Towards Global Peace and Sustainability: Role of Education in Peace-Building in the Great Lakes Region of Sub-Saharan Africa

Abstract

The Great Lakes Region of sub-Saharan Africa is well known for being volatile

and turbulent in terms of peace and stability. For over 60 years, almost all countries

in the region have experienced some kind of political and social turmoil such

as civil war, coup de tat, and genocides. In 1960, the first democratically elected

Congolese prime minister was assassinated. There were unprecedented social and

political havoc in a nearby “other Congo” characterized by power struggle between

various political and ethnic factions in the post-independence Congo Brazzaville.

In Burundi and Rwanda, ethnic tensions between the Tutsi and Hutu engulfed the

developmental dreams of nationalist freedom fighters until 2015. Though arguably

stable, Tanzania has experienced its own share of socio-political messy including

the 1998 Mwembechai and 2001 Pemba massacres. Efforts to build a sense of sustainable

peace and development based on mutual understanding and socio-political

harmony has brought limited success. In all these countries, the missing link in

building sustainable peace and security has been a lack of education. The chapter

intends to fill this gap by critically analyzing the potential role of basic education,

especially pre-primary and early grades education, in sustainable peace-building in

the sub-Saharan context.

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