The Covid-19 pandemic continues to reach deeper into communities in Africa. In response, governments are tending to adopt approaches similar to what has worked in parts of Asia, Europe and the United States; near total lockdowns, strict social distancing, enforced closures of business and strict enforcement measures.
The difference between organised crime and violent extremism is at times difficult to discern.
At Wasafiri, we have recently been discussing different measurement techniques when trying to understand how change happens in complex conflict-affected environments. This is no easy task.
Trying to work out if the money spent on development projects has made a real difference is hard; when this money is directed at sensitive and intangible goals like countering violent extremism (CVE), this gets even harder. CVE programmes, by nature, are designed with ambitious goals; they often seek to reduce or eliminate the violent extremist threat in a specific area, which is seemingly impossible to prove. So how, then, do we try to identify any sort of impact or changes in CVE programmes and attribute these changes to specific interventions?
