Conflicts in North and West Africa have become more violent and widespread than in the past. They have also become more difficult to resolve due to the complex relationships between a growing number of belligerents with diverging agendas. This report maps conflict networks and the evolution of rivalries and alliances in 21 North and West African countries.

Women make a significant contribution to West Africa's food economy, perpetuating a long tradition of commerce and participating in cross-border trade and regional outreach. Their activities face numerous obstacles but also present important opportunities, highlighted in this report through an unprecedented relational and spatial analysis of social networks. The study focuses on the rice sector in the Dendi region (Benin, Niger and Nigeria) and on the regional governance networks that support women's entrepreneurship. It confirms that Nigeria occupies a privileged position due to its demographics and growing urbanisation. The report proposes the development of innovative public policies based on the reinforcement of the social capital of women and policy approaches that promote better integration of the initiatives undertaken by governments, international and non-governmental organisations to empower women and strengthen their resilience.

African governments are increasingly confronted with new forms of political violence. This study maps the evolution of violence across North and West Africa, with a particular focus on Mali, Lake Chad and Libya.

This publication examines the role of border regions in shaping patterns of violence since the end of the 1990s in North and West Africa. Using the innovative OECD Spatial Conflict Dynamics indicator (SCDi), the report looks at the growing relationship between political violence and borderlands at the regional level, by analysing more than 170 000 violent events between January 1997 and June 2021 and through the exploration of case studies in the Central and Eastern Sahel.

This monograph highlights the necessity for taking preventive measures in the form of peace-building as a sustainable and long-term solution to conflicts in West Africa, with a special focus on the Mano River Union countries. Apart from the Mano River Union countries, efforts at resolving other conflicts in say, Guinea Bissau, Senegal, C?te d'Ivoire and Nigeria, have suffered from a lack of attention on the post-conflict imperatives of building peace in order to ensure that sustainable peace is achieved. Given the often intractable and inter-related nature of conflicts in this region, it argues for the need to revisit the existing mechanisms of conflict resolution in the sub-region with a view to canvassing a stronger case for stakeholders towards adopting the peace-building strategy as a more practical and sustainable way of avoiding wars in the sub-region. Peace-building in consonance with its infrastructure is a more sustainable approach to ensuring regional peace and stability and, therefore, ensuring development for the peoples of West Africa. Dr Osita Agbu is currently a Senior Research Fellow at the Nigerian Institute of International Affairs, Lagos. His areas of specialization include Peace and Conflict studies, Governance and Democratization and Technology and Development. He was until recently, a Visiting Research Fellow at the Institute of Developing Economies, Chiba, Japan.

This book explains the structure and geographical and organisational mobility of criminal and migratory movements in the Sahara and the Sahel with a view to helping establish better development strategies for the region.

West Africa faces grave challenges to peace and security. Many peace and security actors in the region operate at the policy level in urban centers, leaving the majority of the population, which is illiterate or rural, behind. Tostan, an American Non-Governmental Organization, implements human rights-based education in rural villages across West Africa and engages social networks in movements to transform harmful social norms. This thesis provides direction for Tostan to further apply its grassroots approach to the promotion of peace and security in West Africa. The Swedish International Development Agency (Sida), a governmental agency, funded Tostan's Peace and Security Initiative, whose overall goal is to create links between rural communities and institutional peace and security bodies in West Africa and build peace and security within and between grassroots social networks. Preliminary research during the initiative revealed unprecedented information regarding West African community stakeholder's perspectives on the types and sources of conflict in their lives. Discrimination or marginalization due to differences in ethnicity, race, religion, political affiliation, or caste and a lack of communication were cited as sources of conflict in all five West African countries in which research was conducted, and the exclusion of women's voices was noted in all but one. Programmatic suggestions in this work are based on a review of academic literature and the results of the preliminary research regarding the root causes of conflict and successful means of building peace and security. An evaluation of other regional peace and security actors, including the African Union, WANEP, Gorée Institute, regional working groups on women, peace, and security, and traditional mediators, informs recommendations for effective partnerships. New programming focuses on the right to freedom from discrimination, resource management, inclusion of women in peace building, traditional and alternative conflict resolution skills, regional peace and security initiatives, and intra and inter-network dialogue.

Provides a context for understanding West Africa's security dilemmas, highlighting the link between failures of economic development, governance, and democratization on the one hand and military insecurity and violent conflicts on the other.

A provocative contribution to the debate on the nature of the state and political processes in Africa.