Studies

Economic effects of security
 Problems in Africa
 
By: Nahla Abu-El Ezz
Conflicts and civil wars in Africa since the end of the eighteenth century is one of the dangerous phenomena which have historical, political, economic, geographical and cultural roots. These conflicts came along with the end of the Cold War, the democratic transformation on the political level, the orientation toward the market's mechanisms on the economic level, and the globalization challenges opposed on the developing countries.
The developing countries were affected by Africa's struggles in all fields mostly focused in Africa' sub Sahara. Seven potential civil wars exploded in five years due to the international order transformation with the beginning of the nineteenth century.
Some of these civil wars were continuity to past cases as Sudan and Mozambiek, other were more dangerous as Angola and Burundy, while new wars exploded in Liberia, Sierralion, Congo, Somali and Rwanda.
We can say that Africa witnessed half of the civil wars all over the world. There is no doubt that these conflicts had negatively affected the economic development, growth and performance in such countries.
Calculating such economic loss is impossible because of the incomplete and the inefficiency data which cannot be collected through the wars, in addition to the transformation of most of the economic activities to unofficial sector. At the same time amounting of some economic costs can be observed through the economic and the social indicators of these countries.
The civil violence, wars and conflicts led to decrease in the human capitals, human development and economic performance in countries which suffered from conflicts.
The economic and social effects of the civil wars and conflicts on a number of African countries who suffered from these wars as follows:
•           Demolishment of human capitals and decrease in human development rate.
•           Negative effect on the national domestic production and the individual share, investments flow, distributing the income among the various economic sectors, and increasing the army forces' expenditure from the national domestic production.
•           Increasing the poverty rate.
•           Increasing the external debts.
 
 
Political economy
 of conflicts and civil wars in Africa
By: Rehab Othman Mohamed Most of the African countries have suffered from conflicts and civil wars over the economic resources or political rights.
Economic reasons of conflicts and civil wars:
Environmental reasons and competition for the rare natural resources stand behind the outbreak of civil wars in Africa. The civil war that took place in Rwanda and Burundi can serve as an example of competition for the limited arable lands. Competition for oil and natural wealth resources brought about civil wars in Sierra Leone (Diamond War), Angola, Nigeria, Liberia, Southern Sudan and Eritrea.
As a result, the civil wars exhaust the economic resources thus increasing the rates of poverty in the war-torn countries. In addition, the unfair sharing of wealth among the different regions helps bring about civil wars in Africa. Surprisingly, a study has revealed that the warring parties prefer war to peace given that the latter entails the fair sharing of power and wealth.
Economic grave consequences of conflicts
No doubt, the absence of stability obstructs the process of humane and economic development as economic resources help fund the military operations against the rebels. Added to that is the low standard of living seen among the people in the war-torn regions. In this context, a study has revealed that the consequences of civil wars extend to include some parties not involved in such conflicts given that the displaced move across the borders to the neighboring countries thus obstructing the march of development there.
Another study has unveiled that civil wars affect the opportunities of realizing economic growth in the future. Also, civil wars have a negative impact on the process of human resources development given that military expenditure outnumbers that of education and health.
Economic policies during conflicts and civil war
The international community has committed a number of grave mistakes in the countries suffering from civil war as it does not analyze the economic status of those countries during conflicts. In this context, a group of economic policies which can help end conflicts peacefully can be summed up as follows:
-           The concerned international organizations should pay heed to decreasing the rates of poverty in order to help boost the economic growth and bring about a state of stability and security all over Africa.
-           Taking measures necessary to confront over-population which obstructs realizing economic development.
-           The governments should pay heed to the fair sharing of power and wealth among the different factions.
-           The necessity of boosting the status of education and health services in Africa.
-           Building up confidence in post-war phase to help attract foreign investments. 
 
 
 
Regional integration
 as a mechanism for enhancing peace and security in Africa
By: Samah Said Ahmed
 
The regional integration is the main characterization for the economic development in the developing countries. The African continent gave its priorities to the economic side but it expanded to include the political and secure sides due to their effect on the regional structures.
 
The African countries entered the regional merging field for achieving obvious economic aims as combating poverty and enhancing the economic development in Africa.
The economic integration leads to commercial exchange rate improvement, foreign investment flow, technological progress, and economic resource distribution equality among the African countries and the whole world.
The most important regional organizations according to the sectional regional initiatives level in Africa are:
•           Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) was established in 1975 in West Africa.
•           Southern African Development Community (SADC) was established in 1994 in Southern Africa.
•           Economic Community of Central African States (ECCAS) was established in 1987in Central Africa region.
•           Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA) was established in 1994 in East Africa.
•           Arab Morocco Union was established in 1989 in Northern Africa.
The African countries involvement (either on the sectional regional level or the African continent level) assures the concerned arrangements for solving struggles between the involving countries and other arrangements for the organization interference.
The organization act as a special supervisor system in ECOWAS known as ECOMOG and it engaged to solve conflicts and national wars as in Liberian civil war in 1990 and Sierralion civil war in 1998.
 
The economic integration enhances the commercial exchange relations between the countries, reduces the conflicts, increases the economic growth rates, increases the individual income and reduces the internal conflicts due to economic resources distribution.
The economic integration within the economic organizations which are widely extended in the African continent is used as a mechanism for enhancing peace and security in Africa as follows:
•           Firstly: Presenting the most important economic organizations in the sectional regions in Africa
•           Secondly: Presenting the institutional arrangements taken by the organizations for enhancing peace and security.
•           Thirdly: Showing ECOWAS role in solving conflicts between Liberia, Ghenia and Sierralion.
•           Fourthly: Showing ECOWAS role in solving the civil war in Liberia, Sierralion, Ghenia Bisaw and Ivory Coast.
•           Lastly: Reviewing a view point concerning the effect of the national integration problem on the regional integration in Africa.
 
 
 
Alimentary security
 and the development in
By: Mohamad abd el monsef
No wonder that the US has the full sovereignty over the world, as it is the major food producer and consequently the major exporter and importer for food in the world.
Eminent from this point, comes the importance of food abundance in the peoples' life to give more care for development, for how can a hungry man with strayed mind thinkand work and produce?
 
Africa has its own nature. The equator nearly divides it into two opposite parts, a matter that led to an environmental similarity in the north and south. Despite its total area reaches"30.3 million km square, the area of cultivated lands do not exceed 8%. of the total area, while the pasturse lands area occupy about" 20%, the forests" 21% and the rest areas are poor lands.
Territories problem in Africa refers to an area amounted to 2.8% million km square of very dehydrated lands. In addition to 3.9% million km square of semi dry lands. All these areas lose water resources, yet vaporization rate in some regions equals" 20-30 times the amount of the fallen rains on these areas.
 
The agricultural sector insub Sahara Africa faces a great challenge aawing to the increasing population by 3% while the productivity rate of food increases by only" 2.5%. annually.
There many challenges that confront the agricultural development process in Africa. These challenges are:
First: Desert ification .
 
A geographical term of an economic identification. It means the deteriorating oductivity of the cultivated lands and it is a phenom enon connected with the regions of fragile natur al resources. It principally happens either by ~tural elements like floods, sand , waves that coversthe cultivated lands or by human interference in cutting forests.
 
Really, desert ification   is the disease of the
uncultivated lands all over the world (continents to the degree that70% of lands exposed to desertedness are found in the two American Continent and 30% are found in the developing countries, particularly Africa.
Sorrowfully, the poor lands constitute 43%. of the cultivated lands all over the world and such deterioration in the lands causes the loss of $ 43 billion annually of the agricultural production. Nevertheless, about 20 million hectares of the cultivated lands are converted to poor lands annually because of its productivity low.
 
NEPAD's initiative assessments confirm that Africa loses more than $4 billion of the land soil elements every year. This would decrease the African Continent's disability of self-nourishment, yet some scientists of Nobel Prizes laureat es described the land status in Africa as a catastrophe. Farmers are still unable to obtain the sufficient amounts of fertilizers that increase the fertility of lands, as well as providing its funds.
 
The African continent's tragedy refers basically to the uncontrolled cutting of forests to manufacture woods, giving no attention to the required compensation process to render forests continue its
role in the ecological balance. In Ethiopia, forests were covering 40%. of lands in 1900 and now it covers only 40%. of the total area.
 
Forests' trees have the power to absorb and scatter the powerful winds, as it is the main element in preventing land sweeping by air. The condensed trees play the role of weakening winds velocity and protect the neighboring sites that reach to40 - folds of its heights. In addition, trees have the power to convert wind direction, a matter that positively affects the soil stability.
 
No doubt that cutting forests in Africa is considered one of the most important element of  patterns in the world that led to an environmental unbalance and. the increase of solar rays reflections that never been absorbed by the forests as before.
NEPAD's experts add the civil wars to desert ification .
 
factor, as the African Continent lost about' 30% of its productivity because of long civil wars. Civil wars in the Democratic Congo and sierralion led to the
immigration of million people from the rural places, this consequently resulted in the cease of the agricultural activity, rendering these countries in need for food aids, despite of its high natural resou rces
Africa is considered the only Continent in the world in which food production decreases as this led to the prevailing of maInutrition that changed from 38%
In 1981 in  sub  Sahara Africa to 34% in 1999  in north Africa, the state was better than other places, as rates of malnutrition decreased at the same period to only 2% in spite of the difficult environmental conditions.
 
Second: the natural pasturelands:
There is a big deficiency between the rate of population growth in Africa and the rate of animal growth. In 1950 Africa had 273, million livestock and the population accounted for 238 million people, but at the rise of livestock number to 680 million in 2000 the population increased to 794 million people, in addition to another habit in the continent's individuals to seize more livestock whatever its productivity performance.
 
The land Watch Institution in Washington evaluates the volume of the recent animalism wealth in Africa by 230 million cows, 241 million sheep and 209 million goats; a volume equals the double of the capacity of the normal pasturelands. The World Bank evaluated the volume of annual lose in pasturelands' productivity by $7 billion. It is more than the Gross Domestic Production for Ethiopia.
 
Third: the piscine wealth:
It is so strange to see the rate of individual consumption of fish to decrease from 2 kg in the first of the sixties in the last century to 7.1 in 2002 While rate of consumption in the world had raised from 9 kg to 16  kg during the same period.
 
It is true that doubling rates of fishing to five folds in the last century led the world countries to buy fishing licenses at the African western coasts, particularly Mauritania, Guinea Besau, the cape verde and Senegal that holds the richest fisheries in the world now. These fisheries now began to collapse as a result of the inequitable fishing, as these countries do not have radars necessary for warranting the commitment of implementing fishing agreements determined by th Sea Law;  Treafy in 1979 This law obligates the interna tionafishing ships to be far 200 maritime miles from the states coasts.
 
 
 
Change of the African approach over security and defense issues
By: DR. Ahmad Ibrahim
The element of security and defense cooperation among the African countries was the missing link in the series of the African concerted action for a long time. This disabled the Organization of African Unity (OAU) to insert this element in the African mass action and to deal actively with many of the effective issues, particularly to that related with the reconciliation of internal and regional disputes among the African states.
 
The following lines detect the development steps of the African treatment with security and defense issues since the foundation of the OAU in 1963.
 
1. Environment of security in Africa
 
Security nature in Africa is characterized by a wide-scale sovereignty of secure threats and challenges that really connects with the artificial foundation of the specific country in the colonial age. The African states, in their modern frame, are established abnormally either in time, borders or social formations. Such originalities occurred basically under the dominant harsh colonial conditions passed by most of the African countries.
 
As a result, many ethnic entities among states have been frittered to render the one sate suffers from a different fusion of races and genres. This caused irritant social conditions inside the one African state, besides the colonial experiment itself that never gave the African communities the chance of self coherent formation like that of the europeans'.
 
This condition paved the way for many conflict forms, , the internal and border conflicts in special. These two types of conflicts wore very bloody masks in many of the African scenes, for example the internal disputes and destructive civil wars broke out in Nigeria, Somalia, Rwanda, Burundi, Ethiopia, Liberia, Sierra lion  , Ivory Coast, Angola and the Democratic Congo (DC), etc. some of these conflicts had repercussions of the state's complete fall like Somalia. Others reached the genocide status like Rwanda and others landed on wide-scale regional polarizations like the DC.
 
Relatively to the border conflicts, they were dealt with various mechanisms of which emerges the sanctity principle of the existing African borders at the time of OAU foundation in 1963. This was adopted to close the door in front of any border conflicts and cutting the way in front of any country demands frontiers' re-demarcations with the neighboring countries.
 
This also sprung from the African leaders' believe that negligence in frontiers issues may lead to re-planning of political map in Africa structurally, including the disappearance of small entities.
 
The mentioned approach never stopped the breaking out of damaging border conflicts among some of the African contries like that included Ethiopia as one part with Somalia in 1977-1978 or with Eretria in 1998-2000 as the other parts. They were the eminent regional conflicts in the African continent since independence.
 
These conflicts, in its turn, were the entrance gate for other several security threats in Africa, of which the most important is the spreading of light and small weapons as a result of vast availability foe weapons in the context of civil wars in some African states. In addition, the problem of anti-individual land mines that causes enormous human harms in several African communities.
 
Another phenomenon of children recruiting from the part of the confronting factions in the civil wars also exists. Moreover, the phenomenon of using the natural resources like wood, precious metals and natural rubber to supply their own military operations or making personal wealth. Yet, these natural resources turned out to be a material for dispute among the factions themselves. At the same time, diseases and epidemics became a security matter in several African nations, mostly of AIDS and Malaria.
 
In the recent time, terrorism problem also appeared as one of the security threats in the African continent. The main terrorist accidents were in Africa occurred only on the African territories, meaning the Africans had no connections at all with it, like that of Al-Qaeda attacks on the american and israeli targets. So, the world increasing interest in such terrorist threats, particularly after the September 11 attacks, moved the Africans themselves to get interested in this problem, considering it one of the principal issues in the agenda of defensive and security cooperation either with the external world or among themselves.
 
At the mean time, international external effects were not completely away of delineating the security environment in Africa, especially in the international arena and the foreign external penetration for the African Continent.
 
These external effects are connected with two main elements; the first is the continuity of the defensive, strategic and security bonds among many of the African countries and the pre-colonial powers, especially between France and many of the African western countries. The second element is related to alternatives of the cold war impacts that extended to the African Continent.
 
By the end of the cold war and the dismantling of the Soviet Union major powers never been somewhat concerned with the strategic considerations during their policy planning towards the African continent. This was reflected on ceasing the economic and military assistances offered by the two major polars to many of the African countries, as this is one of the reasons for the civil wars broke out in many of the African countries.
 
Organization of the African Unity and loosing defensive and security cooperation
 
Foundation of the OAU came out of inspirations and hopes of the African countries in independence and liberation, considering cooperation and teamwork as the best warrant for the newly independent African countries to prevent other anti-colony ideologies. Also, the foundation expresses desire of the African countries in unifying their efforts to achieve cooperation, political and economic integrity among themselves, besides their desire to support their international role in facing major powers on the international arena, particularly during the cold war.
 
Amongst all African teamwork extended to all fields through the OAU, security and defensive cooperation issues were semi absent in the agenda of the African joint action. Article 20 of the OAU's Charter had noted the establishment of a defense committee and to be one of the specialist committees in the Organization's bodies.
 
Since the first sessions of the African summit's conferences, there were ambitious ideas regarding the establishment of a supreme command for the African armies and also setting up African joint forces, but the political alternations along the late four decades of the 20th century were not politically and financially suitable.
 
The African Union, the definition of African collective security
 
Achieving security and stability was one of the basic corners at the establishment of the African Union (AU). Stepping from the Organization of African Unity (OAU) to the African Union (AU) expressed the desire of many African states to develop the African continental order to apt to all standing conditions and challenges on the international, continental, regional and national arenas. The necessity to seize the ability to manage deadlocks facing the Continent is one of the previous mentioned challenges.
 
Generally, the structure of the AU included two main changes in the approach of the African dealing with conflicts issues. The two challenges are:
 
1.         Admission of the Union's right to intervene in the member states' internal affairs, for Article 4 of the Union laid down such right under dangerous conditions represented in war crimes; genocide; humanitarian abuse. At the same time, the foundational law assures the right of member states to demand the Union's interference to return peace and security. Article 4 of the law provided for establishing a joint defensive and security policy.
 
2.         Establishing a new mechanism represented in (Peace and Security Council) to prevent, manage or re-conciliate the African conflicts. Such council and new mechanism never been fixed in the foundational law of the Union. Many ambitious ideas were put forth in the negotiations held among the African leaders to deal with such issues through establishing the “African Council on Peace and Security “ .
 
African efforts to constitute peace-keeping forces achieved many steps in forward. This question was the main topic in the periodical meetings of the African Commander-in-chiefs and Defense Ministers, for it is a new mechanism modernized by the African Union for a mutual coordination and cooperation among member states in different fields of peace and stability in Africa. In the 3rd meeting of the African Commander-in-chiefs in Addis Ababa in May 15-16 2003, they agreed upon establishing African emergency forces and they additionally confirmed this in the first meeting of the African Defense and Security Ministers on January 20-21, 2004.
 
On the other hand, the approach by the AU to deal with defense and security issues faced enormous complications that were resulted basically in the extra enthusiasm used in dealing with such type of issues.
 
This extra enthusiasm brought about an Africans' success in agreeing on active charters for defensive and security cooperation, but they later confronted the limit funds and abilities needed for the functioning of these forces. This was apparent enough in the Darfur crisis, as Africans took long times to agree on deploying forces for speed interference in this region. They later needed the assistance of the NATO to transfer these African forces from their native states to Darfur. In another later stage, it was clear that the AU capabilities were very limit to continue deploying the African troops, then a thinking to deploy international troops under the umbrella of the UN was replaced, a matter that was a way from the international and american pressures that seek to modify the managing system of the Darfur crisis.
 
So, the big mutation achieved by the African Union in the field of security and defense cooperation is considered an important development in the way of an African teamwork, but this mutation needs balance between plans and conceptions from the one side and available funds and capabilities from the other side in order not to collide the extra enthusiasm with the complicated reality. 
 
 		 
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