The use of child soldiers in African armed conflicts: a comparative study of Angola and Mozambique

Abstract

A plethora of the existing scholarship on child soldiering in Africa shows that armed conflicts are associated with human suffering borne by the civilian population who are targeted by the warring parties and pay the heaviest costs. Big variations exist with regard to the extent civilians suffer at the hands of the warring factions over time, across conflicts, and across countries experiencing civil wars. This research explores conditions for the use of child soldiers in Africa which is an issue of high importance and remains an under-researched field. A juxtaposition of Angola and Mozambique civil wars show that more child soldiers were used in the Mozambican war than in the Angolan civil war. Pulling the various strands together, as well as theoretical insights, I find an alternative understanding in regard to the variance in the use of child soldiers in the two civil wars. The variance was due to the nature of contemporary conflicts, lack of institutional structures on part of the rebels and means of control to account for their forces, unpopular policy of villagization in Mozambique, high levels of economic marginalisation and exclusion, recruitment policy of government and rebel forces, influence of traditional leaders and churches as well as the use of foreign actors and private companies in Angola.