Peacebuilding Perspectives and Herder-Farmer Conflicts in Africa (chapter in "Herder-Farmer Conflicts in Africa")
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Author(s): J. Shola Omotola
Date: 2025
Topics: Conflict Causes, Conflict Prevention, Gender, Land, Livelihoods
This chapter proposes a peacebuilding approach to the management of herder-farmer conflicts in Africa. Specifically, the chapter reflects on the contending perspectives on peacebuilding, notably the neoliberal and popular progressive arguments. It also emphasizes the pertinence of environmental peacebuilding as a critical component of the latter. Finally, the chapter highlights other salient components of progressive peacebuilding that are critical to the sustainable resolution of herder-farmer conflicts in Africa. These include the gender and human rights dimensions of peacebuilding, the role of subnational and local peacebuilding initiatives/institutions, and the pivotal position of both formal and informal actors in the peace process. Other salient theoretical issues engaged in the chapter include the overlap and cohabitation in the same space, between a number of peacebuilding institutions and processes, most notably national and local institutions, as well as formal and informal, oftentimes in competitive rather than collaborative ways. This connects to the question of hybridity or synergy and autonomy of these institutions in peacebuilding; and how overlaps across various social forces affect the dynamics of conflicts and peacebuilding.