"Africa has been ravaged by many conflicts, most of them conflicts fought primarily by small arms and light weapons," Ugandan Interior Minister Ruhakana Rugunda told the opening session of a five-day conference in Kampala on small arms proliferation.

"These weapons pose one of the greatest challenges of our time, particularly in Africa," Rugunda said, urging African states "to change and improve the way they export, procure, distribute, control, use and store small arms and light weapons."

The conference is attended by around 100 delegates from 39 African countries and brings together key civil society, security and military officials, as well as international experts.

"Comprehensive strategies involving governments and the civil society at national and international levels are required in order to find a sustainable solution," Rugunda said.

"Small arms have destroyed countless lives and property and continue to cause casualties and suffering to civilian populations," he said, warning that in sub-Saharan Africa alone, more then 20 percent of the region's population was directly impacted by civil wars during the 1990s.

Sources at the conference said that conflicts in Angola, Burundi, Guinea-Bissau, Demoratic Republic of Congo, Liberia, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Sudan and in Uganda had claimed millions of innocent civilian lives and destroyed livelihoods of tens of millions more across in the continent.

The conference is sponsored by the US-based Africa Centre for Strategic Studies.

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