Last week, in the space of just four days, two African conflicts were signed away. At least, theoretically. The first group to put pen to paper was the Sierra Leone government and rebel leaders. Exactly a week ago, they ratified an agreement in nearby Togo which ended eight years of civil war.
The following Saturday, in the Zambian capital of Lusaka, it was the Democratic Republic of Congo's turn. President Laurent Kabila gave his name, alongside senior representatives of other countries involved in the 11-month-old war.
The rebels, having had a tussle over which of them should sign, are currently enjoying some respite.
This slight hitch doesn't appeared to have bothered the United Nations Secretary General, Mr Kofi Annan, too much. "Very good news" was how he described the two ceremonies, two days before Africa's 35th annual jamboree began in Algiers on July 12th.
The focus for the Organisation of African Unity's (OAU) last summit this century is, once again, the myriad of problems facing the continent. War, or perhaps the pursuit of peace, seems to be topping that list.
The year 2000 should be a "year of peace and security in Africa", Nigeria's new civilian president, Mr Olusegun Obasanjo, told a throng of heads of state and senior government officials on Monday.
"The goal is to create a resurgent Africa that is at peace with itself," he continued. Exactly how this could be achieved is hard to imagine. With a countdown of less than six months, the cynical must be sneering.
Take the Horn of Africa, where neighbouring Ethiopia and Eritrea have been flinging bombs across their border since May last year. Then there's Sudan, where 16 years of faction-fighting have killed close to 2 million people.
What about Somalia, a country so divided it doesn't even have a central government? And of course, Angola, where UNITA rebels and government troops have been warring for nearly a quarter of a century.
To the populations of these countries, Kofi Annan must appear to have forgotten them when he told the OAU summit: "Africa today is nowhere near as gloomy as it seems to those elsewhere."
In Angola, where the agony appears never-ending, it is tempting to argue the contrary.
During the last year, nearly 2 million people have escaped massacres in their rural villages and walked on foot for miles to seek out safety in towns and cities. Most of them fled with little more than the clothes on their backs. Penniless, exhausted and frightened, their next crisis was a food shortage.
Not only the displaced, but also Angola's host populations are struggling to stay alive. Growing malnutrition is not helped by fading donor interest. The UN World Food Programme is becoming monotonous in its pleas for upwards of $50 million to avert what is already a catastrophe.
That must, as one desperate aid worker concludes, fit the definition of "gloomy". Worse still, hopes of finding a strategy to achieve peace here have all but vanished. Most Angolans feel so disillusioned by the collapse of the last peace agreement, signed by both parties in Lusaka in 1994, that they convince themselves that war is normal.
Since December, when the government carried out air strikes on the rebels' headquarters, it has been.
Flying in the face of peace agreement-mentality, Almeida Santos, head of Portugal's parliament, told journalists in Luanda last Sunday: "In the case of Angola at the moment, war can be a just solution. We have to be realistic. Sometimes it's necessary to declare war against war. Sometimes it's hard to find a conciliatory solution after several signed accords have failed."
Appalled by these words, some members of Angola's media concluded that Santos was merely plotting to exploit Portugal's former colony: training its national army, perhaps even selling weapons.
However, leaving aside the case for and against a "just war", a senior western diplomat in Luanda welcomed Santos's veracity.
"You can never disarm rebels in this continent. Peace deals don't work in Africa. Just tell me how?" the diplomat, who has worked in Africa for the past 18 years, argued. Such pessimism would probably be disregarded by the more optimistic OAU gathering in Algeria this week.
With the risk of appearing voyeuristic, it will be interesting to see who is proved right.