Incremental peacebuilding in Africa: rethinking time and sequencing in Liberia’s peacebuilding process

Peacebuilding debates have long focused on interventions and what they should achieve, but less on when and how they unfold. This article foregrounds incremental peacebuilding, an approach which treats sequencing and temporality as strategic levers that shape and sustain post-conflict rebuilding. While often implicit in peacebuilding practice, we rethink incrementalism’s analytical potential by situating it within an African experience. Drawing on Liberia’s post-conflict peacebuilding processes across security, governance, and justice, we show how sequencing, delay, and compromise, often dismissed as signs of lack of political will, may function as strategies for navigating uncertainty, elite resistance, and institutional weakness. We argue that peacebuilding success lies not only in content, but in timing, responsiveness, and strategic attunement to political and societal readiness. The article challenges readings of delay as political unwillingness, suggesting instead that such pauses can sometimes reflect a logic of incrementalism rooted in peace imperatives and calibrated responses to constraints.