Professor Alex de Waal from Tufts University will discuss his latest book, The Real Politics of the Horn of Africa: Money, War and the Business of Power.
Monday, February 22, 2016
4:30 PM
10383 Bunche Hall
Los Angeles, CA 90095
Alex de Waal will discuss his latest book, The Real Politics of the Horn of Africa: Money, War and the Business of Power (Polity Press, September 2015), which draws on his thirty-year career in Sudan, Ethiopia, Eritrea and Somalia, including experience as a participant in high-level peace talks. The book provides a unique and compelling account of how these countries' leaders run their governments, conduct their business, fight their wars and, occasionally, make peace. De Waal shows how leaders operate on a business model, securing funds for their political budgets which they use to rent the provisional allegiances of army officers, militia commanders, tribal chiefs and party officials at the going rate. This political marketplace is eroding the institutions of government and reversing statebuilding and it is fueled in large part by oil exports, aid funds and western military assistance for counter-terrorism and peacekeeping. His book is described as a sharp and disturbing book with profound implications for international relations, development and peacemaking in the Horn of Africa and beyond.
Alex de Waal is Executive Director of the World Peace Foundation and a Research Professor at The Fletcher School. Considered one of the foremost experts on Sudan and the Horn of Africa, his scholarship and practice has also probed humanitarian crisis and response, human rights, HIV/AIDS and governance in Africa, and conflict and peacebuilding. Professor de Waal received a D.Phil. from Oxford for his thesis on the 1984-1985 Darfur famine in Sudan. He worked for several Africa-focused human rights organizations, focusing on the Horn of Africa, and especially on avenues to peaceful resolution of the second Sudanese Civil War. He also researched the intersection of HIV/AIDS, poverty and governance, and initiated the Commission on HIV/AIDS and Governance in Africa.
Co-sponsored by the UCLA Department of Political Science
Pay-by-space & all-day ($12) parking available in lot 3.
Cost : Free and open to the public
UCLA African Studies Center3108253686
africa@international.ucla.edu http://www.international.ucla.edu/africa
Sponsor(s): African Studies Center, Political Science