On Military Culture

African armed forces face many challenges with regard to military professionalism, and this is linked to military culture, which is about the collective activities of armed forces, particularly the understanding of shared goals and how to achieve them. This book offers a contemporary view of military culture within Africa, focusing on the theory, the implications for civil-military relations and the role of the armed forces in society. It presents a number of cases, from Ethiopia, Kenya and Namibia as well as Australia and Canada. And it discusses the South African military, with a retrospective view of its military culture and an exmaination of its post-apartheid vision. The underlying argument of this book is that African armed forces need to come to terms with the elements of military culture if they want to become more professional as an instrument of war and in their purpose of serving society.