Revitalizing African Youth for Unity and Peace Building: Celebrating African Culture, History and Values (Published)
The study examined revitalizing African youth for unity and peace building: celebrating African culture, history and values. The study highlights the potential of African cultural revitalization to foster a sense of shared identity, pride and belonging for unity and peace building. Two research questions were raised and answered in the study. Survey design was adopted for this study. The population for this study comprised all African youth. The sample for this study was 1000 respondents. Stratified random sampling method was used to select youth while cluster sampling technique was used to select 5 countries in Africa in the study. The instrument used for data collection was a self-structured questionnaire titled “Revitalizing African Youth for Unity and Peace-building Questionnaire (RAYUPQ). The questionnaire were administered using online platform such as Google Forms and Microsoft Forms. Descriptive statistics of simple percentage, mean score and standard deviation was used to answer research questions. Benchmark of 2.50 was established to accept any item with a mean rating of 2.50 or above as agreed while any item with a mean rating less than 2.50 was regarded as disagreed for research questions. It can be concluded that revitalizing African youth for unity and peace building requires a multifaceted approach that celebrates African culture, history and values. By embracing their rich heritage, youth can develop a strong sense of identity, pride and belonging. This in turn can foster a culture of unity, tolerance and peaceful coexistence. It therefore recommended that government, traditional rulers and African leaders should integrate African culture history and values into educational curricula. Support youth-led initiatives. Foster regional collaboration. Promote cultural exchange.
Keywords: African Culture, Peace – Building, Unity, Values, history
Peace-Building Mechanism Among the Widikum of the Bamenda Grasslands, Cameroon, 1870-2014 (Published)
The quest for sustainable peace is the primary objective of every nation or society. For any society to progress, peaceful co-existence become imperative. This article examines peace building mechanisms employed by peace actors in efforts to promote peace among the Widikum of the Bamenda Grasslands,Cameroon. Though several actors to promote peace have been deployed to scale down the multifaceted land and or chieftaincy conflict in the area under study, their efforts have registered limited success as the conflicts kept resurfacing after peace agreement because most peace effort were constructed from “top to bottom” rather than from “bottom to top” to include the indigenous mechanisms, their custom and tradition and primarily the failure to use powerful and skilful experts as mediators. Both primary and secondary sources were used in the writing of this article. An analysis of the data reveals that the British approach was the best for using alternative methods of both conventional and indigenous mechanisms. The British scale down the chieftaincy and or land conflicts,as justice was dispensed based on the native custom and tradition and sustainable peace was observed.
Keywords: Actors, Peace – Building, Widikum and Bamenda Grasslands., mechanism