Rethinking the Search for Permanent Peace in Africa’s Fragile States: The Governance and Service Delivery Outlooks
Rethinking and pursuing permanent peace in fragile African states constitutes predominant complexities and challenges. Fragile states in Africa experience a continuum of cyclical violence, political instability, and socio-economic underdevelopment despite international interventions through peacebuilding and foreign assistance. The enduring political fragility portrays the fundamental failure of governance systems and systemic public service delivery, perpetuated by socio-economic inequality, exclusion, and citizen disillusionment. This paper disparagingly evaluates and analyses the overriding peacebuilding paradigms. Its argument is based on assessing traditional and externally imposed models that have overshadowed mainly the central domestic governance structures and the significant contribution of legitimacy, local ownership, and institutional resilience. Examining the historical and contemporary dynamics, the study reveals that driving conflict and undermining sustainable peace range from neo-patrimonial state practices, state elites’ interests, and systemic corruption, downgrading the key demographic groups and basic social and economic infrastructures. The study reveals the profound structural weaknesses that plunge Africa’s fragile states into vulnerability traps. Concluding from the empirical evidence and detailed case studies from countries such as the Democratic Republic of Congo, Somalia, and the Central African Republic, to mention a few, the paper discovers how governance failures limited access to service delivery, such as justice, poor education, health, physical infrastructures, and social capital. The analysis postulates that peacebuilding efforts will remain unpredictable, short-lived, and susceptible to reversion without transformative change in fragile states’ governance and service delivery. Therefore, the paper calls for a decisive approach— from reactive, security-focused interventions to proactive, governance-centred strategies rooted in inclusive political settlements, civic participation, decentralised decision-making, and long-term institution-building. The paper stresses that peace involves establishing political and administrative structures characterised by transparency, accountability, responsiveness, and equity.
