| Summary: | Proponents of soft security strive to ensure the goal of individual security<br />without resorting to armed coercion. Given the extended scope of security sectors<br />falling within the ambit of soft security regional co-operation is indispensable – a<br />phenomenon most visible in European security architecture and that of Northern<br />Europe in particular. Not only European decision-makers, however, pursue the soft<br />security option. As Africa entered the twenty-first century, co-operation and an<br />implicit realisation of the importance of soft security threats increasingly configured<br />its regional security arrangements. A new wave of warfare simultaneously entered<br />the African realm and any security approach had to contend closely with the<br />inhumane profiles of these so-called new wars. Subsequently, African security<br />architecture had to straddle the resultant hard-soft security domains more acutely<br />than that of Europe. This required appropriate military options and the adjustment<br />of African armed forces towards softer security policy instruments. For Africa in<br />particular, the maintenance of a hard divide (even if only conceptually) between<br />hard and soft security as imposed by Northern Europe in particular, remains more<br />declaratory than real.
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