Horn of Africa: Challenges in overcoming governance crises

1. Introduction

Once again the Horn of Africa is on the news radar screen with the usual
nauseating projection and imaging of a region embroiled with a seemingly
unending litany of violence, invasions, genocide, destruction, chaos, forced
migration and a state of general insecurity. The recent socio-political
upheavals and developments in the Horn of Africa region require deeper
reflection why this state of unwholesome existence that continues to
threaten life and well being persists with what appears to be a timeless
abandon.

Nearly all the states that constitute the wider Horn of Africa have one
crisis or another. In Ethiopia we mention the recent setback of an election
on May 15, 2005 that nearly got this ancient nation to come into the
contemporary history of democracy only to frustrate the manifest will
displayed by the people to self-govern by returning the incumbent in
violation of what appeared on the whole to be an election result that
favoured the opposition parties. It is an irony that those duly elected are
in prison whilst some of those who have been de-elected are still in
Government. Civil society leaders, journalists, scholars and human rights
activists are still in jail even as the country is poised to celebrate its
millennium on September 11, 2007!

In Somalia the situation remains as chaotic as it has been since Said Barre
left in haste in 1991. The breakdown of public authority and its dispersion
into clan and warlordism has been the single most alarming development in
Somalia. When the Islamic Union Courts (IUCs) appeared to have the upper
hand in Mogadishu over the warlords, there seemed to be a sceptical
reception of their role in warding off one undesirable and worse warlord
groups for their own not as worse IUCs. The latter seemed to have been
contaminated by some Jihadists in their midst at loggerheads with the
secular Transitional Federal Government backed by Ethiopia and recognised by
UN and AU. The invasion by Ethiopia backed by the current US Government
against the IUCs opened the floodgate again for the warlords to resurface
and embolden themselves in Somalia.

The violent overthrow of the IUCs was justified by the claim that they are
‘Islamist terrorists.’ By some accounts the IUCs were recognised to be near
a delivery point of what is sorely lacking in Somalia, namely stability at
least in Mogadishu if not in the whole of Somalia. By other accounts, the
IUCs were part of the global terror network. However one looks at it, once
again like in the Cold War period, the Horn of Africa is sadly incorporated
as the African flank in the geo-politics of the so-called global war on
extremism and terrorism. For the Horn of Africa to be at the forefront in
the war on global terror in Africa, and play in US Government politics in
its drastic compression and framing of the complexities of world politics to
those who are for terror and those who fight it, means that the region is
repeating the role it played during the Cold War. A region that has not
learned the lessons from the cost to it of being embroiled in the Cold War
is bound to repeat it in this new era of what has been described as the
Global War on Terror.

In Sudan there is even more alarming development such as genocide and even
modern day slavery in the Darfur area where apparently culturally ’Arabized
Africans’ attack other Africans with the connivance if not active support of
the militias by the Basher Government in Sudan that have been responsible
for murdering and uprooting whole communities. The crises in Darfur
continues to go on despite protests by the UN, EU, the Africa Union, USA,
Britain and global civil society and human rights organisations.

In Eritrea, opposition is severely punished. Eritrea remains in a no-war, no
peace state with Ethiopia since the outbreak of the large scale war in 1998.
Being together with Ethiopia or living separately did not seem to make any
difference in relation to bringing about a normalised and peaceful relation
amongst geographically contiguous neighbours. Each side accuses the other of
supporting forces trying to destabilize each other. It is thus confounding
searching for what would work to bring about an amicable relationship
between them.

Djibouti has armies from France, and US anti-terror military contingent
operating in its soil. Whilst it is not formally involved in disputes, it
faces from the fallout from the region’s generalised instability. There are
Afar based liberation movements operating in Eritrea, Djibouti and Ethiopia.

Kenya faces huge pressure from refugees and those who flee from all these
numerous conflicts. It has its own ethnic tremor that may erupt into
violence unless the democratic institutions outpace the ethnic agitators in
the course of time.

Uganda has also faced election problems, involvement in the fighting in the
Democratic Republic of the Congo, destabilising armed resistance from the
Lord Resistance Army, and currently involvement in the Somalia conflict by
placing troops in support of the Ethiopian and American Governments’ pursuit
to track Islamists.

External intervention: Perhaps where ‘God may fear to tread’; the Great
Powers seemed willing to risk intervention. On the one hand the Great powers
are openly involved militarily, on the other the fragility of the region can
tempt in attracting jihadist elements to operate wily nilly in the region.
Even Hollywood actors appear to take interest and engage let alone the USA,
Britain, EU and others.

The significance and meaning of the renewed involvement and interest of the
US, the UN and the EU in the region is critically important to reflect upon.
What happened to African solutions to African problems? What happened to
African ownership? It will be indeed critically important to make a critical
assessment of the capability and the willingness of the African Union (AU)
in introducing viable concrete African solutions for Africa’s numerous
development challenges especially to this rather very difficult region of
Africa.

2. Background: Why a Special Focus on this Region of Africa

The larger Horn of Africa region (consisting of Somalia, Ethiopia, Djibouti,
Kenya, Uganda, Eritrea and Sudan) has experienced greater (internal and
external) political, social and economic upheavels since the 1960s. For
mainly strategic reasons the region is currently considered (by the US and
some European countries in the west) as an integrated part of confrontation
against extremism. Here the region’s proximity to the Middle East and global
shipping routes are considered vital.

Civil society in the Horn of Africa has continued to struggle in spite of
repression against dictatorship, poverty, recurrent civil wars and
deprivation. In the global system, the region is identified as a source of
illegal migration and for the failure or the lack of properly functioning
central state institutions. These are developmental deficiencies posing
significant challenges to both regional and global security.

Today it is no exaggeration to state that the Horn of Africa is one of the
most volatile regions in the world. The region suffers from numerous
political, socio-economic and cultural challenges. These problems affect not
only the peoples and the countries in the regions but also the wider world.
Issues such as political instability, economic degradation and cultural
tensions contribute not only to the generalised state of underdevelopment
but also to the numerous interlocking conflicts that have brought major
regional and continental conflicts fuelling the rate of increase of regional
and global migration and insecurity..

Even such far corners of the world from Africa such as Scandinavia are not
spared from the immigration influx: Today, immigrants from the Horn of
Africa constitute the largest African communities in the Nordic countries.
Most live in Denmark, Sweden, Norway and Finland. They are also one of the
largest migrant groups in the European continent. This implies that
developments occurring in the region are more or less felt in many European
countries, including the Nordic countries. Denmark alone has about 26.000
Horn of Africans. Inhabitants that originate from the Horn remit on a
monthly basis a large sum of funding to the region mainly to sustain the
livelihood of relatives left behind. Others are politically and socially
engaged. Through the internet and the extended mobility and communication
opportunities, contacts became easier and faster.

In recent years with relation to the South- North debate, new processes of
interdependency, human mobility and communications are emerging. This is due
to intense globalisation, especially on economy, commerce and technology,
and the increasing number of Diaspora communities that are engaged in
multiple societies. Through this process, developing countries, for instance
in Africa, have enormous opportunities to connect through international
telecommunication networks in order to benefit from the knowledge and
technology available in developed countries. Nonetheless, this opportunity
is threatened by the less advanced research capabilities, due to long term
political instability and civil wars and the persistent brain drain
phenomenon where researchers and academics for various reasons choose to
immigrate to more privileged parts of the world.

In addition, poorer countries confront numerous educational challenges,
mainly stemming from the scarcity of financial resources, the deterioration
of equipment and research laboratories, the absence or the insufficient
access to new technologies of information and communication. Therefore, the
urgent need to reverse the process of degradation of higher education in
these countries and to reinforce their capabilities in the area of research
in development requires a major contribution of international network
co-operation and assistance.

Faced with the challenge to reconstruct after decades of dictatorship and
devastating civil war, some higher learning institutions in the Horn of
Africa give the utmost priority to the development of research
opportunities, with the aim of reinforcing the capacities of knowledge
production to contribute to the accommodation of civic and a variety of
communities in the Horn of Africa. Research capacity building approach is
therefore considered as an essential component of cultural and
socio-economic development.

3. The objective of the workshop is two fold

1. Undertake and build research and knowledge through analytical scrutiny on
the dynamics of conflict and migration, underdevelopment, breakdown in
governance, state collapse in creating new transnational modes of production
and relations calling for newer and sharper tools of social and economic
analytical approaches and strategies

2. Tap into the global pool of Horn of Africa’s Diaspora as knowledge and
resource bearers to connect their own activities and resources to the
region’s conflict resolution efforts and shaping the productive power and
development futures. The objective is to found, design, and settle how a
Horn of Africa Research Network will be set up in the Nordic Area.

It is increasingly becoming evident that through the internet and the
extended mobility and communication opportunities, the migrants scattered
all over the world retain daily communication with those they have left
behind. This communication can be constructive or destructive in a region
with many intersecting and cross-cutting conflicts. The opportunity for
transforming the destructive communication into constructive communication
requires learning, knowledge, capacity and research. How to mediate the
communication from the scattered migrants to those in the region by
strengthening research, knowledge, training, learning, capacity building
will constitute an important part of the network’s work, that we have
provisionally named as the Horn of Africa Research Network on Regional
Integration and Development (HANRID).

4. Expected Output

1. The output from the workshop will be an edited anthology and publishing
at least one research paper from each of the constituting states in one of
the best internationally refereed and peer reviewed journals.

2. The main output will be to use the workshop to put together a 5-10 years
research and knowledge producing and capacity building network application
to form a research capacity network in the Nordic Area related to finding
ways and strategies to address the critical problems of conflict demolition,
poverty eradication, state capacity building, sustainable transitions and
building democratic institutions individually in each state and collectively
as a Horn of Africa region.

5. Workshop themes

– The role of the interaction of the state and non state institutions in
society for contributing to state building, governance and democratisation
process.
– The US and EUs historic and current involvement in the region and
consequences for the creation and development of indigenous viable
institutions.
– The AU’s engagement and commitment in finding African solutions for
African problems.
– Horn of Africa relations with new emerging powers in Asia, the expanding
Chinese and Indian interest in trade and exploration of natural resources in
the region.
– The role of civil society, the public sphere in conflict resolution and
development.

6. Schedule of activities

Here is a rough timeline of the activities planned for the workshop. This
schedule is not to be interpreted as final, and will be adjusted in response
to the submissions received.

– 08:30 – 09:00 Coffee and welcome.
– 09:00 – 10:30 Some of the Suggested Speakers and Discussants (not finalized
yet).
– Professor Mammo Muchie, DIR, Aalborg University, Denmark.
– Professor Poul Nielson, Honorary Professor, Aalborg University.
– Professor Mohamed Hadji Mukhtar, Savannah State University, USA.
– Professor Mohamed Salih, Institute of Social Studies, Netherlands.
– Dr. Berhanu Balcha, Affliate DIR, PhD.
– Osman Farah, Affliate of DIR, MSc., Denmark.
– Dr. Gaim Kebre Ab, South Bank University, London, UK.
– Abdullahi Jama, SIRC, Lund University, Sweden.

There will be at least one presenter from each of the Horn of African
countries!

– 10:30 – 11:00 Coffee break.
– 11:00 – 12:00 Paper presentations and parallel sessions.
– 12:00 – 13:30 Lunch.
– 13:30 – 14:45 Paper presentations and parallel sessions.
– 14:45 – 15:00 Coffee break.
– 15:00 – 17:00 Promotion: books, publications and networks.
Presentation of Horn of Africa Research Network on Regional Integration and
Development (HANRID).
– 17:00 – 17:30 Concluding statements : Network application.

7. Workshop participants & contributors

– Researchers on the social sciences particularly development related
subjects.
– Post graduate and PhD students on development and developing countries.
– Professionals that work with migration and ethnic minority issues.
– Nordic research partners from Finland, Norway, Sweden and Denmark.

8. Important deadline

Those who wish to present papers must send their abstracts by June 30, 2007!
Acceptance notification will be no later than July 15,2007. Full draft
papers must be in without fail by 25 September, 2007.

9. Local organising and scientific committee

– Professor Mammo Muchie
– Professor Poul Nielson
– Associate Professor, Paul Opoku- Mensah
– Associate Professor Li Xing
– Associate Professor Henrik Plaschke

10. Budget

The Nordic Africa Institute has provided a grant of 40,000Swedish Kroners.
We expect to raise the rest of the budget within the University: DIR, CCIS
and IHIS., the Dean and the Rector.

The total budget for the workshop: 80,000 DKk.