Africa Lunch Meeting  with Dr. Jonathan Fisher, Reader in African Politics at the International Development Department at University of Birmingham and Academic Director of the Governance and Social Development Resource Centre (GSDRC). In June this year, seemingly overnight, the longstanding hostility between Ethiopia and Eritrea came to an end. After 18 years of ‘no war, no peace’, the two Horn of Africa states were once again – at least on the surface – close friends. In this talk, based on his forthcoming book East Africa after Liberation: Conflict, Security and the State since the 1980s (Cambridge University Press), Dr. Fisher will place this remarkable volte-face in regional elite security relationships in context, both as a means to understand contemporary trends in regional peace and conflict and to challenge prevailing media depictions of a ‘new era’ of politico-security cooperation and harmony in the Horn.

(Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons)