Amid escalating global gun violence, Central Africa suffers acutely from the proliferation of illicit arms, which fuel instability, crime, terrorism, and widespread human suffering. Small arms and light weapons (SALWs) are estimated by the United Nations to cause up to 500,000 deaths annually and more than a million non-fatal injuries. Despite this toll, over twenty African states manufacture weapons, while many others import them, contributing to an estimated one billion firearms in circulation worldwide, most in civilian hands.

In 2010, eleven Central African countries adopted the Kinshasa Convention, a legal instrument regulating the entire life cycle of a weapon—from production to transfer, repair, and destruction. This study asks: What did these states hope to achieve with this treaty, and why adopt such an institutionalist, legalistic approach to arms trafficking? How does the Convention compare to earlier African arms-control instruments? And has it meaningfully shaped domestic policy, bureaucratic practice, civil–military relations, and law-enforcement operations? I pursue three goals: (1) invert the prevailing scholarly focus on international trafficking by analyzing sub-regional and domestic dynamics; (2) test the “African solutions to African problems” proposition through the negotiation, ratification, and implementation of the Kinshasa Convention, assessing Central African governments’ commitment to curb the spread of illicit arms; and (3) develop an empirically grounded theory of state control over licit weapons to prevent their diversion into illicit circuits—a framework that could inform future initiatives on arms regulation.