Writing
Essays & reflections
Beyond the Ceasefire: Rethinking Peace in the Sahel
Why short-term truces rarely hold, and what durable, locally owned peace could look like across the Sahel.
Governance from Below: Lessons from African Cities
Informal institutions are not a failure of the state — they are often where governance actually happens.
Style as Statement: The Politics of African Fashion
On Ankara, identity, and why what we wear is never just about clothes.
A Gendered Dimension in Understanding Armed Banditry in Northwest Nigeria: Vulnerability and Involvement
The study examines the gendered dynamics in the escalating violence in Northwest Nigeria, presenting an understanding of the realities of women across two broad spectrums — as perpetrators and as victims — moving away from the gendered victim–survivor dynamics that feature prominently in the literature.
Militarization of Elections in Nigeria: A Bane of Democratic Growth
This paper focuses on the role of the military in influencing elections in Nigeria, using the 2019 and 2023 general elections as case studies. It argues that using the military in elections not only lacks a constitutional basis but contributes to electoral violence, deaths and destruction of property.
Journeys through Extremism: The Experiences of Forced Recruits in Boko Haram
Provides exploratory research with forced recruits into Boko Haram, focusing on how they entered the organization, the conditions they experienced in camps and settlements, their exits from the group, their subsequent experiences in state hands, and their perspectives about future reintegration — themes made pressing by the mass disengagements under way at the time of writing and the limited capacity of federal and state systems to absorb the numbers involved.
Hybrid Peacebuilding Approaches in Africa: Harnessing Complementary Parallels
The Policy note underlines complementarities between local/indigenous and contemporary peacebuilding approaches and calls on peacebuilders working in both traditions to prioritize identifying and building “hybrid” approaches that integrate local and indigenous knowledge and perspectives into existing best practices.