Non-state actors have become central to peacebuilding and conflict mitigation across Africa. Civil society organizations, faith-based institutions, and humanitarian agencies are increasingly operating where state authority is weak, contested, or absent. Their actions, which are often described as alternative power, have reshaped how violence is managed and how peace is pursued on the continent.  

Despite non-state actors’ growing role, a persistent concern remains: While non-state actors frequently succeed in reducing visible violence, they often fail to document evidence and patterns to address the deeper causes of conflict. When structural drivers are overlooked, peacebuilding risks becoming cyclical because of managing symptoms while allowing violence to re-emerge in new forms. Alternative power emerges when legitimacy, trust, and moral authority are exercised outside formal state institutions. In many African contexts, we continue to witness a resurgence of  civil society and humanitarian organizations that take center stage to fill gaps left by fragile governance systems. Not all of these organisations have been effective, but a few of them have proximity to communities that allows them to mediate disputes, facilitate dialogue, and deliver services more quickly than state actors. The work of non-state actors aligns with what peace scholar Johan Galtung (1969) described as efforts to reduce direct violence, the visible acts of physical harm that dominate headlines. Many peacebuilding interventions succeed at this level: ceasefires are brokered, tensions temporarily de-escalated, and communities stabilized. 

However, Galtung’s work also reminds us that violence operates beyond the battlefield. Structural violence embedded in political exclusion, economic inequality, and historical injustice often remains intact even when guns fall silent. When peacebuilding efforts focus narrowly on stopping fighting, they risk mistaking the absence of violence for the presence of peace.

The Silence Around Structural Causes

Non-state actors rarely intervene with malicious intent. Their focus on immediate harm reduction is often driven by urgency, limited resources, and donor expectations. Yet the absence of systematic documentation of conflict drivers has long-term consequences. Political theorist John Gaventa argues that power operates not only through visible decision-making, but also through what remains invisible, whose voices are excluded, which grievances are normalized, and which issues are kept off the agenda. In many African conflicts and many other parts of the Global South, these invisible dimensions shape violence more profoundly than armed confrontation itself. When peace interventions fail to interrogate underlying causes such as land dispossession, identity-based marginalization, and human needs issues including unemployment, or external economic interests, they reinforce a narrow understanding of conflict. Consequently, violence becomes framed as irrational or ethnic, rather than as a rational though tragic response to exclusion and insecurity.

A Case of Recurring Violence in The Democratic Republic of Congo: 

The DRC illustrates the consequences of unresolved structural violence. Decades of peace agreements, UN interventions, and civil society initiatives have reduced violence at various moments. Yet armed groups continue to re-emerge, most recently with the resurgence of the M23 rebellion. The persistence of conflict in eastern DRC raises an uncomfortable question: do communities continue to fight because they want to fight? Evidence suggests otherwise. The underlying causes of contested citizenship, historical identity-based persecution of sections of the population, ideological regional power rivalries, and chronic state absence which have never been adequately resolved and systematically documented. Non-state actors operating in the region have often focused on mediation, humanitarian relief, and community reconciliation. While these efforts save lives, they rarely address the political economy of conflict or the governance failures that allow armed groups to regenerate. As a result, each wave of violence is treated as a new crisis rather than a continuation of an unresolved one.

Recycling Conflict Through Incomplete Peacebuilding

When underlying causes are left unaddressed, peacebuilding can inadvertently recycle violence. Temporary calm is followed by renewed instability, often blamed on “spoilers” or “armed groups,” rather than on structural conditions that make violence a viable option. This pattern reflects what Galtung warned against, “the illusion of peace without justice”. Without addressing structural violence, interventions merely suppress symptoms. Gaventa’s framework further suggests that when communities lack meaningful channels to influence power, violence becomes a language of last resort. In the DRC, the re-emergence of M23 and many other yet to surface similarly is not evidence of a cultural predisposition to violence, but of unresolved political issues and exclusionary state practices. Similar patterns can be observed across the Sahel, the Horn of Africa, and parts of Central Africa.

Rethinking the Role of Non-State Actors

Recognizing these limitations does not diminish the importance of non-state actors. Instead, it clarifies how their role must evolve. Alternative power is most effective when it moves beyond crisis management toward structural engagement. Firstly, conflict documentation must be treated as a central peacebuilding task. Non-state actors are uniquely positioned to capture historical grievances, power relations, and evolving patterns of persecution and exclusion. Without this documentation, peace efforts remain fragmented and repetitive. Secondly, peacebuilding must engage and document governance failure, social identity issues, and human need, and not bypass it. Non-state actors can amplify marginalized voices, but sustainable peace requires institutional reform. Bridging community-level grievances with national and regional policy processes is essential. Finally, donors and international partners must shift incentives away from short-term stabilization toward long-term transformation. 

Toward Sustainable Peace 
African conflicts persist not because communities desire violence, but because the conditions that produce violence remain unaddressed. Non-state actors, including civil society organizations, humanitarian partners, faith-based Organizations, among others, wielding alternative power, have proven essential in mitigating harm. Yet without confronting structural causes, their interventions risk becoming part of a cycle rather than a solution. As scholars like Galtung and Gaventa remind us, peace is not merely the absence of war; it is the presence of justice, inclusion, and meaningful power. In my research, I found that the role of non-state actors, mainly academicians, is yet to dive into systematic documentation of the underlying causes of many conflicts in Africa. 

By Emmanuel Iyako through Peace News Network. Iyako is an African scholar, a security and political analyst with extensive regional and multidimensional experience in UN Peace Support operations.