How African Leaders Can Achieve Peace And Security In Africa? (Essay Sample)

How African Leaders can Achieve Peace and Security in Africa Author's Name Institutional Affiliations How African Leaders can Achieve Peace and Security in Africa Baruch Spinoza once said that,"Peace is not an absence of war, it is a virtue, a state of mind, a disposition for benevolence, confidence, justice." I concur. On the other hand, security can be defined as a state of being free from any kind of peril. In this essay, I give my two cents on how African leaders can ensure that peace and security is achieved and sustained in Africa. First of all, they should tackle the problem of poverty. The income and resources of most people in Africa are so inadequate that they are unable to meet their basic needs. Because of poverty, most Africans are facing starvation; and are more than willing to steal or even kill in a bid to satisfy their hunger: a hungry man is an angry man. African leaders should increase budget allocation to the agricultural sector in their respective countries; for I believe that agriculture is the foundation to any stable economy. They should boost agricultural production in their countries by increasing the area of arid and semi-arid land under irrigation; reducing the cost of farm inputs; making it easy for farmers to lease agricultural land; and encouraging agricultural extension. They should also emphasize on minimising post-harvest food loss: a lot of food is usually lost and wasted through contamination, deterioration, spoilage, and spillage. Secondly, they should address terrorism. Terrorism has claimed the lives of many Africans. Some of the terrorist groups that operate in Africa are: Al-Qaeda, Al-Shabab, and Boko Haram. The 1998 United States embassy bombing in Kenya by Al-Qaeda, and the kidnapping of 276 schoolgirls from Chibok in 2014 by Boko Haram are just but examples of acts of terrorism in Africa. In a bid to end terrorism, African leaders should beef up security along the borders of their countries; so as to prevent illegal movement of people and smuggling of arms into their countries. They should also apprehend the sympathisers and financiers of terrorist groups. Additionally, they should hunt down the leaders of terrorist groups. Thirdly, they should tackle the issue of unemployment. The high rate of unemployment among most African youth is a stimuli to lack of peace, and insecurity in most African countries. Most of the youth in Africa engage in crime because they are jobless, and thus idle: an idle mind is the devil's workshop. Therefore, the leaders should create job opportunities by investing in the sub-sectors with the greatest job creation potential for example: agriculture, manufacturing, hospitality, and retail. They should also encourage the youth to be job creators and not job seekers. They can achieve this by ensuring that the youth can easily procure loans; they can use the loans to start their own businesses and generate income from them. Furthermore, they should prevent conflicts from emerging or escalating: prevention is better than cure. Most conflicts in Africa can be linked to natural resources. Examples of some of the natural resource conflicts in Africa include: the diamond-linked conflicts in Sierra Leone and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). The main drivers of natural resource conflicts are: competition over scarce resources, poor governance of natural resources, and the tragedy of the commons. Resource scarcity can be attributed to population growth, increase in consumption rate, and environmental degradation. Therefore, on the issue of population growth, the leaders should encourage family planning so as to maintain a population which can be catered for by the available natural resources. Corruption is a big challenge when it comes to governance of most natural resources in Africa. The leaders should encourage public participation and transparency in every decision made pertaining to a given natural resource. In the case of tragedy of the commons, they should discourage open access to most, if not all, natural resources. Negotiation, mediation, or diplomacy are some of the ways they should use to resolve conflicts that have already escalated. Moreover, the leaders should bring to an end the stree...