In the Lake Chad region, researchers have set up citizen-led laboratories where local communities co-create their own roadmaps out of poverty and violence. This matters because the region faces a crisis: over 149 million people live in extreme poverty, violent conflicts are at a two-decade high, and 45 million people have been forcibly displaced across Africa as of mid-2024. Without change, an additional 50 million people could be pushed into poverty by 2030. The research fills a gap by moving beyond top-down policy prescriptions—instead, it embeds local voices directly into designing prosperity and peace pathways. If successful, this renewal fellowship will turn those co-created pathways into practical, real-world interventions. The team will evaluate existing programmes, assess institutional capacity, and pilot new SDG-aligned projects that address human rights, security, and food security. The goal is to scale these approaches across West Africa and the Sahel, giving governments and organisations tested tools for monitoring and implementing peace-centred development. This is applied social science with a clear target: shifting societies from deprivation and instability toward collective well-being and social justice.
View original technical description
Prosperity and peace are fundamental to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). However, many regions in Africa, particularly the Lake Chad area, face significant challenges in realising these goals. Violent clashes have surged in recent years, with more conflicts occurring now than at any time in the past two decades. As of mid-2024, over 45 million people have been forcibly displaced - an increase from 6.4 million in 2019. In the Sahel and Lake Chad region alone, extreme poverty affects over 149 million people, with one in four individuals facing insecurity. Without urgent collaborative action towards prosperity and peace, violence could push an additional 50 million people into poverty by 2030. In response to these concerns, I implemented a system of interlinked research and learning spaces across the Lake Chad region during the first phase of my UKRI fellowship using innovative bottom-up mixed methods that embed interdisciplinary knowledge co-creation, placing local voices at the centre of the research process: Transboundary Citizen Labs (TCLs) and youth panels that brought together diverse stakeholders and young people to co-create prosperity-peace pathways. An observatory that provides ongoing data and insights on regional conflict and environmental incidents. Participatory scenario-based forecasting exercises engaging over 500 stakeholders to envision multiple futures. Multi-country surveys reaching 1,000 respondents to ground the research in local realities. The findings indicate that prosperity-peace pathways serve as vital roadmaps for transitioning societies from deprivation and instability towards collective well-being and social cohesion. Pathways are co-created to reflect a multidimensional construct with pillars such as leadership values and citizen agency; levers of change like adherence to the rule of law; political economy considerations like institutional incentives; and desired outcomes including access to decent livelihoods and social justice. To date, three sets of pathways have been co-created - focusing on human rights; human and regional security; and linked natural resources, livelihoods and food security - with seven more expected by July 2025. Evaluations using indicator techniques reveal that pathways demonstrate key attributes such as context specificity, multidimensionality, adaptability, local validity and local ownership. To maximise the impact of these findings, I propose a renewal fellowship aimed at practical implementation and scaling: using TCL-enabled co-created pathways as a guiding framework to design, pilot and evaluate SDG-aligned prosperity-peace interventions. Having established a solid evidence base for understanding prosperity-peace pathways and pioneered innovative learning spaces through the TCLs, it is now important to evaluate opportunities and build capacity for real-world applications. The renewal will focus on four work packages: WP1: Evaluation of projects, programmes, and policies. WP2: Institutional capacity assessment. WP3: Co-designing and piloting prosperity-peace compliant interventions. WP4: Scaling up across West Africa and the Sahel. I will develop practical tools for pathway implementation, including indicators for monitoring co-designed interventions over the short-to-long term. Strategies will be created to address potential complexities in using co-created pathways within national/regional policy spaces. This renewal will significantly consolidate the value of the already established system of interlinked research and learning spaces while allowing my team and I to build skills in research-policy-action translation. The proposed implementation will foster progress towards peace-centred development (SDGs 1 and 16), support conflict transformation efforts, and improve livelihood security. Ultimately, this renewal will empower me to build capacity, competence, confidence, and collaborative networks, supporting me to establish myself as a globally visible leader in peace-centred development.
Plain English summaries and category classifications on this site are generated by AI and may not perfectly reflect the original research.
Is something wrong? Let us know