Project description
A closer look at Africa’s fight against insurgencies
Jihadist violence has displaced millions across Africa, destabilising already fragile states and shattering local economies. In doing so, it has torn apart the social and political fabric of many countries. Beyond foreign military intervention, little is known about how African governments and their citizens respond at the local level. The ERC-funded COUNTERRR project aims to explore the state responses in Mali, Mozambique, and Nigeria. It will focus on the internal dynamics, ranging from direct domestic repression to reliance on external military aid. The survival strategies of local populations will also be studied. The goal is to shed light on how these localised responses influence regional security.
Objective
Many African countries, including Libya, Nigeria, Mali, DR Congo, Somalia, and Mozambique, have been affected by violence of jihadist armed groups. These groups pose a distinct threat to social, political, and economic orders across Africa as they violently reject the nation-state and can rely on support from the transnational violent networks of the Islamic State and al-Qaeda.
Research has primarily focused on international responses to “violent extremism” in Africa, but international actors do not operate in a vacuum and interact with responses on the ground. If we want to understand and effectively tackle this violent threat, we need to know more about how domestic actors—governments, security forces, and affected communities—counter jihadist armed groups in Africa. Why do some governments repress these groups through domestic security operations, while others invite foreign countries to militarily intervene? Why do some governments respond immediately, while others delay a response to a new jihadist threat? Why do some communities decide to cooperate with jihadist groups, while others opt to resist them? Why do some communities attempt to resist these groups non-violently, while others form self-defence militias to protect themselves? And finally, how do domestic responses to jihadist armed groups reorder security in the region and shape conflict stabilization or escalation?
COUNTERRR will deliver crucial analyses of when, how, and why domestic actors repress and resist jihadist armed groups and reorder security. It will adopt an innovative multi-level and multi-method comparative approach focused on variation within and across three countries (Mali, Nigeria, and Mozambique). Understanding how African countries and affected communities respond to jihadist insurgencies will help international actors to coordinate and adjust their responses to benefit from local knowledge and prevent further escalation of conflict.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
This project's classification has been human-validated.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
This project's classification has been human-validated.
Keywords
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Programme(s)
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
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HORIZON.1.1 - European Research Council (ERC)
MAIN PROGRAMME
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Topic(s)
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Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
Funding Scheme
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Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
HORIZON-ERC - HORIZON ERC Grants
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Call for proposal
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Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
(opens in new window) ERC-2024-STG
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2311 EZ Leiden
Netherlands
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