A critical assessment of security challenges in West Africa

West Africa, like all other regions of the African continent, has been faced with a multitude of security challenges since the end of European colonisation in the region in the early 1960s.1 And as most West African countries celebrate 50 years of independence in the year 2010, which the African Union (AU) has proclaimed as the “Year of Peace”, many of these challenges remain acute. In fact, in the introduction to their 2005 publication, Crisis of the State in West Africa, Fawole and Ukeje contend that West Africa, perhaps more than any other sub-region in Africa, ‘has acquired the unenviable notoriety as a veritable theatre of violent conflicts, political instability and state implosions. Adekeye Adebajo concurs with this characterisation of the region, describing it as ‘among the world’s most unstable regions.'

This paper aims to appraise and map the security challenges that have faced West African countries since independence with a special focus on the period after 1990. It also assesses the efforts made by various national, regional, continental and extra-African actors and makes suggestions on how the shortcomings in these efforts could be improved.