Abstract
This chapter introduces the handbook. It summarizes the key issues relating to the focus of the handbook. The chapter begins by providing an overview of conflicts in Africa, showing why an investment in peacebuilding, including by religious actors, is an urgent undertaking. It proceeds to discuss religion and religious peacebuilding, as well as religion, peacebuilding and SDG 16. While acknowledging the ambivalence of religion in terms of its capacity to as be appropriated and deployed for both peace and violence, the chapter highlights how the focus on Sustainable Development Goal (16) has seen most contributors focusing on the positive role of religion in peacebuilding in Africa. Overall, the chapter provides the context in which the handbook must be located, and highlights the sequence of all the chapters in the handbook.
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Notes
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- 2.
The term is used to refer to “contested incompatibility over government and/or territory, with at least one party being a state, and involving the use of armed force.” Non-state conflict is the use of armed force between organized groups, none of which is the government of a state (Palik et al., 2022:7).
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The majority of the countries (6/11) cited here are in East Africa, hence accounting for the preponderance of countries from this region among the case studies in this volume.
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Kilonzo, S.M., Chitando, E. (2023). Religion, Peacebuilding and Development in Africa: An Introduction. In: Kilonzo, S.M., Chitando, E., Tarusarira, J. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Religion, Peacebuilding, and Development in Africa. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-36829-5_1
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