The African Peacebuilding Network (APN) of the Social Science Research Council (SSRC) is pleased to announce the 2018 recipients of its Individual Research Grants, Collaborative Working Group Grants, and Book Manuscript Completion Grants.

The program awards these three unique grants to African researchers based in African universities, research institutes, and other policy-related and civil society institutions. Since 2013, the APN has supported the research of 127 scholars through 139 research grants. This year, the APN saw its first grantees from Burkina Faso, The Gambia, and Guinea Bissau, bringing the total number of African countries represented among current APN grantees and alumni to twenty-six.

The APN supports independent African research on conflict-affected countries and neighboring regions of the continent, as well as the integration of African knowledge into global policy communities. APN grants facilitate the production of high-quality African peacebuilding research and promotes its visibility among policy practitioners and scholars both in the West and in Africa, with the aim of influencing academic discourse and effecting policy change.

The thirty-one grantees listed below are pursuing a diverse range of topics related to conflict and peacebuilding, including land and resource-driven conflict, identity, religious and ethnic drivers and triggers of violence, traditional conflict management and local peacebuilding practices, and the role of civil society in preventing electoral violence.

Here is the complete list of African Peacebuilding Network 2018 grant recipients:

Individual Research Grants

The Individual Research Grant (IRG) supports six-months of field-based research, through which recipients produce research-based knowledge that is relevant to and has a significant impact on, peacebuilding scholarship, policy, and practice on the continent. The 2018 Individual Research Grant cohort features fifteen individuals from eleven countries, including the APN’s first Individual Research Grant recipient from Burkina Faso. The other ten countries are Cameroon, Ethiopia, Kenya, Morocco, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda, and Zimbabwe. The 2018 IRG cohort is also the most gender-equal so far, with seven of the fifteen grantees being women (which translates to over 46 percent).

This year’s APN Individual Research Grant recipients are as follows:

  • Titilope Ajayi – “From 1325 to 2349: Engendering Nigeria’s War on Terror,” The Global Institute (GI), Ghana
  • Arsène Brice Bado – “Evaluating Practices of Civil Society Organizations in the Prevention of Electoral Violence in Cote d’Ivoire and Burkina Faso,” Center for Research and Action for Peace (CERAP), Côte d’Ivoire
  • Anna Chitando – “From Victims to the Vaunted: Young Women and Peacebuilding in Mashonaland East, Zimbabwe,” Zimbabwe Open University, Zimbabwe
  • Edmore Chitukutuku – “Youth Peacebuilding: Community Engagement in Zimbabwe,” University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa
  • Amina Djouldé Christelle – “An African Tree of Peace: The ‘Soré Tree,’ Politics, Women, and Peacebuilding among the Gbaya Community in Cameroon and the Central African Republic,” University of Ngaoundéré, Cameroon
  • Asnake Kefale – “Ethno-federalist state building and political stability: Reexamining the Ethiopian experiment after 25 years,” Addis Ababa University, Ethiopia
  • Iddy Ramadhani Magoti – “The Interface Between Traditional and State Designed Approaches of Conflict Management and Resolutions: An Exploration from the Kuria Community of Kenya and Tanzania, 1900 – 2010s.” University of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania
  • Mohammed Masbah – “Deradicalization of Moroccan Jihadis,” African Institute for Peacebuilding and Conflict Transformation (AIPECT), Morocco
  • Alex Sivalie Mbayo – “How Can We Not Matter? People with Disabilities and Political Processes in Sierra Leone,” University of Sierra Leone, Sierra Leone
  • Thulisile Mphambukeli – “Mapping the Shifting (Human) Securityscape of Immigrant Informal Settlers in Mangaung in the Post-Apartheid South African Urbanscape,” University of the Free State (UFS), South Africa
  • Sela M. Musundi – “How Young Rwandans Born Out of Genocide Rape Construct Selfhood,” Center for the Study of Adolescence (CSA), Kenya
  • Priscilla Mwondha – “Uganda’s ‘Niger Delta’: The Wails of Women and Children in Oil-Rich Communities of the Albertine Grabben,” Makerere University, Uganda
  • Roseanne Njiru – “Peacebuilding through Health Initiatives: Assessing the Role of Health Workers in Kenya,” The Catholic University of Eastern Africa (CUEA), Kenya
  • Taiwo Owoeye – “Confronting the Omo Onile Menace in Lagos, Nigeria: The Conflicts and the Remedies,” Ekiti State University (ESU), Nigeria
  • Samaila Suleiman – “The Perils of Historiography: Another Culture of Violence in Northern Nigeria,” Bayero University Kano (BUK), Nigeria

Collaborative Working Group Grants

Every two years the APN awards two Collaborative Working Group (CWG) grants to two groups of researchers. The Collaborative Working Group research grant supports eighteen months of research and is a key complement to the field-based and networking components of the APN’s programming. This grant responds to the need for deep collaboration and engagement of researchers and practitioners on peacebuilding challenges in Africa. It also seeks to connect research to policy, promote mentoring of junior scholars by senior colleagues, and to increase the likelihood of impacting policy through the knowledge-production process.

The recipients of the 2018-2019 APN Collaborative Working Group grants are as follows:

  1. “From ‘No War, No Peace’ to Peacebuilding in Casamance”

Lead Investigator: Mame Penda Ba, Gaston Berger University, Senegal

Group members:

  • Sait Matty Jaw, University of The Gambia, Gambia
  • Lassana Cassama, Universidade Lusófona da Guiné, Guinea Bissau
  • Pape Chérif Bertrand Bassene, Gaston Berger University, Senegal
  • Rachid Id Yassine, Gaston Berger University, Senegal
  • Jean Alain Goudiaby, University Assane Seck, Senegal
  • Nyimasata Camara, University of The Gambia, Gambia
  1. “Herders-Farmers Conflicts in Africa: Historical Trajectories, ‘New’ Issues, Responses and Lessons for Peacebuilding”

Lead Investigator: Jeremiah Shola Omotola, Federal University of Oye-Ekiti, Nigeria

Group members:

  • Abosede Babatunde (APN Individual Research Grant recipient 2016), University of Ilorin, Nigeria
  • Akachi Odoemene (APN Individual Research Grant recipient 2013), Federal University Otuoke, Nigeria
  • Richard Alemdjrodo (APN Individual Research Grant recipient 2016), University of Lomé, Togo
  • Fatma Ibnouf (APN Individual Research Grant recipient 2016; Book Manuscript Completion Grant recipient 2017), University of Khartoum, Sudan
  • Aloysius Ngalim (APN Individual Research Grant recipient 2013), University of Buea, Cameroon
  • Patricia Bontogho, University of Fada N’gourma, Burkina Faso

Book Manuscript Completion Grants

The APN also awards two Book Manuscript Completion Grants to APN Alumni annually. Book Manuscript Completion Grants support APN Alumni to transform their APN projects or related peacebuilding research into publishable book manuscripts within a six-month timeframe. They also serve as a vehicle for enhancing the quality and visibility of independent African peacebuilding research both regionally and globally, while making the peacebuilding knowledge already gathered from a prior APN grant accessible to key policymakers and research centers of excellence in Africa and around the world. Recipients receive one-on-one mentoring by a scholar from the APN Advisory Board knowledgeable in the manuscript’s topic area.

The 2018 Book Manuscript Completion Grant recipients are as follows:

  • Godfrey Maringira (APN Individual Research Grant recipient 2014; APN Collaborative Working group member 2016-2018) – Soldiers and the State in Zimbabwe
  • Tendai Chari (APN Individual Research Grant recipient 2014) – Diaspora Media and their Entanglement in Homeland Conflicts: Mapping Discourses of Conflict and Peacebuilding

Warm congratulations to all of this year’s African Peacebuilding Network grant recipients. The APN looks forward to working with you and seeing the results of your promising research.

If you are interested in applying for a grant from the African Peacebuilding Network, the next call for applications for the 2019 grant cycle will be released in October this year. Applications will be accepted from October 2018 through January 2019.

The African Peacebuilding Network is funded by Carnegie Corporation of New York.