Prior to a tentative analysis of the interplay between Poverty, Conflict and External Development Interventions some results of the Causes of Conflict in the Third World study executed by the Dutch Institute of Foreign Relations, on the role of socioeconomic factors and notably poverty and inequality will be highlighted. In this paper it is contended that if poverty is conceived as the end result of a political process by which specific groups become marginal or are deprived of their resource base, its mobilizing capacity increases manifold. Furthermore, clusters of socioeconomic factors, interacting in context specific conjunctions, increase the "conflict proneness" within societies. Important elite groups within the prevailing political power structure of a state will try to capitalize upon feelings of discontent arising from the socioeconomic background conditions of specific groups. In the first section on Poverty, general trends in Sub Saharan Africa and their significance regarding the possible outbreak of violent conflict are highlighted. A distinction is made between rural and urban poverty situations, while the uneven character of entitlements distribution concerning natural resources among contending stakeholder groups is discussed. In the following section a number of conflict case studies are presented analyzed from the perspective of changing socioeconomic conditions affecting stakeholder groups and the clash of interests between such actors and powerful elite groups vying for scarce resources. The third section addresses the issue of inequality between groups within states in Sub Saharan Africa. It is shown that patterns of relative poverty provide a strong incentive for groups to engage in violent conflict, as so-called power brokers can manipulate feelings of marginalization. Furthermore, the impact of macro-economic developments on fragile states is used to illustrate complex dynamics of inter-group competition in situation of unequal distribution of goods and services, in turn caused by preferential treatment of specific groups by state elite to the detriment of others. Additionally, the fragility of the state and lack of legitimacy in Sub Saharan Africa is briefly assessed in the following section. Another section sketches the impact of a number of external interventions on conflict prone developments in Sub Saharan States. Most of these interventions have had adverse effects on the recipient societies and led to enhanced vulnerability regarding the possible outbreak of violent conflicts in the near future. The final section contains some conclusions, including suggestions for improving external interventions.

The analysis presented in this paper attributes patterns of group Poverty and Inequality to the outcome of the political process in many Sub Saharan States. Through a multitude of factors states have become weaker, leading to increased competition for scarce resources between contending political elite groups. As a result many stakeholder groups have become disenfranchised, and this, in turn enables disgruntled elite to mobilize such groups into violence mostly leading to protracted internal conflict.

It is widely acknowledged that violent conflicts always have structural socioeconomic underpinnings, but the precise nature of the relationship remains puzzling.

In many parts of the world there is widespread poverty and enormous socioeconomic inequality between constituent groups within states. Nevertheless, violent conflicts worldwide do not necessarily occur in the poorest or most deprived countries. So far there seems to be no significant correlation between the incidence of violent internal conflict within states and patterns of poverty. Therefore, a simplistic direct correlation between socioeconomic factors, notably poverty, and violent conflicts cannot be established.

In the research on "Causes of conflict in the Third World (CODW)", executed by the Netherlands Institute of International Relations, ‘ Clingendael’, relationships between various clusters of factors in the countries under study and the life cycle of violent conflicts in these societies have been studied. In this study, the Conflict Research Unit of the Clingendael Institute has focused on three major clusters, the political-military factors, the socioeconomic factors and external interventions. The aim of the CODW research was to try to determine possible causal relationships between various factors and the outbreak of violent conflicts within states. Briefly summarizing the conclusions, it was found that by and large the political interplay between sub state actors, such as local stakeholder groups and their leaders, and the state is linked directly to the outbreak of violent conflicts. The socioeconomic factors mostly were used to mobilize support from among destitute or marginalized population groups by so-called power brokers to engage in violence against powerful elite groups or the state elite. Simultaneously, socioeconomic factors such as widespread poverty, considerable inequality between societal groups and economic decline or stagnation, sometimes aggravated the perspective for a peaceful settlement of violent conflicts. External interventions played a role as aggravating or de-escalating factors, prolonging or amplifying violent conflicts once they were ignited, or enforcing a brokered solution. Conflict cycles are characterized by the interplay of various factors whereby different mobilizing factors in fact succeeded each other.

Only multi causal explanations can explain the origin of violent conflicts. The ongoing search for weighing the relative importance of individual factors as well as finding the relevant combination of factors has increased our understanding about the outbreak and course of violent conflicts. Nevertheless, a consensus about a general explanatory model has not yet materialized among the international community of conflict researchers.

Poverty is a widespread and persistent characteristic of all Sub Saharan African countries. Furthermore, within most states there is a huge gap between a small elite group, an embryonic middle class and an impoverished mass of peasants and urban poor. In the wake of political independence of many African states, the former colonizers and other so-called advanced or developed states have initiated activities and programs targeting the most deprived and poor segments of these societies. Although some improvements have been accomplished in the fields of health care, education as well as economic development, the material well-being of the vast majority of Africans has not improved substantially over this period. In fact poverty remains the most pervasive feature of livelihood of Africans, urban and rural dwellers alike. During the post-colonial period the Sub Saharan region has witnessed a substantial number of violent conflicts, mostly within states between contending ethno-political entities manipulated by rivaling political elite groups. Regardless of the ideological facade of a given regime, the principles of co-optation and exclusion, have formed the basis of the prevailing political system. Political leaders in Sub Saharan Africa have held on to power, time and again, by mobilizing client groups through the distribution goods and services in order defend their interests in the face of resistance from contending elite groups or against incursions of outsiders. Behind the current crises and political disarray in many African states lies the complex interaction between various stakeholders with regard to the access and struggle over the control of scarce economic resources. In many cases poverty and inequality are perceived as the blatant and conscious result of purposeful policies of exclusion and discrimination initiated by the incumbent power elite of a particular ethnic, religious or linguistic group.

Sub Saharan Africa, despite a rapid urbanization trend, currently remains overwhelmingly rural in character. Living conditions of the majority of people are harsh and largely dependant on climatic, physical natural conditions and a complex pattern of on – and off-farm activities involving different members of extended families seasonally employed in a whole range of activities. In Sub Saharan Africa, furthermore, the prevailing agricultural techniques and livelihood strategies have remained virtually unchanged for a substantial period. Consequently, in the rural setting poverty initially was not perceived as the outcome of power struggles between stakeholders in society since climatic and other structural factors had a more decisive impact on living conditions. Poverty in absolute terms, therefore, appears to relate to predominant livelihood strategies of population groups and reflects the current state of development. Nevertheless, the ongoing process commonly referred to as ‘ land pressure’, due to steady growth of population and cattle, has lead to increased scarcity and has shifted attention to political decision making in the rural context. Gradually, the struggle for access to natural resources, notably land, grazing areas and water, has emerged as a crucial livelihood issue in various parts of the Sub Saharan Region. Various stakeholders are involved in these struggles, including absentee owners of land and cattle, who compete with local user groups for these scarce resources. If local users are confronted with powerful outsider elite groups closely linked to the state, violent conflicts will more likely emerge, as local elite will try to mobilize these constituencies into organized resistance movements.

In the urban context, conditions are rapidly changing and traditional patterns of social networks tend to loose out to modern anonymous market relations between individuals. In this setting poverty is personalized and hence individuals are more vulnerable to changes in their own livelihood opportunities. So-called power brokers, emerging from among the ranks of disenfranchised politicians, opposition leaders or traditional leaders fearing loss of power, will try to capitalize upon the discontent of such urban poor.

Additionally, precious resources such as minerals or oil have become sources for intense political struggle between elite groups in most Sub Saharan states. These groups have repeatedly manipulated the existing ethnic diversity in order to enforce a military victory on adversaries, resulting in a proliferation of intrastate warfare. This process has emerged as a structural underpinning of some of the recent violent intrastate conflicts in the region (Liberia and Sierra Leone to name a few). In some cases protagonist groups successfully try to take on the state in order to legitimize their claims on such precious resources. Such insurgencies can easily feed on the processes of marginalisation and deprivation of both rural and urban constituencies. In other cases the incumbent state elite manages to effectively protect its interests by using military force to repress the population and competing elite groups. In the latter case the disenfranchised citizens have few options to survive in the formal economy, turning either to migration, to self sufficiency in agriculture or choosing an activity from among a proliferation of alternative survival strategies (black marketeering, informal economy, smuggling). Moreover, control over the gains of economic exploitation of available natural resources as well as over the state apparatus itself tends to reinforce continuity in power for the elite group concerned. Hence, efforts aimed at change, such as the recent democratization trend, have met with strong resistance from the incumbent regimes in the various African states.

The democratization trend in Sub Saharan Africa has sometimes resulted in power transfers but in many cases led to increased polarization between population groups and to the emergence of violent conflicts. In this political context states cannot live up to the expectations nor fulfill mandates that have emerged in the contemporary political landscape of the Western World. With the state actor neutralized as a potential mediator to sooth the inequality issue within the continent, the outcome of the poverty issue has become linked to that of the political power struggle itself. The prevailing mode of distribution of income and resources leaves little perspective for structural change in the short term. The question of inclusive governance has become crucial if the poverty issue is to be tackled effectively.

From this section it is concluded that structural factors determine the impact of recent demographic and socioeconomic developments in the rural and the urban setting, which have progressively led to situations of scarcity, in which stakeholders groups are confronting each other directly in a zero-sum confrontation. Mineral resources have added an extra dimension to this struggle as the incumbent state elite depends on the revenues from such resources to survive. The competition for access to such sources of income takes place at various levels; between stakeholders groups at the local level, between local groups and the state and between competing elite groups at the state level. The following section highlights some examples of these different levels of conflict and aims to clarify a number of context specific linkages between the different socioeconomic factors involved.

In Niger, at the end of the 1980s, a minority nomadic group, the Tamajaq, rebelled openly against the state in a bid for a more equitable resource distribution. Structural factors in this conflict were the historical formation of the state of Niger, whereby the erstwhile powerful Tamajaq groups had been militarily defeated at the beginning of the century by the French followed by the abolishment of slavery destroying the backbone of their political economy. The former rulers were thus marginalized in the process which was reinforced at independence when representatives from the southern Sub-Saharan peoples within the Niger territory took control of the newly emerging state.

During the Uranium boom the military head of state (Kountje) had focused primarily on state building endeavor through the instigation of the so-called "Societe de Developpement". The entire society was divided in political sub units which had to conform to socialist rhetoric whilst aiming to attain specific productivity levels. However, this ambitious social experiment failed to address the ethno-linguistic diversity of the country as well as the profound differences in livelihood strategies between agriculturists and herdsmen. Furthermore, the state proved incapable to timely diversify its sources of income and merely spent benefits of the Uranium export in the construction of roads and government offices in the capital Niamey. The successive post-independence governments failed to address the underlying problems of the fragile domestic economy.

Throughout the post colonial period land pressure within Niger gradually led to the disappearance of the buffer area between traditional agricultural and pastoral lands, and in fact, the so-called agricultural boundary had shifted northwards. This resulted in marginal agriculture in fragile ecological settings, in turn provoking land degradation, erosion and desertification. The traditional annual movements of cattle over large distances had become more hazardous as agriculturists over time had become agro-pastoralists, reserving harvest residues and other fodder for their own cattle, hence limiting possibilities for the transhumance movements. The traditional nomadic livelihood strategy became endangered in this changing socioeconomic setting.

The main triggering event for the Tamajaq rebellion was doubtless the deteriorating socioeconomic position of the nomadic peoples in general and the failure of the government to address grievances and to provide adequate emergency and follow up assistance in the aftermath of the consecutive draughts. The nomadic peoples had suffered greatly from the impact of the successive droughts in the early 1970s and 1984/1985 and large numbers fled to neighboring countries, notably Algeria and Libya. The Nigerien head of state, Ali Saibou, who succeeded military dictator Kountje in 1987, promised a safe return to the Tamajaq refugees and reintegration into society, among others by offering resettlements fees, distribution of food and a number of cattle per family to enable restoration of stocking rates prior to the environmental calamities. The state proved incapable to fulfill these promises when the Tamajaq started to return in number, greatly increasing their ordeal. The ensuing frustrations provoked extremist activities in turn leading to some violent incidents whereby Tamajaq elements looted public facilities, pillaged village stores and public markets. These incidents were part of a broadly supported protest movement to which the government turned a deaf ear. Instead, the national army was used to repress Tamajaq discontent leading to incidents in which civilians were killed.

Under a strong military repressive state the differences between ethnic groups were somewhat dissimulated to resurface when the political climate allowed for the expression of divergent political opinions. This destabilized the fragile national unity of Niger leading to proliferating factionalism in an atmosphere of distrust towards the national army. During the National Conference, held in the second half of 1991, community leaders from the Tamajaq appealed for rehabilitation of their community but were humiliated instead. This triggered the outbreak of the rebellion, resulting in the launching of the "Front de la Liberation de l’Air et de L’Azawak" (FLAA). The National Conference, dominated by representatives of the student movement and sedentary ethnic communities failed to take into account the feelings of frustration and marginalisation amongst the nomadic peoples.

Within the Tamajaq community there was no unified strategy with a common goal. Various factions as a matter of fact independently engaged security forces in different areas, making for a fragmented guerrilla war which the understaffed and badly armed national army could barely contain. There were groups who favored independence or far reaching autonomy whereas others claimed greater representation in the political domain as well as a fair share of resources. Disputes about the relative demographic weight of the Tamajaq as well as the demarcation of their homelands blocked a peaceful solution for a long period of time.

The major underlying factor of this political crisis was provoked by the livelihood crisis that confronted this erstwhile nomadic people. In the colonial setting in-built response mechanisms to crisis situations had gradually eroded and created a setting in which the Tamajaq had become vulnerable to climatic hazards. The combination of ecological crises, land pressure, loss of response mechanisms and the desire to maintain a proper cultural identity within a fragile national context of a state that failed to provide adequate support when it mattered, resulted in the Tamajaq quagmire.

In the Casamance area of Senegal a long standing dispute between the Jola and the Senegalese state has resulted in a protracted internal violent conflict that lasts for over ten years now. Structural factors underlying the conflict seem to be the nature of mechanisms employed by the state to penetrate local society and to exercise political control. As the nature of political allegiance was brokered through a hierarchy of formal and informal elites (mostly Muslim marabouts), the Jola, who stand out as a rather egalitarian and socially unstratified society, were not effectively integrated in the national polity. The application of the new constitution, transferring previous communal land rights to the state, has had a profound impact on local customs and resource management in the Casamance Region. Another outstanding feature of the Jola is their attachment to land (notably rice paddies) as they rely on a precarious eco-system in the low coastal areas of the Casamance river estuarium allowing for a combination of rice cultivation, marginal fishing and cash crop production of mainly peanuts and cotton. The region furthermore is seen commonly as the breadbasket of the country. The region therefore can hardly be labeled as poor if compared with other regions in Senegal. Within the region itself the Jola majority seems to be poorer than other ethnic groups residing in the Casamance area. This, however, can partly be attributed to traditional livelihood strategies reflecting Jola culture. A number of socioeconomic developments have resulted in the mobilization of Jolas in violent opposition to the dominant Wolof ethnic group and to their "cronies" residing in the Jola homeland; the Casamance region. The pivotal factors to be highlighted are the loss of control over important resources, the lay-offs in the public sector affecting Jola intellectuals, the fear of losing Jola cultural identity and the repression by the state.

The selective exploitation of fishery resources by foreign ethnic groups is resented by the Jola community. As a cumulative result of climatic deterioration and out-migration fishing the Casamance river and the Atlantic Ocean has become a way to overcome the farming systems crises. Although the indigenous fishermen are far more numerous than the immigrant Serer and Toucouleur fishermen, who control large scale, specialized fishery and the distribution channels, they play only a marginal role in this type of fishery. The Senegalese State earns foreign currency with the export of shrimps and deap-sea fish. The Jola suddenly became competitors for the same resources. The result of this has been resentment between the Jola and Toucouleur communities. The Jola feel that other ethnic groups should have consulted with them prior to the exploitation of natural resources in the region as they consider themselves the legitimate owners.

Concurrently, the labor migration of young Jola to Dakar, an alternative livelihood strategy dating back to the 1950s, became hazardous as of the mid 1970s. The limits to the absorption of labor power in the Senegalese public sector and the subsequent lay-off of state personnel also left a large part of young urban Jola unemployed. Disappointment with the state among the educated casamancais led them to withdraw from the state and return to their villages of origin to settle as farmers. The initiative by the Senegalese state to incorporate at least part of this elite after the 1982 incidents was either not encompassing enough or too late.

Then there was also the gradual penetration of the Wolof language and culture (modern music, food and dress) notably among the young Jolas. Since independence Wolof replaced Creole as a lingua franca in the Casamance. The slow "Wolofisation" has added to the grievances as in the national media Wolof predominates and regional culture is completely ignored. Perceived neo-colonialism combined with fear of losing one’s cultural identity in view of the ongoing "Wolofisation" of the youth has angered most Jola.

After the bloody confrontations of 1982 and 1983 in which over a hundred people died, the Senegalese state took an ambiguous stand towards the region. In order to counter the attraction of the newly emerging resistance movement MFDC the central government appointed several young casamancais in the local bureaucracy while simultaneously setting up a committee of wise men to address the underlying causes of the conflict. On the socioeconomic dimension the establishment of development projects and agencies were an important priority for the state and the external donors to counter some of the underlying grievances. On the other hand however, the state divided the Casamance region into two constituent entities, the smallest being the Jola inhabited Lower Casamance, effectively thwarting the MFDC independence movement’s claim to the entire region. Furthermore a campaign of repression was unleashed selectively against suspected supporters of the MFDC within the Jola community. As the local society is profoundly unranked in nature the soothing effect of appointing some elements to positions within the administration was limited. They as well as other Jola’s working on behalf of the central government were described as traitors by the MFDC movement. The repressive measures resulted in further support among the Jola for the MFDC cause. When in 1989 the state Senegal was confronted with internal and external threats the MFDC choose to take on the state militarily. From that moment on several rounds of hostilities have taken place. However, the civil war has caused enormous damage to the economic infrastructure of the region. Tourism consequently has diminished and even stopped completely for some years (1991-1992, 1992-1993).

Overall the interplay between various socioeconomic factors play an important role at the background of this violent conflict. The impact of the new constitution on land distribution, the expansion of modern economic activities (fisheries and tourism) mainly by immigrants ignoring local entitlements, the incapacity of the state sector to absorb newcomers on the labor market or to accommodate the casamancais otherwise combined with a long standing perception of being slowly colonized as exemplified by the penetration of Wolof culture, have fuelled a strong sense of marginalisation and facilitated political mobilization of Jola’s by disenfranchised Jola intellectuals and escalated into civil war. Again poverty in and by itself does not account for the outbreak of conflict in the case of the Casamance Region in Senegal. This case clearly demonstrates the interplay between the various levels of conflict present in Sub Saharan Africa.

In Ghana movements attempting to appropriate the state bureaucracy to control other ethno- linguistic identities have been forcefully repressed from the early days of independence onward. The Nkrumah regime has prevented the power bid of traditional Ashanti elites that sought to take possession of the state. The heritage of Nkrumah looms large over Ghana as he instigated a culture of violence through the imposition of a one party system with the support of the military. Despite the differences in the ideological outlook of the successive regimes since independence and the obvious difference in official rhetoric, the economic situation has not improved significantly for the average Ghanaian citizen. The economic plight of the majority of Ghanaians did not lead to the outbreak of violent conflict, except indirectly through the effects it had on educated youth returning to situations of feudal exploitation within the overall context of a deteriorating economy.

Poverty related conflicts did materialize albeit on a regional scale in the North of Ghana in 1981, 1992 an 1994 between sub groups of the encompassing Mole-Dagbani ethnic group. The economic situation at the end of the 1980s seriously impacted upon all layers of the Ghanaian population in particular the government and urban formal sectors. This in turn led to substantial return migration of educated young men to their former places of residence. In the case of the Komkomba, a sub-group of the afore mentioned Mole-Dagbani ethnic group, these returnees refused to pay tribute to the traditionally dominant Nanumba minority sub-group. Eventually the Kokomba insubordination to the old feudal system led to violent conflict between these groups resulting in a large number of casualties. The central government initially sided with the Nanumbas, as this group occupied better positions in state institutions and consequently was better capable to forward its interests on this level. When the conflict erupted again in 1994 the central government was forced to address the underlying causes and take a neutral stand between the contending parties in order to maintain a legitimate stance.

Interestingly, this conflict case shows that the propensity towards violent civil strife was present at the beginning of the 1980s and also in the early 1990s. However, such conflicts did not erupt on a countrywide scale, because the larger ethnic identities had no concerted interest articulation at the national level. Most, larger ethnic groups were composed of different sub-groups and did not have a homogeneous strategy making it difficult to mobilize support against state repression. Localized conflicts seem to present part of a complex safety valve system that has emerged gradually. Many people simply fled the country to go and live elsewhere in the region or to immigrate to Europe or the US. Relatives of those who fled relied on remittances. The vast majority simply endured the hardships, cutting down on luxury consumption but mostly on expensive food items. Others took recourse to the widespread black-market activities. Some Ghanaians simply abandoned the formal economy, turning to self-sufficiency activities. Urban employees returned to their villages to farm for a livelihood and illegal export flourished. A whole range of alternative opting out strategies was employed by the population as the Ghanaian state clearly was unable to manage the economy to the benefit of all. These opting out strategies have abated the will to take on the state. Additionally, repression by the army proved to be an effective tool to deter possible attacks from specific sub-groups in society. However, the internal division between different ethnic groups, their respective demographic weight and perceived unequal treatment as exemplified in uneven resource distribution from the central government does not augur well for the near future. Yet, Nkrumah, during his short reign from 1956 to 1966, apparently has performed better than contemporary leaders of neighboring countries as far as state formation is concerned. In Ghana the perception of being a Ghanaian citizen has been imposed effectively through the politics of Nkrumah as the first allegiance with ethnic identity next in line.

From a socioeconomic point of view it is remarkable that no major violent intrastate conflict has materialized. Depending on how strict the definition is used the contemporary history of Ghana can be viewed as a case of continuous state violence perpetrated against the entire Ghanaian population by a well organized state bureaucracy supported by security forces.

With regard to poverty as an independent contributing factor to the outbreak of violent conflict one needs to take the predominant structural characteristics of resource allocation and wealth accumulation within states into account. The level of poverty in absolute terms can not be directly related to the emergence of violent conflict within these societies. However, once group identity and poverty are linked or a perception of discriminatory treatment can be discerned the propensity towards violent opposition to the state or other groups becomes apparent, as can be inferred from the Tamajaq and Jola cases. In same cases the state effectively controls the population and is able to contain violence, as the Ghana case illustrates. In the Ghanaian case, furthermore, a number of opting out strategies seem to provide an effective safety valve against the proliferation of conflict on a larger scale. In general terms poverty can be labeled, as a possible mobilizing factor on condition that it overlaps with group identity. Especially, if poverty is conceived as the end result of a conscious political process by which specific groups are marginalized or deprived of their resource base its mobilizing capacity increases manifold. In the next section the focus lies with the relationship between the selective nature of some state policies resulting in the promotion of inter group inequality, feeding discontent among disenfranchised population groups.

In West African states there has always been a structural inequality between the administrative and industrial centers and the countryside in which a subsistence economy predominates. Within this spatial dichotomy the selectively imposed cash crop production has created a dependant peasantry that mostly did not receive adequate compensation from the benefits reaped from the exportation of these products. Instead the existing spatial inequality was reinforced by the deliberate marginalization of these population groups by the political and economic elite living in the urban areas. The redistribution of various social services to the rural areas was only implemented haphazardly and mostly a direct outcome of patronage networks linking elite members to their respective constituencies. In the urban setting state elites have relied for a long time on subsidies on staple foods to co-opt urban constituencies. As a result of the IMF and Worldbank imposed austerity programs most of these subsidies have been abandoned, occasionally resulting in widespread urban unrest. Inequality between different groups in the rural and urban settings therefore have become more exacerbated, in turn providing a fertile recruitment ground for local power brokers, in their quest to wrestle power from the incumbent political elite.

Inequality between groups in West African societies has a stronger conflict potential than absolute poverty as such. In the Casamance region the selective procedures of land expropriation by the state combined with aquatic resource exploitation by non indigenous groups has strengthened the perception among the Jola’s that they are systematically exploited by the dominant Wolof ethno-linguistic group, as they control the state bureaucracy. Although the provision of social services by the central government clearly does not disfavor the region in comparison to other regions in Senegal, there is a widespread image among the Jola that the state fails to deliver services and investments. The Jola represent quite a confusing example of deprivation as they deliberately hang on to subsistence practices as a central feature of their culture while rejecting the market oriented productive practices of other groups thus depriving themselves of cash earning activities. Clearly therefore, socioeconomic factors cannot solely account for the Jola insurgency. The negative impact of state policies regarding local resources, without taking Jola interests into account, has jeopardized legitimacy of the Senegalese state. The state exploits a resource rich area (tourism, fishery, groundnuts, cotton) but fails to compensate its traditional inhabitants adequately.

In Niger the division between agriculturists and pastoralists is crucial as specific ethno linguistic divides coincide with this dichotomy. Fulani, Arabs, Toubous and Tamajaq are all ethno-linguistic groups primarily engaged in the livestock sector. The relative decline of this sector due to a breakdown of traditional coping strategies following the droughts that ravaged the Sahel in the seventies and eighties has impacted strongly on livelihood strategies for these groups. Over the last decades more and more peasants have become agro-pastoralists blurring the rigid boundary between both livelihood strategies. However the Fulani, Toubous and Tamajaq remain largely dependent on the livestock sector for survival. As a result Tamajaq have attacked sedentary groups in a desperate bid to stem the tide. Moreover, the socioeconomic situation of the nomadic ethnic groups has created a structural dependency on state resources. As the state proved to be incapable to provide enough relief assistance to these communities their hostility towards the central state increased. The state has already exploited the resources (Uranium) of the Tamajaq heartland in the past, but has never reinvested in the area, presently failing to provide compensation for the traditional inhabitants.

In the Ghanean case there seem to be no direct resource interests at stake limiting the involvement of the state.

Inter-group violence in Sub Saharan Africa is likely to be the outcome of a political process whereby some local groups take on other groups living in the same region, mostly as a proxy war for conflicts resulting from the uneven impact of state policies concerning resource exploitation. The rationale behind such violence often can be related to selective resource exploitation by the state without concomitant compensation for local stakeholder groups concerned. The difference between the Jola and the Tamajaq cases lies in the fact that the Senegalese government still has the option to work out a compromise, since the Casamance area remains a potentially rich region, whereas the government of Niger has little to offer, as the Uranium profits have been consumed already, and the Tamajaq areas seem to offer only marginal perspectives for future riches.

In general the mobilizing capacity of inter group inequality is omnipresent in the West African context although this does not inevitably lead to violent clashes between contending groups. The state, provided it can generate sufficient resources, can sooth some of such potential conflicts. However, as has been stated earlier, the state itself rarely constitutes an independent entity. Resource availability and extractive capacity through tax collection from the collectivity in this context are pivotal factors in the socioeconomic perspective on the emergence of violent conflict. Economic development to a large extent determines the potential for state extraction of funds to be redistributed through various sectoral budgets. In the case of Africa the economic performance of individual states has been strongly determined by the fluctuations of the international commodity markets. Other important events include the oil crises of the early 1970s and several climatic disasters such as the recurrent droughts in the Sahel of which those of 1973-1974 and 1984-1985 stand out prominently. The economies of Senegal and notably Niger, in which the conflict cases elaborated in this paper are situated, are extremely dependent on single products, groundnuts and uranium respectively. Against the backdrop of the structural weaknesses already highlighted this vulnerability has led to budget deficits and external indebtedness. Hence, reliance on external sources of income has become extremely important for regime survival.

The ongoing struggle for access to scarce resources in Sub Saharan Africa has led to the proliferation of internal conflicts, in which contending elite aim at capturing the ultimate prerequisite of power; the state itself. This process has reinforced the process of state disengagement between the state bureaucracy and the inhabitants it is supposed to cater for with the provision of services. The exclusionary policies of selected resource exploitation have aggravated this situation and undermined the remaining credibility of many states. The impact of external meddling aimed at supporting minimal governance conditions through financial support has, at best only temporarily halted the process of state disintegration and power struggle between contending elite. The cumulative impact of cutbacks on government spending, largely caused by external conditions imposed by financial donor institutes, has among others resulted in the lay-off of civil servants, the reversal of subsidies for staple foods and the apparent inability to compensate for loss of income to elite supporting sectors of the state apparatus. These consequences have undermined the stability of the fragile state bureaucracies in Sub Saharan Africa, in turn triggering discontent and sometimes rebellion of the armed forces or other disgruntled groups such as unemployed intellectuals in West Africa.

As a result inter-elite competition has worsened and the number of protagonists, involved in internal warfare, has increased.

In Sub Saharan Africa many states lack the capacity to extract sufficient resources to be able to provide a minimum level of services to the population at large. The economic dependency of many such states has increased because of structural macro-economic limitations. Furthermore, the state has become the prime target for elite competition effectively crippling its potential for conflict mediation. The elite power struggle has increased the existing division between the state apparatus and the population annihilating the embryonic legitimacy of the state as an impartial arbiter. Some external interventions have impacted negatively on the state crisis in Sub Saharan Africa and have provided additional incentives for the ongoing elite struggle. As the internal dimension of the resource related political power struggle seems to follow an inescapable trajectory towards violent internal conflict it becomes crucial to look at the possible contributions of external interventions in order to solve the current crisis in Sub Saharan Africa.

Protracted internal warfare has impacted negatively on economic growth as scarce infrastructure has been destroyed in the process. Overall, countries that have experienced violent conflict have faced severe damage to the economic infrastructure, the productive sectors and agriculture have been crippled, valuable natural resources have been plundered or destroyed and the loss of human capital has been significant re-enforcing the dependency of such states on external support.

External interventions, among others, have impacted on internal developments and to some extent either enlarge or diminish their propensity to conflict. However, a thorough analysis of the precise impact of development oriented interventions on the dynamics of conflict within recipient societies has not been elaborated so far. Hence, in this section some broad tendencies will be reviewed in order to determine the relative importance of external funding or support when it comes to diminish poverty for specific target groups or to check inter-elite competition in order to prevent the outbreak of violent conflict. To illustrate some linkages a number of external interventions will be reviewed briefly with regard to the relationship between poverty and conflict. These categories are: Macro-economic support to States, targeted project aid to specific groups and conflict prevention interventions.

Macro economic interventions consist of financial transfers, involving either states or multilateral financial institutions such as the World Bank, the IMF or regional development banks. Most commonly loans and gifts are employed to assist the balance of payment of Sub Saharan countries. In essence, money is lent to finance ministries in developing countries to be able to supplement budget deficits and maintain the state bureaucracy. These loans are almost always tied up to conditions regarding management of the public sector in these states, and can severely impact on the degree of financial autonomy. As a rule, loans are partly used to pay arrears of debt servicing, as most Sub Saharan states are indebted to financial institutions in the Western world. When states fail to repay they become entangled in a spiral of budget deficits and liquidity problems that hamper the execution of basic government services, in turn provoking discontent among the civilian population. Hence, the macro economic financial stability of a state is crucial for regime survival, and by consequence the impact of external lending agencies is quite substantial. Sometimes macro-economic interventions yield positive results. In this context the example of post-genocide Rwanda is instructive. The incumbent Tutsi led regime that wrestled power from the genocidal Habyarimana regime in 1994 faced virtual state collapse. Nearly all government services were wrecked and most civil servants were either dead or in exile. Financially, Rwanda was bankrupt and even the relative small annual debt servicing obligation could not be honored by the RPF regime. Most donors where quick to respond to the ensuing refugee crisis in neighboring Zaire, where roughly one million people, mostly Hutus, had taken refuge. The new Rwandan regime, however, was looked upon with suspicion as many outsiders feared massive retaliation of the Tutsi minority against the Hutu majority in the aftermath of the genocide. Some donors were even openly hostile to the new regime as they had been propping up the former government. Others simply gave priority to humanitarian relief, ignoring the destitute situation of the Rwandan economy.

The Dutch Minister for Development Cooperation Mr. Pronk, aware of the urgency of debt relief, was the first to pledge financial contributions in order to facilitate debt relief for the Government of Rwanda (GOR). This intervention paved the way for international credibility for the GOR and enabled the new government to restart government operations. On an ad hoc basis The Netherlands recurrently disbursed an amount of roughly 3.5 million yearly for debt relief. In October 1997 Mr. Pronk pledged an amount of $ 25 million in an effort to stimulate a more structural approach towards Rwandan macro economic problems. It was hoped that this initiative would stimulate other donors to participate. Rwanda could thus be enabled to qualify within three years for the status of Highly Indebted Poor Country (HIPC). Such a status gives low-income countries more easily access to so-called soft loans and credit facilities in turn enabling a more stable macro economic policy to materialize. The Netherlands favored the creation of a Trust Fund for multilateral debt relief but the Rwandan Patriotic Army (RPA) intervention in the Kivu region in Zaire shied some members of the donor community away. Additionally, the lack of budget transparency fueled allegations about aid fungibility. The donor community feared macro economic support somehow would be employed by the GOR to finance its intervention in neighboring Congo. The Stockholm conference held in July 1998 resulted nevertheless in a partial support for the GOR. Both Sweden and the UK honored their pledges. In the near future donor attitude will depend on the willingness of Rwanda to follow a process of peaceful negotiations with the contending parties embroiled in the Democratic Republic of Congo crisis. Macro economic support proved to be an important life-line for the GOR, as the absence of credit facilities would have stifled the rehabilitation of state institutions and hence would have prolonged the post genocidal crisis in Rwanda.

During the last decades many different actors engaged in the field of Development Cooperation have designed specific projects and programs to benefit target groups within countries. Such programs can encompass an entire ethnic group, a specific region or sub-groups within local society such as the elderly, women headed households, children or disabled persons. The design of such activities has more often than not followed the logic and priorities of the intervening actors. Such priorities always contain in-built assumptions about the societal makeup and sociological reality in the countries concerned. They do not however correspond automatically to the desired requirements of local beneficiaries as numerous failed projects testify. Moreover, unintended side-effects of these interventions can seriously destabilize local communities as the scarcity of resources provokes power struggles between stakeholder groups over the resources brought in from outside. In some cases the intervening actor consciously designs such dynamics in a bid to empower disenfranchised or subservient stakeholders, and hence, conflict is encouraged. Such actors defend their interventions on moral grounds contending that change is endemic to any society and that a choice has to be made in favor of weak groups. Nevertheless, such externally induced change does not automatically imply a peaceful process of empowerment. Often the external inputs are simply appropriated by local elite groups including group leaders within target groups, exacerbating inequality within local society instead of diminishing perceived injustice. In many cases, development investments such as project vehicles or logistic equipment have been used directly in conflict situations, prolonging the duration of the conflict.

Although a direct relationship with large-scale violent conflict is debatable, the cumulative impact of many small-scale interventions can exacerbate existing tensions between groups co-existing in the same area but not equally benefiting from the additional external resources. On another level the targeted interventions by their very nature bypass the government of that country, and are weakening its potential role as service provider and resource distributor. Again, such policies are mostly consciously designed to overrule national authorities because the legitimacy of many such state actors has been questioned by donor agencies. In the Sub Saharan context this process has led to the proliferation of NGO type structures competing with particular state controlled service sectors in various fields such as health, education and information provision in agriculture. The earmarking of funding for specific activities molded in externally supported ideological frameworks threatens the rather weak state structures, engaged in early state-building endeavors. As a result many NGO’s leaders have become competitors of state elite groups with regard to external funding from the Development Cooperation sector. In a political culture based on consensus the empowerment of civil organizations will insure interest articulation for most stakeholder groups concerned. In large parts of Sub Saharan Africa politics is a zero sum game implying that these external forms of "social engineering" are highly conflict prone.

Conflict prevention has become a fashionable thematic issue. Many interventions that took place in the past are now being reinterpreted as regards their potential role in the prevention of violent conflict. The timing of specific interventions can be considered as crucial because action taken at the right moment might indeed counter an escalatory trajectory leading to protracted warfare and mass destruction. If one agrees that conflict is an integral part and a possible outcome of processes of societal change, it becomes essential to distinguish between different types of interventions and their applicability and efficacy in the various stages of a conflict life cycle. Although the term "conflict prevention" is widely used studies have amply demonstrated that such interventions are rarely undertaken prior to the outbreak of violent conflict. The term ‘early response and conflict containment’ rather designates all types of external action to prevent existing conflicts to deteriorate beyond a certain threshold of violence or to try to mediate between the contending parties involved. Many ‘traditional’ instruments of Foreign policy such as diplomatic interventions in order to persuade parties to negotiate rather than to fight have been revalued as conflict prevention instrument. Sometimes a more or less coherent set of incentives and disincentives is used to pressure parties to comply with truce agreements or to sanction the breech of armistice agreements between parties. In Sub Saharan Africa the past record of conflict prevention clearly demonstrated the peripheral status of the continent in world politics. Civil wars in Sudan, Angola, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Congo-Brazzaville and Sierra Leone at present have been waged without sufficient response from outside actors to try to halt their destructive impact on local society. Numerous countries have recently reached peaceful solutions to internal conflicts but the needs assessment of the International Community has remained on the level of emergency humanitarian help without any long-term coordinated conflict preventive assessment to be conceptualized in post-war peace building projects.

The Rwandan example this time serves to illustrate the negative impact of external interventions. The UNAMIR quagmire certainly demonstrated the profound division and political cleavage among important member states of the United Nations proving its incompetence as regards ‘early action’. In fact, the failure to adequately respond to the genocide has called into question the UN’s reputation as a protector of Human Rights or an arbiter of conflict. It is illuminating to see that the joint development endeavor in the aftermath of the genocide has been focussing on the issues of combating impunity and developing high quality justice regarding perpetrators of the genocide who are brought to justice. Hence, large sums of money have been invested in the Justice Sector, in the training of lawyers and judges, in the detention sector, in the support of Human Rights Monitoring groups and in the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda in Arusha (Tanzania). However noble the intentions underlying this approach it fails to address the base line preconditions in order to possibly prevent the outbreak of yet another round of violence in the near future. The preoccupation of the International Community with the justice sector and the issue of free and fair trials for alleged criminals clearly reflects a feeling of collective guilt and fails to take the prevailing socioeconomic reality of Rwanda into account. The necessity to ensure survival for the majority of citizens in a resource poor land-locked country with high population densities and few perspectives for economic growth or technological innovation seems to be the most important prerequisite for future conflict prevention.

• Poverty is widespread in Sub Saharan Africa in rural and urban context alike. Poverty, in and by itself is not the single most important explanatory factor with regard to the outbreak of violent conflict, but clearly has an important mobilizing capacity. The cases examined demonstrate the interaction between various socioeconomic and political factors in the build-up to violent conflict. The political manipulation of inter-group differences in income and access to scarce resources constitutes an important additional explanation for the mobilization into violent conflict between groups. The state in Sub Saharan Africa is coveted by rivaling elite groups, who use it as an instrument for self enrichment. The effectiveness of the state as a conflict mediator is furthermore seriously undermined by institutional efficiency. The weakness of state bureaucracies is enhanced by a lack of local tax-base and lack of access to external credits. The African political landscape is dominated by competition between stakeholder elite groups that contend for a limited amount of resources, unable and unwilling to distribute entitlements in an even-handed manner and engaged in rough power struggles for scarce resources among which external funding through Development Cooperation figures prominently.

• The impact of conflict on development perspectives for relatively small and poor Sub Saharan states is substantial. In many cases internal warfare, even of a limited duration, can undo decades of slow and painstaking development. The under developed states of Sub Saharan Africa are unable to face the enormous costs of post-war peace building in general, especially regarding the rehabilitation of roads, buildings and other physical infrastructure as well as re-establishing government services and the state bureaucracy. In fact, engaging in warfare is suicidal for small states in Africa and condemns such countries to protracted dependency on foreign aid once a negotiated settlement has been reached.
• The relationship between external interventions and the conflict proneness of societal changes is infinitely complex and needs to be analyzed within the context of specific interventions. Nevertheless, the examples forwarded in this paper have highlighted the discrepancy between the design of external interventions and the recipient societies, often leading to a deterioration of the local security setting defined in broad terms. The fragility of state systems in Sub Saharan Africa is worsened by the, sometimes unintended, impact of external interventions, regardless of their nature or the scale upon which they are implemented. Notably external financial interventions significantly impact on regime stability, and hence on the likelihood of the possible outbreak of violent power struggles between contending elite groups vying for scarce resources. Furthermore, development interventions reflect the ideological preoccupations of donor organizations and donor countries in general. Sometimes, conflict becomes externally induced as the result of deliberate policies aimed at empowering destitute groups in local societies. The resources injected into local society can be appropriated easily by contending parties engaged in internal warfare prolonging the life cycle of conflict. Finally, even interventions aimed at conflict prevention, reflect donor preoccupations and sometimes fail to address vital long term issues. Such interventions may even prolong conflicts or impact negatively on post war peace building perspectives.
• There is a need for reevaluating the relationship between the phenomena briefly sketched. The domain of external development interventions provides an opportunity for donor countries to impact upon the complex dynamics involved in poverty-related violent conflicts. In Sub Saharan Africa a careful political assessment needs to form the basis for external, development oriented, interventions. The precarious balance between stakeholder groups as well as between elite groups engaged in violent competition for scarce resources are starting points for a necessary comprehensive analysis in which carefully targeted interventions might make the difference between conflict and peace. Furthermore, donor coordination and the timely application of a consistent set of policy instruments will help avoid pitfalls of the past.