SECURITY IN AFRICA A CRITICAL

For decades, Africa has been on the periphery of Western security policy. After 9/11, the U.S. and many of its allies increased engagement with the continent with claims that East Africa and the Sahel were hubs of terrorist activity. Intelligence analysts, asserting that ungoverned spaces and failed states were training grounds for future terrorists, increased their focus on Muslim populations in Africa. They concluded that political instability and poverty provided fertile recruiting fields to those who wanted to do harm to the West. Analyses reflecting these ideas flooded government narratives about the African continent. This text questions this approach to insecurity in Africa as well as American security and foreign policy. Looking at the narratives used by various Western governments since 2001, it argues that commonly used indicators of threats are based on mainstream security perspectives that provide a circumscribed view of what is a threat to international security in a post-9/11 world. To do so, it focuses on four key indicators: ungoverned spaces and failed states, Muslim populations, poverty, and political instability. By assessing specific threats critically, it explains how analysts need to understand the historic, social, political, and cultural contexts before correctly informing the West s foreign policy in Africa. It shows that these traditional characterizations of threats in Africa are relics of the Cold-War era perspectives of security, which focused on military capabilities, and can lead to dangerous security policy decisions. A critical approach to these indicators provides a more realistic and practical view of threats in Africa that have the potential to affect international stability. It also offers a broader and more dynamic approach to today s conditions in Africa in which the security of the individual affects the security of the international community."