| Abstract: | With various attempts being made to address religious, ethnic and political conflicts in Africa, one question which continues to feature in public discourses concerns the contributions which the African academic community could make towards the understanding and resolution of conflict. This article demonstrates that ontological issues need to be critical in any attempts at effectively analysing conflicts. The merit of the critical realist philosophy of Roy Bhaskar, with its ontological concerns, is presented as an important analytical and resolution model which the African academic community can fall back on, to look for effective solutions to conflict on the continent. The thrust in this article is that the properties of the critical realist approach to social research make it practically adequate for analysing conflicts. |
