Africa Center for Strategic Studies

• Conflict, Security, and Development: World Development Report - 2011

  By the World Bank, 2011. One-and-a-half billion people live in areas affected by fragility, conflict, or large-scale, organized criminal violence, and no low-income fragile or conflict-affected country has yet to achieve a single United Nations Millennium Development Goal. Strengthening legitimate institutions with an aim to provide citizen security, justice, and jobs is crucial to break such cycles of violence, fragility, and weak development. [ENGLISH] [FRENCH]

• Mozambique: Balancing Development, Politics and Security

  By Jeremy Astill-Brown and Markus Weimer. Chatham House, August 2010.

  Mozambique’s two decade arc of stabilization and poverty reduction are giving way to rising social discontent. Development strategies should be modified to confront newly emerging security and governance challenges. A top priority will be building legitimate state institutions that can resist a rapid rise in organized crime, reverse an increasingly constrictive political environment, and adjust economic growth plans that will likely provide few opportunities for Mozambique’s poor. [PDF]

• Addressing the Problem of Failed States: A New Instrument

  By John E. Herbst. PRISM, 2009. Governance failures and shortcomings are a prime source of instability and violence as they contribute to state failure. Many international partners working with the UN, African Union, and non-governmental organizations are scaling up their capacity to deploy teams of wide-ranging civilian experts to assist states during such governance shortfalls in order to prevent crises and restore security and stability. [PDF]

• Economic Drivers of Conflict and Cooperation in the Horn of Africa

   

   By Roy Love.  Chatham House, 2009.

  The four cross-border regions of the Horn of Africa exemplify a complex development-security nexus in which politics, inter-elite struggles, resource endowments, poverty and other seemingly distinct phenomena all interact. They also illuminate how local initiatives and international aid programs can enhance development and reduce conflict. [PDF]

• Democracy and Development: Overcoming Autocratic Legacies

  Poor countries are more vulnerable to crisis, be it economic, humanitarian, or open conflict. Cross-national analysis, however, shows that the development performance of low-income democracies significantly outpaces that of autocracies – and do so with less volatility. Sustaining democratization, therefore, is a priority for attaining both development and security objectives.  PDF   For additional reading go to: Security and Development

• Investing in Peace: How Development Aid Can Prevent or Promote Conflict

  By Robert J. Muscat. M.E. Sharpe, 2002.

  The author examines nine cases in which the work of development agencies exacerbated or ameliorated the root causes of conflict. This permits some generalizations about the efficacy or deleterious effects of development programs on conflict -- and of their futility when the conflict-prevention dimension of international assistance efforts is ignored. 

Other Reads