THE African continent at a time when Africa is suffering from acute crises and live in a state of perpetual tension, infight and civil war. Unfortunately, the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) has been in a state of hibernation. It is similar to the OIC, just a name without well-defined tasks. Everyone seems to enjoy the “ Picnic” while the African continent suffers from regional wars, drought and poverty.

The African people have regained their freedom from the colonial powers. But most of these nations failed to reshape their destiny through the democratic process, dialogue and cooperation. This very aspect has been highlighted by the Algerian leader Abdelaziz Bouteflika in which he said that the OAU should find a mechanism to resolve through peaceful means the regional conflicts in the African continent. However, African leaders listen, agree but fail to act! Africa seems to be in a state of war with itself. After the devastating civil wars in Congo, it is now the crisis in the Horn of Africa, where Ethiopia and Eritrea arc fighting a renewed war of attrition along their 620-mile border. In Sierra Leone, a rebel army stepped up fighting against UN peace-keepers.

The waging of war on the African continent is nothing new it has ebbed and flowed with the decades. By the end of the 20th century, Africa had more major armed conflicts than any other continent. But today’s fighting is especially troubling, because it comes in the wake of democratic progress, because it flies in the face of the international community, and because it is visible to the world.

First, African countries arc beginning to fight across international borders, as is the case in Congo and Ethiopia-Eritrea. In many cases, this stems from a collapse of the cold-war security balance that was maintained by the US and the Soviet Union. Simply put, today’s African leaders perceive that they have the ability to take matters into their own hands.

The second pattern, is the continued implosion of weak States, such as Sierra Leone. Lacking strong infrastructure and regional powers to keep the peace, these countries are becoming the personal fiefdoms of those who are in power. The danger of this scenario is that the chaos could spread, as rogue leaders try to destabilise their neighbours. The perpetual crisis in Nigeria has wasted years of progress and prosperity. Also, as is the case with Sierra Leone, the implosion of national institutions can lead to complicated rivalries and countless factions. That makes peace agreements and reconciliation more difficult.

The cause of the crises in Africa dates back to European colonialism. The colonial experience fostered weak States and artificial boundaries in which countries were forced to compete for scarce resources.

Colonialism eventually gave out to cold-war domination, when the Soviets and the US played African groups against one another and armed them with weapons that are still in use today.

When the colonial powers quit, they left behind smouldering and intractable conflicts. They created a security vacuum. Today the blame is on the international powers, which are accused of not doing enough to help, and the African people. A third factor is a combination of a failed policy of the government owning everything and horrific corruption. And if economics are a cause, weapons are the means. According to the US Bureau of Intelligence and Research, countries are increasingly looking to Africa to unload cold-war stocks of inexpensive weapons like AK-47s. In some instances, such as in Ethiopia, countries are buying fighter aircraft or attack helicopters when their own people are near starvation. American Government and defence industry are also partially to blame in the arms game, according to the New York-based World Policy Institute. The US has helped build the arsenals of eight of the nine governments directly involved in the war that has ravaged Congo, thereby contributing in the miseries of Africa.

Large-scale trafficking in light weapons has been singled out as a major cause of the wars being waged in large parts of Africa.

A report by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute also reports that Africa has more major armed conflicts than any other continent. The report identified 11 major armed conflicts in Africa making the continent the world’s worst conflict zone for the first time since 1989. A “major armed conflict” is defined as one with at least 1,000 battle-related deaths. Over eight million of the roughly 22 million refugees around the world were in Africa with millions more Africans internally displaced.

The proliferation of light weapons on the continent — AK-47 automatic rifles, rocket-propelled grenade launchers, mortars, and land mines — is also fuelling the war and conflicts. In some countries an AK-47 automatic rifle can be bought for as little as $6. While the availability of weapons did not cause Africa’s wars, it has prolonged them and made them more lethal. Africa has proved an attractive market for nations and manufacturers eagre to get rid of arms stocks made superfluous by the end of the Cold War, or by technological developments. Although the volume of arms transfers in Africa is not as great as in some other parts of the world, the impact of arms trafficking on Sub-Saharan Africa’s politically fragile countries has been catastrophic. Many of the people trafficking arms to Africa are former military or intelligence officers and operatives from the apartheid government in South Africa.

On a national scale, major arms producers like Russia, China, Belarus, Brazil, Bulgaria, North Korea, Romania, and Slovakia, and sources within Africa such as Uganda, South Africa, Sudan, or Zimbabwe have flooded Africa with weapons.

Diamond sales, illegal wildlife trafficking and the sale of stolen relief aid are among the ways in which non-government militia raise funds to buy weapons. The wars in Africa have increasingly taken on a regional character, especially in the Horn, the Great Lakes region, and southern Africa. The wars by proxy have also contributed in spreading conflicts over wide areas with official and unofficial Armed Forces forming alliances across national boundaries. Conflicts continue in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Zimbabwe, Angola, Congo-Brazzaville, Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Rwanda Somalia and Sudan. Low-intensity conflicts plague several countries, including Burundi, Chad, Djibouti, Senegal and Uganda. It is about time that the Organisation of African Unity should act very quickly and decisively to end armed conflict in Africa. This can be achieved through activating the proposal of the Egyptian President, which calls for the establishment of a unified African Army with a specific mission of ending conflicts and peace-keeping.