It's not that  long ago - a decade or so - that development organisations and theorists dismissed the security sector, and especially the military, as a waste of time and money. This wasn't entirely unreasonable, given the poor performance and the corruption of many African militaries at the time. But it did misunderstand the basic nature of the problem: history suggests that there is no development without security. It does not suggest that there is no security without development, at least unless you twist the meaning of such words to breaking point.

The whole subject of the link between security and development is very confused at the moment, and development organisations have not helped themselves by rushing into the security area without understanding it.

I've been involved with the Security Conflict and International Development Master's degree at the University of Leicester for a while now, and I was happy to contribute a chapter to their Critical Reader on the problems of security and development.

This chapter from a collective book on AFRICOM traces the history of attempts by outsiders to define Africa's security problems

Here is a version of a presentation I often give on the subject, including issues like Human Security.