Madariaga - College of Europe Foundation

9:00 - Tuesday, 22 September 2009

Roundtable on Natural Resources and Conflict Prevention in Africa - United Nations Conference  Centre, Addis Ababa

Natural resources and the environment play a crucial role as driving or supporting factors in conflict, especially in Africa, where a large proportion of African society remains generally dependent on the environment and natural resource endowments. Yet natural resource dynamics remain either ignored, when the analysis of conflicts are oversimplified, or masked by the complexity of a conflict, while it might be a critical cause or contributor. As a result policy interventions do not address these critical issues.

These dynamics have to be considered in depth, both with a view to generating a deeper understanding of conflicts in Africa and in an effort to develop policy interventions aimed at tackling the link between natural resources and conflicts within the continent.

To this aim the Madariaga – College of Europe Foundation and the African Centre for the Constructive Resolution of Disputes (ACCORD) organised a Roundtable on Tuesday 22nd September in Addis Ababa, at the United Nations Conference Centre.  The event was organised with the support of the European Commission’s services.

The discussions were underpinned by a research paper prepared by ACCORD that provided an Africa civil society perspective on the role of natural resources in conflicts, and developed a wide-ranging analysis on the case studies of Democratic Republic of Congo, Burundi and Sudan.  

Download here the ACCORD Paper on "Natural Resources and the Environment in African Conflicts: An African Civil Society Perspective on Conflict in Burundi, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Sudan".

Please find here a Brief Survey of the EU's activities, prepared by the Madariaga - College of Europe Foundation.

Read the Roundtable Final Report in  English and  French.

Other documents:  

Concept Paper

Background Paper

Draft Programme

For more information contact This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .