enable African development practitioners and writers from NGOs, the research community and elsewhere, to share their work, their concerns and their ideas on the development issues, problems and challenges facing their continent. By giving Africans themselves this opportunity to express their views to an international readership, we hope the series will help shape a more positive and more realistic image of Africa and, at the same time, provide a useful input to Northern development education and information activities. We would like to express our appreciation to the contributors to this edition and to renew our thanks to the institutions that support this series, which are listed on the back page.
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