USA Africa Dialogue Series - Towards an African Theory of Just war!

Towards an African Theory of Just war

 Revista de Estudios Africanos, Número 1, page p.51-65. https://doi.org/10.15366/rea2020.1.003

Lawrence Ogbo Ugwuanyi

From 1957 when the first independent country emerged in Africa till date, Africa has fought  over a hundred wars[1]. These wars which have been both inter-state and intra-state wars, sometimes called civil wars, provoke philosophical questions on the meaning and notion of  war in African thought scheme. Were these wars just or not within an African conception of war- that is the means, manner and method of fighting war within the African experience? If the idea of just war were advanced through the African worldview, what principles would define it? What alternative and fresh values would be suggested by the theory? This article sets out to address these questions. To do this, the work will attempt to articulate an African theory of just war by mapping out what it would look like if it were informed by the norms, values, and micro-principles that characteristically drive philosophical enquiry in an indigenous African context. The work will draw from narratives about wars that have been fought in traditional African society as well as oral texts to achieve its position, which is roughly that a just war in African thought is war fought to protect the corporate harmony of a people who are bound and bonded together through land, the resources, and other symbols and traditions that make them distinct.

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[1] These wars are recorded in a number of literature in social science and history discourse in Africa. The wars include 1957-1958 Ifni War;1963-1967 Shifta War; 1964 Ethiopian–Somali Border War;1964-1979 Rhodesian Bush War;1965-1979 First Chadian Civil War;1966-1989 South African Border War;1967-1970 Nigerian Civil War;1975-1991 Western Sahara War;1972-1974 First Eritrean Civil War;1974-1991 Ethiopian Civil War;1975-2002 Angolan Civil War;1977-1992 Mozambican Civil War;1977 Libyan–Egyptian War;1978-1979 Uganda–Tanzania War;1980-1981 Second Eritrean Civil War;1982 Ndogboyosoi War;1982 Ethiopian–Somali Border War;1983-2005 Second Sudanese Civil War;1989-1991 Mauritania–Senegal Border War;1989-1997 First Liberian Civil War; 1990-1994 Rwandan Civil War; 1991-1994 Djiboutian Civil War;1991-2002 Sierra Leone Civil War;1991-2002 Algerian Civil War; 1993-2005 Burundian Civil War; 1993-1994; Republic of the Congo Civil War;1996-1997 First Congo War; 1998-2000 Eritrean–Ethiopian War; 1998-2003 Second Congo War;1998-1999 Guinea-Bissau Civil War; 1999-2003 Second Liberian Civil War.etc