Kigali, Rwanda (PANA) – Africa could avert many of its recurrent and destructive conflicts if it had a committed and strong leadership, according to African personalities who have worked to get peace and stability back on the continent.
Taking part in a discussion, which was based on the report of a high level panel on fragile states: ‘Ending Conflict and Building Peace in Africa’, former presidents Olusegun Obasanjo of Nigeria and Thabo Mbeki of South Africa observed that the continent’s leaders have not been resolute about taking difficult decisions on conflict situations.
“I believe that getting rid of conflict depends on leadership, but we have a bit of leadership deficit in Africa,” Obasanjo said, with Mbeki adding: “In truth, there hasn’t been honest discussion among African leaders about causes of conflicts on the continent.”
The discussion, also attended by Rwandan President Paul Kagame and former Botswana leader Festus Mogae late Tuesday, was part of the ongoing Annual Meetings of the African Development Bank (AfDB).
If the continent’s leadership got the politics and governance right, according to Obasanjo, they could eliminate a substantial number of conflicts.
“If you don’t attend to conflicts in time, they fester and become dangerous,” he explained, making reference to various conflict situations he handled in the West Africa region and in his own country, including the Boko Haram insurgency.
“Conflicts don’t happen overnight,” Obasanjo said, citing as a miscalculation by the AfDB in approving a US$25 million credit for electrification of South Sudan’s capital, Juba, shortly before the country slipped into its latest crisis in December 2013.
He said that signs of the conflict were already imminent in the dismantling of state institutions that preceded the inter-tribal fighting.
On South Sudan, Mbeki said the latest conflict was avoidable, though he noted that its source was “failure of the country’s entire leadership”.
“In South Sudan you have a leadership that in reality was self-centred, jostling for power which then spilt over into war,” he said, accusing leaders of Africa’s youngest nation of “mobilising local communities to fight each other”.
Mbeki said the same cause could be traced in the raging conflict in Central African Republic, a country that for many years has suffered “a consistency of failed leadership.”
On his part, Kagame said: “We have for so long discussed conflicts and, actually, have good ideas for such conflicts to be resolved.”
Arguing that there would always be new kinds of conflict and new causes as well, Kagame went on: “As leaders we must take responsibility for our failure in dealing with these matters. There is no silver bullet for these conflicts and there is no leader who can resolve them alone.
“It doesn’t make sense that our leaders cannot get themselves together to address problems facing our people. African leaders don’t need to be invited anywhere outside the continent to address our problems. We should get together and address our own problems.”
In fragile states, Kagame suggested that security should be prioritised as a public good so that security forces could be trusted by all citizens.
The eight-member High Level Panel on Fragile States in Africa was set up at the initiative of AfDB President Donald Kaberuka to review the likely sources of fragility in the continent and to make recommendations on how they should be tackled.
Led by Liberian President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, the panel had the task of informing the Bank’s forthcoming strategy on fragility in Africa.
Meanwhile, Kaberuka said the Bank needed to have a dedicated facility to help countries emerging from a conflict situation clear debts, build internal capacity and kick-start development.
