Towards Global Peace and Sustainability: Role of Education in Peace-Building in the Great Lakes Region of Sub-Saharan Africa

Abstract

The Great Lakes Region of sub-Saharan Africa is well known for being volatile and turbulent in terms of peace and stability. For over 60 years, almost all countries in the region have experienced some kind of political and social turmoil such as civil war, coup de tat, and genocides. In 1960, the first democratically elected Congolese prime minister was assassinated. There were unprecedented social and political havoc in a nearby “other Congo” characterized by power struggle between various political and ethnic factions in the post-independence Congo Brazzaville. In Burundi and Rwanda, ethnic tensions between the Tutsi and Hutu engulfed the developmental dreams of nationalist freedom fighters until 2015. Though arguably stable, Tanzania has experienced its own share of socio-political messy including the 1998 Mwembechai and 2001 Pemba massacres. Efforts to build a sense of sustainable peace and development based on mutual understanding and socio-political harmony has brought limited success. In all these countries, the missing link in building sustainable peace and security has been a lack of education. The chapter intends to fill this gap by critically analyzing the potential role of basic education, especially pre-primary and early grades education, in sustainable peace-building in the sub-Saharan context.

Education and Peacebuilding: Analysis Based on Theory and Big Data

“…190 states are counted here (Barro-Lee et al, 2018) while almost no evidence shows that the length of schooling helps to build stability. Possible reasons can be the quantity and quality of education [25], [28], [29], the unequal access to educational resources [30], [31]. As a result, though citizens in some countries have received relatively long years of education, the knowledge they learned may be helpless to national development.…”

Implementing History Education as Strategic National Framework for Strengthening Intergroup Relations

“…The work pays particular attention to the role of history education as deliberate policy framework and the extent to which the subject matter could foster inter group relations in Africa in general and Nigeria, in particular. Ndijuye and Tandika (2020) in their studies on the role of education in peace-building in Africa's Great Lakes Region, alluded that Africa, and indeed sub-Saharan Africa is notorious for conflicts due to its volatile nature as well as the complex nature of inter group relations. In Africa, and especially after the period of colonization, it does appear that there has been the general problem of social group integration, economic management challenges and the apparent relapse into anarchy.…”

“…As a result of this development, almost all nation states in Africa namely, West, East, Central and North Africa have one way or the other experience socio-political turmoil. Ndijuye et al;(2020) maintain that there has been widespread political upheaval in many countries within the region, including the celebrated ethnic tension in Rwanda and Burundi between the Hutus and Tutsis; the Mwembechai conflict in 1998 and the Pemfa crisis of 2001.…”