Invest in Africa’s peacebuilding research — Bryan Acheampong

African governments and private sector institutions have been urged to invest in peacebuilding research to proffer home-grown solutions to the emerging peace building challenges on the continent. 

Describing peacebuilding as a collective responsibility of state and non-state actors, the Minister of Agriculture, Bryan Acheampong, explained that investing in peacebuilding research, institutional development, and capacity building through such partnerships would also contribute to addressing African challenges by African scholars as well as global challenges from an African perspective.

“Funding for peacebuilding research remains largely controlled by a few international actors mostly in the Global North.

“Emerging peacebuilding approaches place emphasis on localisation necessitating that peacebuilding academia embraces new partnerships which enforce Global South cooperation in developing African research agendas,” Mr Acheampong, who is a former Minister of State at the Ministry of the Interior said at the 12th joint graduation ceremony of the Kofi Annan International Peacekeeping Training Centre (KAIPTC). 

Graduation

The graduation was on the theme “Educating the Next Generation of Peacebuilders in Africa”.

 In all, 37 students graduated from KAIPTC’s master’s degree programmes.

They are Master of Arts Degree in Gender, Peace and Security, Master of Arts Degree in Conflict, Peace and Security, Executive Master of Arts degree in Conflict, Peace and Security, Weekend Master of Arts degree in Conflict, Peace and Security, and Weekend Master of Arts degree in Gender, Peace and Security.

The KAIPTC Commandant, Major General Richard Addo Gyane, urged the graduates to collaborate with the public and private organisations to address the myriad challenges facing the continent.

“By working hand-in-hand, you will leverage resources and expertise to ensure that no youth is left behind in the pursuit of knowledge and peace,” he said.  

To ensure sustainable peace, Maj. Gen. Gyane, said KAIPTC endeavoured to provide its students with quality education that reflects good leadership, conflict resolution skills, empathy, high moral standards that fights corruption. 

He underscored the need to be conscious of the warning signals that portend trouble and conflict situations while forging the right relationships with members of the ccademia to address emerging situations that affected the continent.

“To this end, we must be able to apply the intuitive and analytical skills we have gleaned from the KAIPTC to guide discussions on best practices and the best attitude to handle the different social strata that we might find ourselves in.

This way, we would have played the key role that our current educational status has bestowed on us, as critical thinkers who are not easily cowed into replacing right with wrong, but insist on transparency and fairplay with a huge dose of integrity,” he said.