Introduction

Post-colonial Africa is a veritable theatre of conflicts. In the last 40 years, it recorded over 80 forceful changes of government in which at least 24 Heads of State lost their lives.¹ As late as 1996, about 14 of Africa's 53 countries were engaged in armed conflicts simultaneously.² In the 1990s alone, Africa witnessed no less than nine serious conflicts, among which the most serious ones included the genocidal Tutsi/Hutu civil war in Rwanda; the inter-clan imbroglio in Somalia; the bloodbath in Liberia; the civil unrest in Uganda, the long-standing ethno-religious civil war in southern Sudan; the protracted Angolan civil war; the secessionist insurgency in southern Senegal; the Kabila-led insurgency which toppled the Mobutu government in former Zaire; the violent power struggle in the Democratic Republic of Congo; the murderous Koromah rebellion in Sierra Leone and the ongoing politico-religious slaughter in Algeria.³ Sadiq Rasheed, writing on the displacement of Africans by these ubiquitous conflicts noted in 1993 that:

Some eight million Africans are believed to have been turned into refugees and a further 40 million have become displaced in their own countries because of war, draught and conflict. Indeed, 10 African countries are currently suffering from tragic human losses, massive population displacement and indignities wrought by senseless violence and instability.⁴

Salim Ahmed Salim, Secretary-General of the Organization for African Unity (OAU), sums the consequence of this African profile of conflicts: His words:

They are generating millions of refugees and displaced persons in Africa. They are subjecting generations of Africans to violence, hatred and destruction.⁵

Although it is true, as David Weeks noted, that conflict is an inevitable outcome of diversity,⁶ Africa (with its diversity) has had a disproportionate number of conflicts. The debilitating consequences of this plethora of conflicts have made the study of conflicts and the search for peace in Africa a subject of scholarship. This paper is a contribution to this concern. It addresses the involvement of the African military in peace keeping in African conflicts. However, this cannot be treated in isolation. First, such involvement is determined by the causes, course and nature of given conflicts. For this reason, this paper devotes its second part to a brief review of the nature and factors of conflicts in Africa. The third section considers the mechanism for conflict resolution in post-colonial Africa. This is because the involvement of the military in such conflicts takes place sequel to, or simultaneously with, political efforts at conflict resolution. The fourth section discusses the role of the African military in peacekeeping in African conflicts. The paper concludes with a brief review of the limitations of the African military and why it has not been and cannot be infallible in the resolution of African conflicts.

(ii) Nature and Factors of Conflicts in Africa

Conflicts in Africa have been broadly classified into inter state and intra-state conflicts⁷ E.A. Erksine identifies three variants of inter state conflicts⁸:

(a) Struggle for National Liberation and Independence e.g. SWAPO against South A