Peacekeeping in Africa: Politics, Security and the Failure of Foreign Military Assistance

In recent decades, African states have developed an impressive infrastructure for training their peacekeepers. In addition peacekeeping, peacebuilding and associated areas in conflict resolution have become accepted areas of employment. Marco Jowell has spent a decade working in peacekeeping training in East Africa - initially as one of the foreign 'Technical Advisers' at the PSO training center in Kenya, the International Peace Support Training Centre (IPSTC) and subsequently as a strategic adviser to the Rwanda Peace Academy. Using first-hand experience he considers how military forces from a variety of African states with great differences in history, language and political systems and with militaries with different cultures and capabilities can conduct complicated multinational peacekeeping operations. He shows that regional peacekeeping training centres provide an environment for African elites, predominately military, to interact with each other through shared training and experiences. This process of interaction, or socialisation, aims to improve skills but also to forge cohesion so that future African-led missions will be managed by well trained officers who are comfortable and willing to work within a regional or Pan-African framework. Thus it can be stated that part of the aim of peacekeeping training centres is to foster a Pan-African 'outward' looking ideology or disposition as well as improving technical ability.