Strategic Governance to “Silence the Guns” in Africa: Urban Sub-Saharan African Perceptions on War's Root Causes.

Despite the African Union’s campaign to silence the guns in Africa by 2020 (STGIA 2020), many African countries are suffering from wars and political instability, the primary causes of underdevelopment in Africa. This paper examines the roots causes of wars in Africa and provide a strategic governance to silence the guns beyond 2020. To accomplish this, we gathered data from 169 questionnaire responses administered across 25 African countries, to capture African people’s perceptions on the root causes of wars and whether employing strategic governance would help silence the guns in these countries. The results showed that political power struggle (47.9%), ethnic conflict (17.8%), religious discrimination (10.7 %), land disputes (8.3 %) and chieftaincy disputes (7.1 %) were considered the biggest driving forces of wars in the Africa, whereas no understanding causes of wars, poverty, hunger and poverty, corruption, terrorism, Western influence, instigations by Western powers, ignorance and poor leadership have a relatively lower influence. Half the participants proposed poverty alleviation measures as a significant strategy to silence the guns. Finally, most participants believed that good governance and social accountability could contribute toward silencing of the guns in Africa.