The absence of a strong external military threat for Africa has created an atmosphere whereby attempts at institutionalizing pan-Africanism are typically weak and it has typically been through the pressures of crises (warfare, famines and geopolitical competition) that more substantive efforts at regional cooperation have emerged.

West Africa has experienced evolving violence since independence, first by recording the highest share of military coup frequency in Africa between 1960 and 1989, then in the Mano River regional crisis of 1989-2003, and finally terrorism in the Lake Chad region and the Liptako-Gourma region from 2010 till date.

Many West African countries have disparities between their northern and southern regions that conventional economic literature can neither explain nor solve. Across West Africa, there is a growing case for thinking about these shared disparities from a regional lens. 

Due to Islamic regulations uniquely governing the lives of Muslims even in the public sphere, more non-Muslims need to understand and engage with Islam.

Is Africa’s current state of ‘underdevelopment’ directly related to the fact that millions of Africans did not die, suffer and become dispossessed in ancient wars of state formation and expansion?