Effective security sector reform (SSR) efforts in Africa should align with on-the-ground realities and insecurities of African people and states in order to build a sense of genuine ownership and participation by citizens and civil society, two international experts said at a weeklong Africa Center program on SSR in Central Africa.

While normative frameworks developed by the United Nations and other multilateral actors provide a rich body of lessons-learned in SSR, African best practices should be built into the process, the expert said.

“On this very sad occasion of the passing of the African and global icon, Nelson Mandela, it is fitting to recall that South Africa through its post conflict reconstruction experience pioneered the agenda of rooting SSR in the principle of African solutions to African problems,” Ms. Julie Werbel, a senior U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) advisor on SSR, observed. Former South African President Mandela passed away shortly before the December 9–13 program began.

Mr. Ismail Tarawali, the Deputy National Security Coordinator at the Office of National Security (ONS) in Sierra Leone voiced a similar opinion.

“In Sierra Leone, the brutality of the civil war, a war that depleted our human and institutional capacities, meant that the application of international SSR models was not enough,” Mr. Tarawali said, “We had to dig deep into our history to find the tools that would help us apply Sierra Leonean and African knowledge to the process.”

Both experts were speaking at the Security Sector Reform (SSR) in Central Africa Workshop hosted by the Africa Center for Strategic Studies (ACSS) on the campus of National Defense University. The program brought together approximately 40 senior African military and civilian security sector professionals and leaders from 10 Central African nations.

Ms. Werbel provided a synopsis of the requirements for successful SSR in the African context. “Successful reform approaches view security from a holistic perspective, a perspective which takes into account the traditional state-centric concept of security as well as human security,” she said.

“From this perspective,” she said, “the state, civil society, private sector, and citizens work together as partners and in the process develop the constructive relationships required to push through reforms on the basis of collaboration and consensus.”

Ms. Werbel observed that 80 percent of African societies rely on traditional mechanisms of conflict management and restorative justice to resolve security problems at the local level. These mechanisms, which have been successfully reinvigorated in several African countries as part of the toolbox of post-conflict reconstruction and transitional justice instruments, include traditional mediators, community courts, and dispute-resolution councils.

In addition, Ms. Werbel argued, a range of non-state actors, including private security companies, rebel groups and militias, are also involved in one way or the other either as providers of security or creators of insecurity. This makes the business of security sector reform both “complex and vexing,” she said, requiring “nuance, cultural understanding, and proper timing,” and above all, “a comprehensive and multi-level approach.”

Ms. Werbel reminded participants that SSR could not be disconnected from the broader agenda of reform and democratization, an agenda that has been codified in several African Union (AU) instruments, including the AU Policy Framework for Security Sector Reform and the African Charter on Human and Peoples Rights (ACHPR).

“The African experience, as gleaned from countries like South Africa, Ghana, and others, suggests that for SSR to be meaningful it must be crafted as part of a broader package of structural, institutional and governance reforms,” she recommended, “and not as a separate process.”

In response to a question about the core principles that Central African governments should consider when designing SSR programs, Werbel offered the following: “local ownership, citizen participation, integration of African and international experience, and good leadership.”

Mr. Tarawali, the Deputy National Security Coordinator in Sierra Leone, used his country’s experience to highlight the importance of “bottom-up” approaches to security sector reform.

“Sierra Leone’s national security system was a relic of the colonial political economy, an economy that was structured to serve the interests of the colonizers and not the Sierra Leonean people,” Mr. Tarawali noted.

“Consequently, the armed forces, police, and intelligence were oriented towards insuring the survival of the colonial state,” he said. Rather than re-orient the system towards serving the people, successive post-colonial administrations entrenched it and, with time, the entire Sierra Leonean security architecture centered on “regime survival,” a weakness which, in Mr. Tarawali’s view, contributed to many of the problems that Sierra Leone encountered, including one of the most brutal civil wars on the continent.

“Our first task on the long and difficult road of reforming our security sector was to acknowledge the past in a way that would help us find solutions to our problems,” Mr. Tarawali observed. “We had to accept the reality that our national security system had become heavily politicized.” “The massive abuses that our armed forces inflicted on our people created a climate of fear and repression, which in turn placed the security services above the law and consequently drove a wedge between the state and citizens,” he explained.

“We therefore took a conscious decision to put the Sierra Leonean citizen at the center of our reform project,” he said, “an undertaking that was made easier by the fact that our post conflict state-building process, a process that is still ongoing, is dominated by reform-minded individuals.”

Mr. Tarawali explained that the Sierra Leonean model stresses four concepts: de-politicization; restoration of the dignity of Sierra Leonean citizens; professionalization; and a bottom-up approach to security.

He echoed Ms. Werbel’s argument about placing security sector reform within the broader processes of constitutionalism, leadership, and governance reform.

“Our SSR, with all its imperfections, created the conditions that enabled our people to conduct two general elections without significant external support,” Mr. Tarawali explained. “We developed a new architecture, starting from the village level all the way up to the national level, which built on our local customs and applied international best practices in a comprehensive way.”

“Perhaps nothing captures this better than a new democratic culture that is emerging in our country,” he added.

“In 2007, for the first time in our history a democratically elected government, having served two full terms, handed over power peacefully to another democratically elected government.”

“This new culture, a culture that was evident again in our 2012 elections,” he said, “is an eloquent testimony of the resilience of our newly crafted security architecture and more importantly the commitment of the Sierra Leonean people towards forging a new country.”

The Security Sector Reform in Central Africa Workshop provided military and civilian actors the opportunity of sharing experiences and learning lessons from each other in order to contribute to greater security, cooperation, and development in the Central African region.

The ACSS is the pre-eminent institution for strategic security studies, research and outreach in Africa. The Africa Center engages African partner states and institutions through rigorous academic and outreach programs that build strategic capacity and foster long – term, collaborative relationships. Over the past 14 years, more than 6,000 African and international leaders have participated in over 200 ACSS programs.