Author's Name:	Don John O. Omale (PhD)
Subject Area:	Social Science and Humanities
Subject	Accounting
Section	Research Paper

Restorative justice, African justice, traditional justice, local justice

The protracted and endemic armed conflict and violence in Africa has undermined its democratic gains and sustainable development. However, application of restorative justice mechanisms (such as the Truth and Reconciliation Commissions, and the Rwanda Gaccaca) have significantly, unraveled some of the common sources of conflict in Africa which include intergenerational forms of exclusion and marginalization, poverty, structural inequality, and insecurity. Findings from these restorative mechanisms show that very many people and groups benefit from the intractable conflicts in Africa; and so it is learnt that, reducing the opportunities, attractiveness and profitability of conflict is important if violent conflict must be prevented in Africa. Using literature evidence and ethno-methodology, this paper advances endogenous/indigenous, and Afrocentric principles and practices that are relevant to the global restorative justice principles and practices because, as far as the knowledge of Dispute Resolution, and/ or restorative justice is concerned, Africans with their long knowledge and culture of communitarianism has got a lot to share with the West as much as they have got to learn from the West. This paper argues that while the international community has a better understanding of the elements of successful peacekeeping operations in Africa, it needs sufficient local knowledge of what should be done to consolidate peace in Africa and how best to go about achieving it, hence selected Afrocentric evidence are presented for international learning.