The data that we do (not) have: studying drug trafficking and organised crime in Africa

An increasing amount of reports highlights the growing salience of drug trafficking in Africa. Yet the evidence-base for this claim remains problematic. Stemming from a critical approach to social sciences’ epistemology, the paper explores how drug trafficking data are framed, produced and shared. Building on an extensive literature review and key interviews, it provides an in-depth analysis of both the main open source drug trafficking metrics (at UN, US and EU level), and the inner working of anti-drug trafficking agencies in key African countries, i.e. Nigeria, Senegal and Mali. The analysis shows that politicised framings, practical challenges and methodological inconsistencies affect drug trafficking knowledge production, especially in Africa. The paper therefore suggests to treat drug trafficking data – both quantitative and qualitative ‘evidence’ – not as proxies that would reveal ‘the reality’ of criminal under- and over-worlds ‘out there’, but performances whose appearance and disappearance is part and parcel of the mechanics of state (un)making. Anchoring the interpretation of drug trafficking data to the dynamics of protection and extraction characterising parallel modes of governance in the post-colonial world leads to the acknowledgement that the absence of reliable data is not a mere knowledge gap, but a datum in itself that calls for interpretation and investigation

Strategic misalignment: European security and P/CVE engagement in the Sahel

A key security partner of the region for more than a decade, the European Union today faces growing challenges and the potential failure of its policy towards the Sahel. While the cycle of violence does not appear to be receding, rivals such as Russia – but also Western allies such as Turkey or the Gulf states – are building new partnerships in the region. Contesting the idea that exogenous factors alone explain strategic shortcomings, we explore instead how the evolution of EU initiatives aimed at preventing and countering violent extremism (P/CVE) has contributed to strategic misalignments with Sahelian partners. The choice of new international partners by Sahelian states does not primarily follow from ideological reasons, but rather displays tactical ductility and sensitivity to political costs and strategic opportunity. The EU assistance to the emergence of a regional security model, based increasingly on securitization and militarization through ambiguous, at times incoherent and self-referential policies, should be examined to better understand the weakening of political influence in the Sahel

Introduction: socio-economic development and the ‘liberal peace’

Beside writing the introduction, edited the 200-page final thematic and case-study report of the working package 4b of FP7 Collaborative project "Multi-stakeholder Partnerships for Socio-Economic Development in Post-Conflict Reconstruction": available at http://www.multi-part.eu