Editorial
In our frst article, Ruth T. Nyamadzawo refects on ways to confront and address the challenges of xenophobia in South Africa. The article presents details of a study conducted on xenophobic sentiments amongst both local and migrant adolescents living in South Africa and how addressing issues of xenophobia at a younger age is an important intervention. It is argued that addressing xenophobia amongst the youth could empower young people to be agents of change and help them to become peacebuilders in their communities rather than perpetuating existing xenophobic sentiments.
The edition then shifts from Southern Africa, to West Africa. Gideon Ofosu-Peasah writes about violence in the region of Bawku, in northern Ghana.
The violence in Bawku, not only has links to the terrorism that has destabilised neighbouring states, but it is also fuelled by internal drivers of confict.
These drivers, according to the article, include protracted conficts relating to the chieftaincy of the region, political tensions and commercial interests.
These drivers then push people towards terrorist activities and fuel instability and confict in the region.
Many countries in Central Africa share rivers, lakes and aquifers, with the Lake Chad and Congo River basins both spanning across a number of diferent countries. In order to prevent the abuse of these water resources, Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) is an important confict prevention tool.
Michèle Nken Okala writes about IWRM and the international and regional frameworks in place to prevent and manage water related conficts in Central Africa. However, the efectiveness of these frameworks are hindered by limited ratifcation of conventions and issues of non-adherence to the frameworks by states in the region.
In Nigeria, there has been a growing impact of confict and violence in rural areas. Joseph Ochogwu discusses the perception that while urban areas are known for their high levels of crime, poverty and violence, rural areas are often considered to be areas where communities are tight knit, making them less prone to violence and confict. However, in Nigeria, rural areas can be hotspots for violent conficts as is illustrated by the increase in terrorism, banditry, kidnappings and insurgencies in the northern regions of the country. This, it is argued, means that there is a ruralisation of violence in Nigeria, where there is a shift of focus of conficts from urban to rural areas.
Many African countries struggle to address the issue of inequality in their societies and Kenya is no exception. Sylvan Odidi discusses the relationship between horizontal inequalities and violent conficts in the country. Horizontal inequalities refers to the inequalities experienced across diferent culturally defned groups. In the case of Kenya, perceptions of certain ethnic groups being politically favoured, and certain regions in the country being more and better developed than others has caused tensions within society and has led to violent conficts. This article details these horizontal inequalities and the violent conficts attributed to them, and ofers recommendations on how to address these issues.
Finally, the last article in this edition discusses the evolving security landscape in Africa and what the implications might be for the question of Western Sahara. The confict in Western Sahara is rooted in a question of self-determination, as Morocco claims the territory as its own, while the Polisario Front has agitated for independence for the territory for decades. Dimitris Symeonidis writes about the current security climate, the evolving roles of Russia and Turkiye on the continent and regional dynamics and how these factors could potentially impact on the current status of the Western Sahara confict. xenophobic practices