Last week, the Research Group African Intervention Politics, led by Antonia Witt participated in the bi-annual European Conference on African Studies (ECAS), held in Prague from June 25–28 2025. This year’s conference explored the theme “African, Afropean, Afropolitan”.
As part of the BMBF-funded network African Non-Military Conflict Intervention Practices (ANCIP), the project team convened two panels focusing on the (dis-)integration of the African Peace and Security Architecture (APSA) and the interplay between military and non-military intervention practices.
In these panels:
- Jonas Schaaf, Lamine Savané, and Antonia Witt presented their research on “(Dis-)connecting with civil society in African regional interventions: Reconstructing AU and ECOWAS practices in Guinea and Mali”.
- Hilda Milka Koyier delivered a talk titled “Sites of Intersection: Understanding African (non-military) interventions through AU and ECOWAS representations on the ground”.
- Sophia Birchinger presented findings from her PhD project “Perceptions of Coercion: AU and ECOWAS Interventions in The Gambia and Guinea-Bissau”, with a talk titled “Coercion in Practice: Exploring Citizens’ Experiences with the Interfaces of (Non-)Military Interventions in The Gambia and Guinea-Bissau”.
- ANCIP Fellow and PRIF Guest Professor Cheryl Hendricks joined the team and served as panel moderator.
In addition, Antonia Witt convened a panel on the politics of uncertainty around violent extremism in Africa at which she also presented a paper on “Anticipating and Governing Violent Extremism: Insights from Ghana”, stemming from the research project “Preparing for Peace: International and Local Responses to the Spread of Violent Extremism”.