The continued relevance of peacebuilding within external interventions in Africa is being questioned in this paper. The relevance of peacebuilding means not only dealing with the causes of conflicts passed, but also engaging with the harbingers of violence. These harbingers are the effects of inequality, prolonged through networks of obligation within patronage-based political systems that encourage the ambitious to harness localised grievances and conditions of impoverishment, and translate these into violence. If current trends prevail, future conflicts in Africa will be about
the collective denial of individual rights in order to maintain and extend current
configurations of power.
