ABSTRACT
This chapter unravels the relationship between the African state and the privatization of force and violence, and uses private security as a lens through which to explore broader transformations of the contemporary state. It argues that what is at stake in security privatization is much more than a simple transfer of previously public tasks to private actors. The chapter shows that the rise of private security actors cannot be understood simply with reference to state weakness or state failure, wherein the rise of the private is necessarily at the expense of the public in a zero-sum power struggle. It also argues that contemporary security provision and governance take place within global security assemblages that include a multiplicity of public and private, and global and local actors. The chapter provides a bird's-eye view of private security actors in Africa. Private security, in all its various forms, has become ubiquitous in contemporary Africa.
