Exploring the challenges of structural peacebuilding in Sub-Saharan Africa : a case study of peacebuilding in post-civil war Somalia 2013 to 2018

Abstract

There is a growing consensus in the discipline of International Relations that the sovereign nation state, particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa, is a myth because of the several nations that can be found within one sovereign entity, made so by the Berlin conference of 1885 that partitioned Africa. Regardless of this consensus, international peacebuilding theory and practice is biased towards maintaining these sovereign arrangements that were created during the colonial periods by European colonizers. This bias is caused by several epistemic colonialities nested within a wider colonial matrix of power. Peacebuilding in Somalia presents an example of how these biases affect peace in a multiethnic, multiclan, and diverse society.