Introduction: Hybrid Security Governance in Africa

Abstract

Security Sector Reform (SSR) programmes have not sufficiently acknowledged the fact that in Africa, security governance is based on a complex amalgam of statutory and non‐statutory actors and institutions which do form the security sector. SSR processes are more often than not focused on structural and formal institutional arrangements of the state and are generally seen as a purely technico‐institutional reform, based on techniques of organisational engineering and principles of institutional design. Consequently, security reform processes, most of the time promoted or supported by external donors, tend to be driven by an administrative view of the state which emphasises its legal structure whilst glossing over its political and social character. Today, there is a dire need to take a critical stance on the relationships between the various systems, actors and beneficiaries involved in the security sector on the African continent. This introductive article proposes to refer to the analytic model of ‘hybridity’ to grasp the current realities and the prospects of the security sector in African countries.

Ulinzi Shirikishi: Popular Experiences of Hybrid Security Governance in Tanzania

“…The assumed advantages ascribed to community police or pre‐existing local security providers echo those that have informed the adoption of participatory or community‐based approaches to development in other sectors, such as compatibility with local norms, access to local knowledge and greater local legitimacy and popularity than ‘top down’ alternatives (e.g. Bagayoko, ; Baker, : 568; Wisler and Onwudiwe, : 4).…”

“…Hybrid models of security provision, which incorporate state and non‐state actors, are expected to improve efficiency (Bagayoko, : 7; Wisler and Onwudiwe, : 5) and to offer a means of capitalizing on community‐based resources. This is particularly appealing in post‐conflict contexts where the costs of restructuring discredited state police forces may be prohibitive (Baker, : 214).…”

“…Appreciation of the range of institutions to which populations might look for protection has informed scholarly and policy‐related literature that emphasizes the potential for community‐based or other ‘non‐state’ institutions to play a role alongside state police forces in a hybrid or ‘multi‐layered’ model of security and justice provision (e.g. Bagayoko, ; Baker and Scheye, ; OECD, ). Relatedly, various forms of community policing have become ubiquitous in police reform programmes across much of the global South (Brogden, ).…”

Cutting off the King’s head: security and normative order beyond the state

“…32 Work on security governance has benefitted from this analytical shift of focus, employing notions such as 'global security assemblages' to make sense of new configurations of security governance that transcend national boundaries; 33 or analysing security governance in terms of 'hybridity' in order to move beyond simple state/non-state binaries in the analysis of complex networks of actors working in security spaces. 34 Analysts working on the everyday politics through which security is contested and negotiated have tended to find more traction in the notion of hybridity than assemblage. For example, Willems and van der Borgh (this volume) aptly demonstrate the value of thinking in terms of hybrid political orders.…”

African agency? Africa, South Africa and the BRICS

“…And finally, albeit controversially, if we go beyond the 'formal and legal' to 'gangs and guns', we can discover novel forms of African agency particularly in de facto regional conflict zones like the Great Lakes, the Horn of Africa and the Sahel and in the energy and minerals sectors (Besada, 2010;Bagayoko, 2012;Klare, 2012;Nathan, 2012). The most notable form of such agency in response to global drugs supply chains moving to West Africa is the preemptive WACD (www.wacommissionondrugs.org) supported by the Kofi Annan Foundation.…”