Africa needs to stop celebrating peace prizes, as if not fighting for once is all we’re capable of

The awarding of this year’s Nobel peace prize to Ethiopia’s Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed is a welcome respite for a country long blighted by decades of repressive rule, unending tribal wars and conflicts and the infamous famine — induced by drought and political instability — that claimed the lives of more than a million people.

Abiy, at 43 the youngest leader in Africa, took over as prime minister only last year and immediately turned the fortunes of his country for the better, introducing drastic political and economic reforms, releasing thousands of political prisoners and removing restrictions on the media. The country also elected Sahle-Work Zewde, its first woman president. Politically Ethiopia is almost unrecognisable from the country Abiy inherited from Hailemariam Desalegn, his predecessor, who resigned after nationwide protests last year.

The award is more in recognition of Abiy’s peace deal with neighbouring Eritrea, which broke a 20-year logjam following the 1998-2000 border war that claimed more than 70,000 lives.

Eritrea was handed over to Ethiopia by Britain as a reward for its contribution in World War 2. After a 30-year war of independence, an Eritrean liberation movement finally defeated the Ethiopian forces in Eritrea and helped a coalition of rebel forces take control of Addis Ababa in May 1991.

I was in Abuja covering the Organisation of African Unity summit when news of the fall of Addis broke. It created pandemonium and panic among OAU staff, many of whom had families in the Ethiopian capital, where the OAU was headquartered.

The incident also gave a peek into what passes for African diplomacy. Representatives of the fallen regime, who days earlier had been driven around in gleaming limousines, were stripped of their diplomatic credentials, kicked out of the summit and told to find their own way home. Mengistu Haile Mariam, the feared head of the Derg, or military junta, who had given refuge to the ANC, fled to Harare where he still lives, despite the fact that he’s been found guilty of genocide. It is estimated that he’s responsible for the deaths of almost 2-million Ethiopians.

A year after Mengistu’s overthrow, I was in Eritrea with a South African delegation. Relics of war were everywhere. The road from the capital Asmara to the port city of Massawa on the Red Sea was littered with destroyed tanks and other vehicles abandoned by fleeing Ethiopian soldiers. Bodies had been left to rot. Haile Selassie’s holiday palace in Massawa had had its roof blown off.

But Eritreans were happy, free at last. They had succeeded, against all odds, in defeating one of Africa’s most powerful armies without outside help. The excombatants had a new mission: to rebuild their country, and did so without pay.

A few years later, in 1998, Eritrea was at war with Ethiopia again. This time the armies that collaborated to drive Mengistu out of power were at each other’s throats over a border conflict that dates back to the founding of the two countries. It is the resolution of that conflict which has won Abiy the Nobel peace prize for 2019.

But Ethiopia remains a tinderbox. Sixteen people were killed this week in protests around the country and angry mobs burnt copies of Abiy’s book. No doubt he faces steep challenges, but the prize won’t hurt. And it has generally been welcomed on the continent. It is hoped, however, that it will act as a powerful incentive for Abiy’s co-signatory to the peace deal, Eritrea’s Isaias Afwerki, to follow his example. Afwerki has been president since independence in 1991. No elections have been held. Independent media is banned. And young people are fleeing the country to avoid military conscription. Maybe one day when Afwerki decides to do right by his people, he too will win a Nobel peace prize.

Africa needs to stop celebrating winning peace prizes. That is not an achievement. It is, in fact, an acknowledgement that the continent is still marred by wars and conflict, and that peace is a rarity. It is as though ongoing conflict is Africa’s state of normalcy. Attainment of peace becomes an achievement that has to be celebrated. And rewarded. But that’s like rewarding a man who’s suddenly realised abusing his wife is a bad idea.

We need to learn to do the right thing as a matter of course.

Winning peace prizes is also a sign of inertia and underdevelopment. The bar is set very low for us. We can only win prizes for good behaviour. Achievements in other areas of human endeavour — the sciences, economics, innovation — seem at the moment to be beyond us.

It’s not as though, as some bigots would have us believe, we have stunted minds. It is that while other nations strain every sinew to advance themselves, we spend our time and energy in wars and pulling each other down.

A Nobel peace prize gives us a false sense of achievement.

The US has an impressive 385 Nobel winners, and only about a dozen are peace prizes. Australia has 12 winners, none for peace. Austria boasts 22 and only three are peace laureates. Israel, with a population of 8.5-million, has more Nobel prizes per capita than the US, France and Germany, and it shows. SA has four peace and two literature laureates. The five scientific laureates born in SA received the awards for research done after they’d emigrated.

We definitely need to work on achieving peace, but to join the big league of developed nations we need to concentrate on scholarship as well. That’s the challenge to our centres of higher learning.