 Good morning, everyone. My presentation is going to look at the topic on packing recent trajectories in African conflicts. What prospects for peace? I will be focusing on the West African Sahel, and I will try to make sense of the recent trajectories of conflicts in that region of Africa. I think the first thing to observe is that there has been an upward swing both in the intensity and spread of conflicts. And you can begin to isolate two major characteristics. First is the whole question of the evolving dynamics and complex nature of these conflicts. Being largely non-state actors, national actors, community-based actors, transnational actors and international community. And the second lesson, which I draw, is to show the limits of dominant paradigms of peace and security. These conflicts are complex in the sense that they both show elements of continuity and change. And in terms of actors, we can identify various new actors, newness here in relative terms. And essentially, we will focus on the non-state actors which identify as ethnic militias, Islamic militias, communal vigilantes, and more recently, private military and security contractors, as well as the various international cooperation forces, which I will come to later. And so, the scenario has actually been complicated by the return of military rulers, what I call the return of the military crats. In other words, military coup d'etat have come to complicate the picture. To go on, we do not see much of interstate conflict. What we are seeing is interstate and trans-state. Interstate in the sense that a lot of the conflicts take place within a state, but trans-state in terms of the mobility of the fighters and the ability for them to move in a very fluid manner across boundaries, both because of the geographies of conflict and because of the nature of borders and the topography of that region. And so, I argue that we are trending towards what I call complex new worlds, and this is not original to me. It's a theoretical framework that is well-known, and one of its proponents, Amy Nyang, argues that it is multifaceted. It shows that the conflicts are multifaceted and entangled in broader historical, regional, and global processes that also frame local dynamics. So therefore, it's a bit difficult to disentangle what is local from what is regional and global. And I go into the historical background very briefly, and I argue that part of the reason why we are experiencing this type of conflict is because of the unfinished business of the post-colonial nation-state formation process. And where we have arrived at the mismatch between the nature of the states that emerged after independence and the ethnically diverse and divided people who are yet to assume full citizenship and a sense of shared nationhood. The second challenge I also identify is what I call the crisis of state legitimacy. Things that I avoid the fragility and the failed state thesis. My argument is that what you have is a lack of trust in the state, and the very blurry relationship between what people see as a state, as an alien creation, an alien being that is increasingly becoming irrelevant to their everyday needs. The second issue I point to is what I call the legacies of the Cold War and the global war on terror. And I argue basically that the legacy of the Cold War is that the hegemonic ideology, the dominant ideology, has not really worked across the states of the region, and therefore people are in search of alternatives. And one of the attractive things has been the whole ideology of global Islam. But global Islam is not to be seen as an ideology in that sense. It only offers a justification and a handle within which people are able to pursue their grievances, mobilize support, and fight. The third thing I look at is what I call the crisis of globalization and localization. In other words, we have to go back three decades back to the era of structural adjustment and economic reforms of the 1980s and 1990s, and what happened to the states of the region as a result of this. And I argue that the retrenchment of the state and the privatization of a lot of public institutions has created a situation where a lot of the welfare gains that were made immediately after independence have been completely eroded, the middle class has shrunk, and a lot of people lost their jobs, lost their livelihoods. And therefore there is a mood of disenchantment that has also been further complicated by what I consider to be a youth bulge. Thirdly is a crisis of multi-party democracy. And increasingly, while the international community insists on democracy, multi-party democracy, and elections, the ordinary people are experiencing democracy more in terms of a choiceless political vent, which really does not offer them any choice and is becoming irrelevant to their everyday needs, and therefore they are looking for alternatives. And who are the social forces on the ground to offer them those alternatives? A lot of them are some of these groups that are considered to be terrorist groups, Islamist groups, ethnic organizations, and so on and so forth. And so this has provided ground for the whole question of the securitization and militarization of the Sahel, both by international forces in the international community, as well as the national governments of the region. And I argue that democracy has eroded even that aspect of securitization and militarization. Democracy has been drained of its social content, and it has created the leeway for authoritarianism and leaders who are disconnected from their people and their causes. And rather than have democracy as a system of egalitarian redistribution, what we have is a strategy for holding on to power at all costs. And because the international community basically supports these kinds of governments, people also are beginning to transfer their resentment for such governments to certain sections of the international community. I speak briefly about climate change, and I argue that it is leading to resource casualties. And these resource casualties are feeding into intensified struggles over those resources as a result of competing livelihoods and also leading to internal displacement and all kinds of frictions between mobile populations and settled populations. I argue again that when you look at ECOWAS, the G5 and the UN, their efforts, though well-intentioned, are not achieving the desired purpose. And rather what we see is that the various fighting organizations, whether you call them Islamists or whatever you bandit or whatever you call them, they are basically moving across the region, and those international interventions are not working. And ECOWAS's peace and security architecture is no longer effective. If not, the military coupists who have just seized power in Mali, Guinea, Burkina, and Faso, tried unsuccessfully in Niger, but did it in a very interesting way in Chad, will not have succeeded. I have two minutes left. I'm going to rush quickly to my conclusion. And my conclusion is that the prospects that what we require to build peace in the Sahel is a paradigm shift. And that paradigm shift will be based on the deep knowledge of the changing social dynamics and understanding of the areas of potential positive impact in the countries across the region. Africa's future lies in the hands of its youth and growing impetus for re-democratization and a generational power shift. The international community will need to understand the codes and nuances of the emerging forces of change. Drawing on research, a careful reading of alternative politics, and moving away from our moded paradigms that are first been outpaced by social struggles, innovative technologies, regional and global transformations. The way forward out of the multiple challenges facing peace in the Sahel lies in the transformation of the state and politics along radically participatory and developmental democratic lines. An alternative approach to regional geopolitics. I would come back to geopolitics when I'm doing the answer, question and answer session. And a rethinking of international interventions in the region. We need to begin to include people and their participation in politics and governance. Democracy should be on the terms of the people not imposed or modelled elsewhere and should prioritize their demands for the freedom to participate in governance and a life of dignity as equal citizens. I think I will stop here in the interest of time and I thank you for your kind attention.