Spanning the period from the cold war to the 'war on terror', examines the political economy dynamics of security and insecurity on the continent, as well as its implications for political actions. More than any other part of the globe, Africa has become associated with conflict, insecurity and human rights atrocities. In the popular imagination and the media, overpopulation, environmental degradation and ethnic hatred dominate accounts of African violence, while in academic and policy-making circles, conflict and insecurity have also come to occupy centre stage, with resource-hungry warlords and notions of 'greed' and 'grievance' playing key explanatory roles. Since the attacks of 9/11, there has also been mounting concern that the continent's so-called 'ungoverned spaces' will provide safe havens for terrorists intent on destroying Western civilization. The Review of African Political Economy has engaged extensively with issues of conflict and security, both analysing on-going conflicts and often challenging predominant modes of explanation and interpretation. This Review of African Political Economy Reader provides a timely, comprehensive and critical contribution to contemporary debates about conflict and security on the continent. The first section, covers some of the continent's main post-Cold War conflicts and demonstrates their global connections. The articles also discuss the so-called 'resource curse', as well as the global arms trade, and reveal the complexities of the relationship between the economic and the political. The second section focuses on security as part of post-Cold War global governance, and discusses the effects of liberal peace-building as well as the link between development assistance and the 'war on terror'. The final section examines life as it continues in conditions of war and shows how insecurity reconfigures urban space, transforms social order, identities and authority. Rita Abrahamsen is Professor in the Graduate School of Publicand International Affairs, University of Ottawa, Canada Published in association with ROAPE ROAPE African Readers Series Editors: Tunde Zack-Williams & Ray Bush

Examines key contemporary accounts of the civil war and a range of subsequent texts to reveal the ideas behind the conflict and how these frame the understandings of what took place and what it means for contemporary Nigeria. The Nigeria-Biafra War lasted from 6 July 1966 to 15 January 1970, during which time the post-colonial Nigerian state fought to bring the South-Eastern region, which had seceded as the State or Republic of Biafra, back into the newly independent but ideologically divided nation. This volume discusses the trends and methodologies in the civil war writings, both fictional and non-fictional, and is the first to analyse in detail the intellectual and historical circumstances that helped to shape these often contentious texts. The recent high-profile fictional account by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie in Half of a Yellow Sun was preceded by works by Ken Saro-Wiwa, Elechi Amadi, Kole Omotoso, Wole Soyinka, Flora Nwapa, Buchi Emecheta, Chukwuemeka Ike and Chris Abani, all of which strongly convey the horrific human cost of the war on individuals and their communities. The non-fictional accounts, including Chinua Achebe's last work There Was a Country, are biographies, personal accounts and essays on the causes and course of the war, its humanitarian crises and the collaboration of foreign nations. The contributors examine writers' and protagonists' use of contemporary published texts as a means of continued resistance and justification of the war, the problems of objectivity encountered in memoirs, and how authors' backgrounds and sources determine thekinds of biases that influenced their interpretations, including the gendered divisions in Nigeria-Biafra War scholarship and sources. By initiating a dialogue on the civil war literature, this volume engages a much-needed discourse on the problems confronting a culturally diverse post-war Nigeria. Toyin Falola is the Jacob and Frances Sanger Mossiker Chair in the Humanities and University Distinguished Teaching Professor at the University ofTexas at Austin; Ogechukwu Ezekwem is a PhD student in the Department of History, University of Texas at Austin.

Examines how regional integration can resolve the crises of the Greater Horn of Africa, exploring how it can be used as a mechanism for conflict resolution, promoting the economy and tackling issues of identity and citizenship. The Greater Horn of Africa (GHA) is engulfed by three interrelated crises: various inter-state wars, civil wars, and inter-communal conflicts; an economic crisis manifested in widespread debilitating poverty, chronic food insecurity and famines; and environmental degradation that is ravaging the region. While it is apparent that the countries of the region are unlikely to be able to deal with the crises individually, there is consensus that their chances of doing so improve markedly with collective regional action. The contributors to this volume address the need for regional integration in the GHA. They identify those factors that can foster integration, such as the proper management of equitable citizenship rights, as well as examining those that impede it, including the region's largely ineffective integration scheme, IGAD, and explore how the former can be strengthened and the latter transformed; explain how regional integration can mitigate the conflicts; and examine how integration can help to energise the region's economy. Kidane Mengisteab is Professor of African Studies and Political Science at Penn State University; Redie Bereketeab is a researcher at the Nordic Africa Institute, Sweden.

The three articles in this "Discussion Paper" explore different perspectives to the complex causes of the civil war that broke out in C te d Ivoire in September 2002. They are written against the background of the signing of yet another peace agreement between the Ivorian government and the former rebel New Forces (NF) in March 2007. This volume also provides a context where the prospects for post-conflict peace, national reconciliation and democracy in C te d Ivoire could be critically analyzed.