National, Regional, and Global Infrastructures for Peace in Africa ...

National, Regional, and Global Infrastructures for Peace in Africa: Challenges, Prospects, and Opportunities

Report on the 2018 Southern Voices Network for Peacebuilding Annual Conference

Co-Hosted by the Wilson Center Africa Program and the Institute for Peace and Security Studies at Addis Ababa University Addis Ababa, Ethiopia July 16-19, 2018

Visit to the African Union Headquarters

"National, Regional, and Global Infrastructures for Peace in Africa: Challenges, Prospects, and Opportunities"

Report on the 2018 Annual Conference of the Southern Voices Network for Peacebuilding The Institute for Peace and Security Studies

Addis Ababa, Ethiopia 16-19 July 2018

Co-hosted by: The Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars Africa Program

and The Institute for Peace and Security Studies, Addis Ababa University

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Table of Contents

About the Southern Voices Network for Peacebuilding

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From the Director

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Conference Agenda

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Conference Proceedings

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Appendices

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Participant Bios

Participant List and Contact Information

Member Organization Profiles

List of Conference Action Items and Deliverables

List of 2019 Conference Topic Suggestions

Photo Packet ? attached separately

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The Southern Voices Network for Peacebuilding

Eliciting and Applying Local Knowledge for Peacebuilding and State-building in Africa

About the Southern Voices Network for Peacebuilding

The SVNP is a continent-wide network of African policy and research organizations that works with the Wilson Center's Africa Program to bring African knowledge and perspectives to U.S. and international policy on peacebuilding in Africa in order to create a more sustainable peace. The SVNP achieves this by:

Hosting scholars from the network for a 3-month residency at the Wilson Center in Washington, D.C.

Organizing first-class conferences that link members to one another and to U.S. and African policymakers and practitioners

Producing best-in-class policy analysis through briefs, reports, and posts on the Africa Program blog, Africa Up Close

The Southern Voices Network for Peacebuilding was established in 2011 with the generous support of the Carnegie Corporation of New York.

Southern Voices Network for Peacebuilding Conferences

The Africa Program hosts annual conferences both in Washington, D.C. and on the continent to promote dialogue within the network and share important recommendations and ideas with a wider audience. It is our hope that such collaborations will be a positive contribution to Global North and Global South policy debates.

2018 Annual Conference Objectives

The theme of the 2018 conference was "National, Regional, and Global Infrastructures for Peace in Africa: Challenges, Prospects, and Opportunities." Discussions explored the nature, scale, and scope of the infrastructures in place for peacebuilding at the national, regional, and global levels; evaluated the extent to which they are functioning and meeting the continent's peacebuilding needs; and, provided best practices and ways forward for building on or reforming current infrastructures to make them more efficient and effective.

Through a four-day series of presentations, dialogue, and scholarly and policy sessions, the annual conference provided participants with the opportunity to meet with each other, and with U.S., African, and international policymakers and practitioners working on peacebuilding in Africa; to enhance individual, organizational, and network capacities and outreach through capacity-building workshops; to strengthen intra-SVNP collaboration; and to share knowledge and facilitate strategic thinking on issues critical to peacebuilding in Africa.

This publication was made possible by a grant from the Carnegie Corporation of New York. The statements made and views expressed in this paper are solely the responsibility of the authors and do not represent the views of the Wilson Center or the Carnegie Corporation of New York. For more

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information, please visit

From the Director

Dear Southern Voices Network for Peacebuilding Members and Friends:

This year, we were pleased to meet in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia on July 16-19, 2018 for the Southern Voices Network for Peacebuilding (SVNP) Annual Conference co-hosted by the Wilson Center Africa Program and the Institute for Peace and Security Studies (IPSS) at Addis Ababa University. The conference brought together 21 representatives from SVNP member organizations, as well as external speakers and practitioners. Through a series of plenary and public sessions, participants connected with one another, and shared knowledge and engaged in robust discussions on the conference theme: "National, Regional, and Global Infrastructures for Peace in Africa: Challenges, Prospects, and Opportunities."

Since 2011, the Southern Voices Network for Peacebuilding has worked to increase dialogue between members, African, U.S., and international policymakers, improve cooperation and collaboration between SVNP members, and generate and amplify African knowledge on issues of peace, security, and nation-building in Africa. The annual conference is a key component of SVNP, providing an opportunity for the leaders of member organizations to come together, update each other on their work and contributions to peacebuilding, share best practices and lessons learned, connect with policymakers, and build relationships that support collaborative projects to further advance peacebuilding in Africa.

It was especially poignant and appropriate that this year's conference was hosted in Addis Ababa-- the home of the African Union and the heart of Africa's peace and security. The conference afforded the SVNP the opportunity to dialogue with African, U.S., and international experts and to visit the African Union thus enabling us to better locate our dialogue on peacebuilding within the most prominent infrastructure for peace in Africa. We also welcomed our newest and first North African member organization, the Sadeq Institute (Libya), and external speakers joined us from the U.S. Government, the African Union, and NGO, and academic sectors to reflect on, analyze, and comment on some of the most pressing issues in peacebuilding, including: the changing nature of elections in Africa; natural resource management; gender and peacebuilding; the role of international partners in peacebuilding; country case studies of peacebuilding in Africa, as well as discussions about the African Union's peace and security architecture. In addition, participants shared challenges and approaches to increasing network impact and collaboration, working with interns to enhance institutional capacity, and research efforts from the next generation of African peacebuilders. In this regard, we were especially delighted to have been joined by IPSS participants in the executive-level Masters in Managing Peace and Security in Africa (MMAPSA) program who further enriched our discussions.

SVNP members shared their achievements and challenges from the past year as well as their goals for the future of the network. Many noted that SVNP is on an upward trajectory but that it has the potential to achieve even more. As we move toward the first decade of the SVNP, members also

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