Short Abstract

Long studied across Africa, private security arrangements today are being reshaped by new forms of global competition and market dynamics. This panel looks at emerging actors and interconnections between the state, market, and society in the provision of security in current violent conflicts.

Long Abstract

The involvement of private, informal and civilian actors in the production of security is far from new in Africa. A substantial body of scholarship has documented how states have relied on private security companies, militias, vigilantes, civilian intermediaries and other forms of delegated or informal coercion, challenging assumptions that security is produced exclusively through formal state institutions.

This panel revisits these debates in light of contemporary transformations of armed conflict and security provision across Africa. Recent conflicts have generated new forms of mobilisation and circulation: the expansion of private military and security actors, the renewed visibility of mercenarism, the transnational circulation of combatants and military expertise, new accessible technologies, and the growing involvement of civilian and informal actors in warfare and protection. At the same time, older arrangements of delegation and brokerage are being reconfigured rather than simply replaced.

Taking the privatisation of security as a broad analytical entry point, the panel asks how these transformations reshape relations between state institutions, markets and civilian actors. How are coercion and security expertise delegated, commercialised or informally negotiated? Through which networks and intermediaries do actors, practices and expertise circulate?

Bringing established debates on informal governance and security pluralism into conversation with research on contemporary warfare and specific case studies, the panel seeks to renew our understanding of how coercion, authority and political order are negotiated across Africa.

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