ABSTRACT
While inter-state conflict in Africa has diminished greatly in recent years,2 a disturbing escalatory trend exists in the total magnitude and in the occurrences of violent conflicts within African States. Reports from different African countries like DR Congo, Somalia, Eritrea, Rwanda, Burundi, Liberia, Ethiopia, Ivory Coast and Nigeria, to mention but a few, reveal that Africa is witnessing an increasing incidence of socio-economic and political conflict. These conflicts have decimated large areas, reduced fragile socio-political and economic relations within states into hostility and chaos, and led many newly emergent and long-established states to the brink of structural collapse.3
