Mobility in pastoral societies of Northern Mali: Perspectives on social and political rationales

Since the 1980s, the so-called “nomadic” populations in the regions of Northern Mali and Niger have embarked on an extensive process of settlement. Today they mostly live in villages or “settlement sites”. But, at the same time, individuals and small groups among these same populations have considerably enlarged their area of mobility and accelerated the rate and the value of the trade in which they engage. These two phenomena could, at first sight, appear contradictory. But the observation of empirical situations shows, rather, compatibilities, similarities even, between these two concomitant phenomena. Building on innovative debates conducted in geography and sociology, this article puts forward the hypothesis that the building of villages, as well as integration into military bases and barracks, proceeds from (social) rationales of mobility, just as much as transhumance, journeys, migration. Much more than a simple displacement in space, the notion of mobility could describe an “art of doing”, a way of being to others and to the world.     

Intervention at Risk: The Vicious Cycle of Distance and Danger in Mali and Afghanistan

In crisis-hit countries, intensive risk management increasingly characterizes the presence of international interveners, with measures ranging from fortified compounds to ‘remote programming’. This article investigates the global drive for ‘security’ from an ethnographic perspective, focusing on Afghanistan and Mali. By deploying the concepts of distance and proximity, the article shows how frontline ‘outsourcing’ and bunkering have generated an unequal ‘risk economy’ while distancing interveners from local society in a trend that itself generates novel risks. To conclude, the article asks whether alternative forms of proximity may help to break the vicious cycle of danger and distance at work in today’s crisis zones.     

The spaces of intervention for Mali and Guinea-Bissau

ABSTRACT

This article focuses on interventions by the African Union and the Economic Community of West African States in Guinea-Bissau and Mali. In the literature, these are often approached in a ‘top-down’ manner, focusing on formal institutions, not accounting for the complex dynamics in and around conflict intervention. This article argues that adopting space as an analytical lens allows new ways to address these issues. It highlights how interventions by different actors and their interactions are influenced by spatial perceptions and framings, which result in the making of different ‘spaces of intervention’ through different practices. The two described here, ‘scaling’ and ‘establishing reach’, enable strategic and continuous formation and negotiation of spaces for action, according to actors’ needs and interests. Thus, shedding light on specific actors and their practices, the article contributes to a better understanding of the complex dynamics in conflict intervention in West Africa.     

The African state and the failure of US counter-terrorism initiatives in Africa: The cases of Nigeria and Mali

Counter-terrorism initiatives are failing across the African continent. A major reason for this failure lies in the state-centric and military-focused nature of many counter-terrorism initiatives. In Africa, the state is often the source of insecurity for ordinary citizens. Any military strengthening of an illegitimate African state by the international community not only serves to bolster a predatory state but also undermines the human security of citizens. More importantly, such an approach conflates sub-state and international terrorism and serves to bolster the latter, thereby undermining regional and international security further. Put simply, current counter-terrorism initiatives are counter-productive. This paper focuses on counter-terrorism efforts in Nigeria and Mali with a special focus on US initiatives to combat terrorism in the region.     

Migration,Livelihoods and Institutions: Contrasting Patterns of Migration in Mali

Migration is a common and essential livelihood strategy in the risk-prone environment of Sahelian West Africa. But migration is not a passive reaction to economic and environmental forces. Patterns of movement are determined by context-specific and complex dynamics, mediated by social networks, gender relations and household structures. IDS-based research on sustainable livelihoods illustrated this in two locations in Mali: in a village in the Sahelian dryland with different and gendered migration patterns of various ethnic groups; and exceptional patterns in the Sudano-Sahelian cotton region with extensive and long-lasting engagement in small cocoa and coffee plantations in Côte d'Ivoire.     

First Steps Towards Hearts and Minds? USAID's Countering Violent Extremism Policies in Africa

The United States government has adopted new approaches to counter violent extremist organizations around the world. “Soft security” and development programs include focused educational training for groups vulnerable to terrorist recruitment, norm messaging through local radio programming, and job creation in rural communities. This article evaluates the effectiveness of one set of these multi-vectored, community-level programs through data from 200 respondents in two similar, neighboring towns in northern Mali, Africa. The data show that residents in Timbuktu who were exposed to the programming for up to five years displayed measurably altered civic behavior and listening patterns in comparison with their counterparts in the control town of Diré, which had no programming (controlling for potential covariates including age, ethnicity, and political and socioeconomic conditions). However, there was little measurable difference between the groups in terms of their cultural identities and attitudes towards the West. While this study is unable to definitively prove a causal connection between programming and behavioral outcomes, it nonetheless strongly suggests that the process of “winning hearts and minds” can be effective at certain levels but may require extended time and dedicated resources to generate higher-level results.     

Beyond regional radars: Security from below and the rule of law in the Sahel

ABSTRACT

Political crises, terrorism, porous international boundaries, coups d’état, and socio-political upheavals all underline the need to rethink what security means in the Sahel region. While international and regional approaches to security still take predominantly military and macro-political perspectives, there is a need to ethnographically describe and analyse security from below. To this end, citizens’ own initiatives should be central to contemporary analyses of African peacemaking interventions. This article takes the growing and diverse movements of self-defence groups in Burkina Faso and Mali as a starting point for analysing how security can be ‘seen from below’, often in interaction with and sometimes even in outright contradiction with the rule of law. While local self-defence groups constitute a challenge to the rule of law, ethnographic fieldwork in Mali and Burkina Faso reveals a high degree of adaptability and flexibility of these movements. This article furthermore discusses methodological challenges when doing ethnographic research in dangerous terrains, drawing on fieldwork in the Sahel, and considers implications of the study of ‘security from below’ for the wider study of international affairs.     

Joint sector reviews—M&E experiments in an era of changing aid modalities: Experiences from JSRs in the education sectors of Burkina Faso,Mali and Niger

Aid policy and practice have been thoroughly shaken up over the past few years. One of the reform areas relates to monitoring and evaluation (M&E). In short, aid recipients are asked to elaborate result‐oriented frameworks while donors are expected to harmonise and align their policies and frameworks. This article examines the extent to which joint sector reviews (JSRs) could take the M&E reform agenda forward. JSRs are M&E exercises at the sector level which have the potential to satisfy the M&E needs of various stakeholders while, at the same time, also contributing to the M&E reform agenda. They are increasingly utilised on the ground, yet, so far, there do not exist any systematic stocktakings and/or analyses of them. Our own analysis of a sample of JSRs from the education sectors of Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger indicate that JSRs score highly on harmonisation, coordination, leadership and broad‐based participation, but poorly on alignment. They generally prioritise accountability over learning needs and largely neglect accountability and learning at the level of the sector institutional apparatus. In this article, findings from the field are contrasted with insights from evaluation theory and practice so as to provide suggestions for on the ground JSR improvements. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The UN at war: examining the consequences of peace-enforcement mandates for the UN peacekeeping operations in the CAR,the DRC and Mali

The UN peacekeeping operations in the Central African Republic (CAR), Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Mali were in 2013 given peace enforcement mandates, ordering them to use all necessary measures to ‘neutralise’ and ‘disarm’ identified groups in the eastern DRC and to ‘stabilise’ CAR and northern Mali. It is not new that UN missions have mandates authorising the use of force, but these have normally not specified enemies and have been of short duration. This article investigates these missions to better understand the short- and long-term consequences, in terms of the willingness of traditional as well as Western troop contributors to provide troops, and of the perception of the missions by host states, neighbouring states, rebel groups, and humanitarian and human rights actors. The paper explores normative, security and legitimacy implications of the expanded will of the UN to use force in peacekeeping operations. It argues that the urge to equip UN peacekeeping operations with enforcement mandates that target particular groups has significant long-term implications for the UN and its role as an impartial arbitrator in post-conflict countries.     

Strengthening family planning stewardship with a total market approach: Mali,Uganda, and Kenya experiences

To improve overall market sustainability, governments and their donors are ramping up efforts to strengthen stewardship in developing country health markets. Key stewardship functions include generating intelligence that enable policymakers, ministerial leaders, and program managers to develop evidence‐based policies and strategies to improve the resource management, supply, and use of health products and services. The total market approach (TMA), an analytic and policy framework, generates market intelligence and improves evidence‐based decision‐making, and also strengthens other stewardship functions, such as building and sustaining partnerships, strengthening tools for implementation, aligning government policy with market interventions, and ensuring accountability/transparency. TMA evolved in response to the phase out of donor support for reproductive health (RH) and family planning (FP) programs and the need to improve coordination among public, private, nongovernmental organizations, and civil society to achieve greater equity, health impact, and market sustainability. To assess TMA's role in strengthening the stewardship of RH/FP markets, this article reviews three countries that applied TMA principles: Mali, Uganda, and Kenya. It identifies how TMA processes influenced stewardship functions and assesses to what degree these processes have contributed to concrete actions to improve market efficiency and sustainability.