Africa and The Challenges Of Security Governance In The 21st Century

Abstract

For several decades, security has been a major issue in Africa in view of the continued human brutality, pogroms, genocide, terrorism, civil wars and inter-ethnic conflicts that have continued to be recorded in the continent. Since the 1980s in particular, the continent has continued to record unprecedented violence of various kinds. The state in Africa has more or less become incapacitated as it continues to find it difficult to generate the fundamental conditions for meaningful human survival. Generally, governance is described as the overall integrative efforts of individuals who have either been elected or appointed to carry out the aims for which the modern state has been set up. Through governance, those who occupy the machineries of government are bound to the pursuit of those policies that can impact on the lives of the masses. Methodologically, the paper adopted descriptive and analytic approach. Data for the paper was sourced through the secondary means of data collection. The focus of the paper is on Africa and the challenges of security governance in the 21^st century. The study reveals that bad governance, inter-ethnic conflicts, and corruption have remained major challenges to security governance in Africa. The paper argues that the non rethinking of security issues to significantly address the basic needs of the average African has remained a major threat to Africa’s security. The paper recommends a pragmatic change and refocusing on security issues in Africa in order to arrest the bottlenecks militating against security governance in Africa.