Overview
- Offers a comparative study of three armed ethnic conflicts in three East African countries, in order to deepen our understanding of the political and transnational dimensions of ethnic conflict
- Argues that poor political governance and misuse of power by elites, rather than resource competition, ethnic diversity, or climate change, are the most fundamental causes of internal ethnic conflict
- Suggests political solutions to mitigate armed conflicts in Africa
Part of the book series: African Histories and Modernities (AHAM)
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About this book
From Darfur to the Rwandan genocide, journalists, policymakers, and scholars have blamed armed conflicts in Africa on ancient hatreds or competition for resources. Here, Tsega Etefa compares three such cases—the Darfur conflict between Arabs and non-Arabs, the Gumuz and Oromo clashes in Western Oromia, and the Oromo-Pokomo conflict in the Tana Delta—in order to offer a fuller picture of how ethnic violence in Africa begins. Diverse communities in Sudan, Ethiopia, and Kenya alike have long histories of peacefully sharing resources, intermarrying, and resolving disputes. As he argues, ethnic conflicts are fundamentally political conflicts, driven by non-inclusive political systems, the monopolization of state resources, and the manipulation of ethnicity for political gain, coupled with the lack of democratic mechanisms for redressing grievances.
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Keywords
- Conflict resolution in Africa
- history of ethnic conflicts
- the Darfur conflict
- Gumuz and Oromo conflict
- Orma-Pokomo conflict
- armed violence in Africa
- center-periphery relations in Africa
- chronic marginalization in Africa
- Tana Delta
- African political elites
- African resource management
- democratic governance in Africa
Table of contents (9 chapters)
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Front Matter
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Back Matter
Authors and Affiliations
About the author
Tsega Etefa is Associate Professor of History and Africana and Latin American Studies at Colgate University, New York, USA.
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: The Origins of Ethnic Conflict in Africa
Book Subtitle: Politics and Violence in Darfur, Oromia, and the Tana Delta
Authors: Tsega Etefa
Series Title: African Histories and Modernities
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-10540-2
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Cham
eBook Packages: History, History (R0)
Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG, part of Springer Nature 2019
Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-030-10539-6Published: 25 February 2019
eBook ISBN: 978-3-030-10540-2Published: 01 February 2019
Series ISSN: 2634-5773
Series E-ISSN: 2634-5781
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: XIX, 271
Number of Illustrations: 4 b/w illustrations
Topics: African History, Political History, Conflict Studies, Peace Studies