African Intervention Politics

The Research Group African Intervention Politics studies interventions by African regional organi­­zations such as the African Union (AU), the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and the Southern African Development Community (SADC). These organizations have become central actors in establishing and maintaining peace and security on the African continent. Due to predominantly institutionalist and top-down approaches in existing research, systematic knowledge about the practices and consequences of African interventions is still scarce. The Research Group addresses these knowledge gaps by adopting a “bottom-up” perspective that focuses on the lived realities as well as the politics of regional interventions.

[Translate to Englisch:]

In so doing, the Research Group concentrates on two thematic areas: On the one hand, we explore the knowledge orders and practices that underlie African interventions and with the help of which various actors in interventions try to establish peace and order. On the other hand, we investigate the effects of these interventions on the political and social order in affected countries and how different social groups experience and evaluate the interventions. Methodologically, we use focus group and interview research, survey research, and participant observation, among other methods. The various projects of the Research Group are carried out in close cooperation with African scholars based on the continent.

Image: SoulRider.222 / Eric Rider via flickr, CC BY-ND 2.0

Head of Research Group

Antonia Witt

Antonia Witt

Research Fellows

Sophia Birchinger

Sophia Birchinger

Hilda Koyier

Hilda Koyier

Jonas Schaaf

Jonas Schaaf

Associate Fellows

Omar M Bah

Omar M Bah

Sait Matty Jaw

Sait Matty Jaw

Adjara Konkobo

Lamine Savané

Lamine Savané

Simone Schnabel

Simone Schnabel

[Translate to Englisch:]

Issaka Souaré

Student Assistants

  • Katharina Meyer zu Tittingdorf
  • Charlotte Wintz

Projects

The competence network ANCIP, funded by the German Federal Ministry for Education and Research (2022-2026), seeks to (1) establish an online database of non-military interventions by the African Union (AU) and African Regional Economic Communities (RECs), (2) empirically reconstruct non-military intervention practices and routines by specific African actors, and (3) advance the theoretical debate as well as strategic policy advice on these issues.

African Non-military Conflict Intervention Practices (ANCIP)

​​​The project explores the role of coercion in peacebuilding, focusing in particular on actors from the Global South. Designed as a cooperative project, it is implemented jointly by the Institute for Peace and Security Studies (IPSS), Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, the Kofi Annan International Peacekeeping Training Centre (KAIPTC), Accra, Ghana, and PRIF.​​

​​​The Role of Coercion in Peacebuilding: Insights from Africa in an Inter-Regional Perspective​​

Drawing on two case studies – Burkina Faso (2014/15) and The Gambia (2016/17) – this collaborative research project explores how African citizens experience and evaluate interventions by the African Union (AU) and ECOWAS and what they expect from the two regional organizations.

Local Perceptions of Regional Interventions: AU and ECOWAS in Burkina Faso and The Gambia

The potential spread of violence from Sahelian states to the broader region, specifically the coastal countries Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Togo, and Benin has recently become a key policy concern. Building on a growing literature on antici¬patory (inter¬national) governance, this research project explores different rationales and practices of preventing violent extremism in coastal African countries and the under¬standings of (in)security and peace under¬pinning them. It thereby explores the interactions between (un)certainty and (in)security and the political consequences that evolve from the particular way in which violent extremism is predominantly addressed in the region.

Preparing for Peace: International and Local Responses to the Spread of Violent Extremism

PhD Projects

The vision of the African Union (AU) – “An integrated, prosperous and peace­ful Africa, driven by its own citizens [...]” – and the mission state­ment of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) – “From an ECOWAS of States to an ECOWAS of Peoples” – suggest in­clusive develop­ment processes and goals of the two organi­zations. This is interpreted as an inten­tion to align their policies with the norm of “people-centric gover­nance.” As central actors in the African Peace and Security Archi­tecture (APSA), both organi­zations can intervene for purposes of crisis prevention, conflict mana­gement, and post-conflict recon­struction and develop­ment. Scholarly engage­ments with military compo­nents of African conflict inter­ventions have dominated the generation of know­ledge about African inter­vention politics to date. Besides, through the “local turn”, a strand of research has emerged that critically examines liberal peace­building and fore­grounds the actions of local peace­building. The dissertation project addresses the inter­twining of the local and the inter­national in African non-military interventions by elaborating how and why civil society actors are included or excluded as colla­borators in AU and ECOWAS conflict inter­ventions. Using practice-theoretical approaches, the study recon­structs the practices of inclusion and exclusion of civil society actors on the basis of the two case studies Mali and Guinea and contri­butes to further opening the “black box” of African non-military inter­vention politics.

This will first be realized through guide­line-based interviews with relevant AU and ECOWAS actors through field research visits to Addis Ababa and Abuja, and illus­trated through the case studies. In the latter, guided inter­views with civilian non-state actors and parti­cipatory approaches with focus groups will be con­ducted. In addition to expe­riential know­ledge on inclusion and exclusion mecha­nisms in AU and ECOWAS interv­entions, information to reconstruct the actor land­scape will be obtained through social network analyses and “commu­nities of practice”, which form the concep­tual frame­work of the project, will be iden­tified in the field of African regional conflict inter­ventions.

Jonas Schaaf

Jonas Schaaf

Doctoral Researcher

In the past twenty years, the African Union (AU) and the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) have demonstrated considerable agency in providing peace and security on the continent thus shaping political orders and life worlds. The literature on intervention pictures those African interventions as less or even non-coercive, hence attest them being more legitimate compared to more contested ‘Western’ interventions.

This PhD project challenges this assumption by arguing that interventions are inherently coercive as they react to a normative crisis in an attempt of order-making. Preliminary field work suggests that coercion is much more ambiguous than its usual negative connotation and that perceptions of coercion do fall apart along parameters of space, positionality and time. In this, there is a flipping point between legitimate and illegitimate coercion that, in effect, shapes the legitimacy of the intervention and the attempt of regional order-making. Based on these assumptions, this PhD project asks: how coercive are African interventions? What constitutes coercion for whom? Why do perceptions fall apart and how does this impact regional order-making?

Drawing on ethnographic elements, such as observation, immersion, (non-)elite interview and focus group research in The Gambia and Guinea-Bissau, this PhD project (1) explores perceptions of coercion within those two case studies as a way to demonstrate how those affected by interventions perceive the interventions’ coercive nature and what constitutes coercion for them. In a most similar case design, this project (2) identifies causal factors why those perceptions fall apart and (3) how this shapes the attempt and legitimacy of regional order-making.

Sophia Birchinger

Sophia Birchinger

Doctoral Researcher

Publications (selected)

  • How African Regional Interventions are Perceived on the Ground: Contestation and Multiplexity
    | 2024
    Witt, Antonia; Bah, Omar M; Birchinger, Sophia; Jaw, Sait Matty; Schnabel, Simone (2024): How African Regional Interventions are Perceived on the Ground: Contestation and Multiplexity, International Peacekeeping, 31: 1, 58–86. DOI: 10.1080/13533312.2023.2262922
  • Forging an African Union Identity: The Power of Experience
    | 2023
    Witt, Antonia (2023): Forging an African Union Identity: The Power of Experience, Global Studies Quarterly, 3: 3, 1–12. DOI: 10.1093/isagsq/ksad052
  • “Siding with the people” or “Occupying force”? Local perceptions of African Union and ECOWAS interventions in the Gambia
    | 2023
    Birchinger, Sophia; Jaw, Sait Matty; Bah, Omar M; Witt, Antonia (2023): “Siding with the people” or “Occupying force”? Local perceptions of African Union and ECOWAS interventions in the Gambia, PRIF Report, 3, Frankfurt/M. DOI: 10.48809/prifrep2303
  • Beyond formal powers: Understanding the African Union's authority on the ground
    | 2022
    Witt, Antonia (2022): Beyond formal powers: Understanding the African Union's authority on the ground, Review of International Studies, 48: 4, 626–645. DOI: 10.1017/S0260210522000067
  • The “Clubs of Heads of State” from Below
    | 2022
    Schnabel, Simone; Witt, Antonia; Konkobo, Adjara (2022): The “Clubs of Heads of State” from Below. Local perceptions of the African Union, ECOWAS and their 2014/15 interventions in Burkina Faso, PRIF Report, 14, Frankfurt/M. DOI: 10.48809/prifrep2214
  • Taking Intervention Politics Seriously
    | 2020
    Witt, Antonia; Schnabel, Simone (2020): Taking Intervention Politics Seriously. Media Debates and the Contestation of African Regional Interventions ‘from Below’, Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding, 14: 2, 271-288. DOI: 10.1080/17502977.2020.1736415
  • Studying African Interventions ‘from Below’
    | 2018
    Witt, Antonia (2018): Studying African Interventions ‘from Below’. Exploring Practices, Knowledges and Perceptions, South African Journal of International Affairs, Special Issue, 25: 1, 1–19. DOI: 10.1080/10220461.2018.1417904

News

Research network organizes event on African non-military interventions with policy makers and practitioners
Antonia Witt organizes kick-off workshop in Ghana
Sophia Birchinger conducts research in Guinea-Bissau
Antonia Witt and Sarah Brockmeier-Large at the Berlin Peace Dialogue 2024
Political Lunch with El-Ghassim Wane
Antonia Witt appointed to advisory board
Antonia Witt at the Schader Foundation's Afghanistan Dialogue Forum
Four doctoral students recently defended their dissertations
PRIF researchers discuss local perspectives on ECOWAS interventions
New PRIF report outlines a practice-oriented research agenda