More and more African countries are falling prey to civil war and the disintegration of government authority and social order. Here, for the first time, teams of African scholars actually based in the countries principally affected examine what is happening. Their first aim has been to understand the complex and diverse roots of these conflicts. To this end, they analyse the conflicts in Angola, Burundi and Rwanda, Liberia and Sierra Leone, Somalia and Somaliland. They also reflect on the general obstacles to comprehending conflict in Africa. Possible ways of anticipating, containing and indeed preventing new conflicts are discussed, as are the experiences of successful transitions to peace in Northern Mali and post-civil war Nigeria. Proposals for mastering conflict in future range over a wide diversity of ideas like a moratorium on the importation of arms, trans-frontier development projects, political reform creating real space for participation by different social groups, and governmental decentralisation. This timely volume is a significant contribution by African intellectuals to resolving the most intractable problems confronting Sub-Saharan Africa.