Large development investment and local peacebuilding in rural Africa: building and sustaining peace at the margins.

在撒哈拉以南非洲地区，目前正在进行的许多大型发展项目都在偏远的农村地区。其中包括150亿英镑的拉穆-南苏丹-埃塞俄比亚运输走廊项目，该项目将通过铁路和公路连接肯尼亚海岸拉穆的新港口设施与肯尼亚北部、埃塞俄比亚和南苏丹，以及一条石油管道和相关的炼油能力。在塞拉利昂内陆，一个中英财团在通科利利（Tonkolili）矿区开展了一项价值数十亿英镑的业务，该矿区是世界上已知铁矿石储量最大的矿区之一。这些项目是对非洲土地和资源的现代争夺的一部分，需要前所未有的新投资水平。他们往往生活在长期被国家忽视的边缘农村地区，那里有冲突和暴力的后遗症。生活在农村边缘的绝大多数人只受到市场和国家机构的最低限度的控制，而是依靠非正式的关系和机构来促进和平并规范土地和资源的获取。虽然人们普遍认为，大的发展将改变农村人口的生活和生计，但有许多例子表明，大的发展投资可能会严重破坏稳定，实际上导致新的暴力，而对创造新的就业机会、刺激当地创业或促进和平几乎没有任何作用。该项目涉及电话会议的第三个主题，即如何最大限度地减少暴力风险及其对穷人的影响。它考察了在有大量新投资的情况下，地方建设和平努力如何以及为什么能成功地减少暴力，重点是肯尼亚和塞拉利昂的偏远农村地区。通过在肯尼亚北部和塞拉利昂北部不同的地方政治和治理环境中进行严格的实地调查，它验证了这样一种假设，即在支持地方机构和关系以建立和维持和平的情况下，减少暴力威胁及其对穷人的影响的努力更有可能取得成功。将采用多种方法，包括对研究地点的家庭进行调查、半结构化访谈以及非正式讨论和互动，以对社区用于解决问题和协商获得更好结果的机构和关系进行细致入微的了解。在肯尼亚和塞拉利昂，一名资深学者将在项目的整个生命周期中与一名早期职业科学家密切合作，以转移生成和分析数据的技能，以及向非学术利益相关者提供知识。在肯尼亚，我们将与未来农业联合会的高级学者罗巴·杜巴·沙拉莫博士密切合作，他曾担任亚的斯亚贝巴安全研究所的主任。在塞拉利昂，该小组将由Njala大学的Paul Richards教授领导。这些小组将与肯尼亚的Saferworld和塞拉利昂的Conciliation Resources合作，制定计划，将研究成果转化为各种发展利益攸关方（包括国家、国家和地方民间社会、外国投资者以及捐助和援助机构）的可用资源。这些问题将在内罗毕和弗里敦与高级官员举行的知识分享活动中讨论。在英国举办的活动将有目标利益相关者参加，包括在肯尼亚和塞拉利昂的英国海外私人投资者，英国海外非政府组织发展协会，欧盟和经合组织代表，国际发展部脆弱国家和冲突小组，以及关于冲突问题和非洲的所有党派议会小组。

Across sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), many of the largest development projects currently underway are in remote rural areas. These include the £15 billion Lamu-South Sudan-Ethiopian Transport Corridor Project, which will connect a new port facility at Lamu on the Kenyan coast with northern Kenya, Ethiopia and South Sudan through rail and road links as well as an oil pipeline and related refinery capacity. In the interior of Sierra Leone, a UK-Chinese consortium has launched a multi-billion pound operation in the Tonkolili mining complex, one of the world's largest defined reserves of iron ore. These projects are part of a modern scramble for Africa's land and resources and entail unprecedented levels of new investment. They are often in marginal rural areas that were long neglected by states and have a legacy of conflict and violence. The vast majority living at the rural margins have been only minimally captured by market and state institutions and instead rely on informal relations and institutions to promote peace and regulate land and resource access. While it is widely assumed that big development will transform the lives and livelihoods of rural populations, there are many examples that large development investment can be deeply destabilising and actually lead to new violence while doing little to create new jobs, spur local entrepreneurship or promote peace.This project relates to the third theme of the call that is concerned with how to minimise the risk of violence and its impacts on the poor. It examines how and why local peacebuilding efforts succeed in minimising violence in contexts where there are large new investments, focusing on the remote rural areas of Kenya and Sierra Leone.Through rigorous fieldwork in different settings of local politics and governance in northern Kenya and northern Sierra Leone, it tests the assumption that efforts to reduce the threat of violence and its impacts on the poor are more likely to succeed where they support local institutions and relations to build and sustain peace. A combination of methods will be used including a survey of households in the study sites, semi-structured interviews as well as informal discussions and interactions to develop a nuanced understanding of the institutions and relations that communities use to solve their problems and negotiate for better outcomes. In both Kenya and Sierra Leone a senior scholar will work closely with an early career researcher through the life of the project to transfer skills in generating and analysing data as well as making knowledge accessible to non-academic stakeholders. In Kenya we will work closely with Dr. Roba Duba Sharamo, a senior academic affiliated with the Future Agricultures Consortium who previously headed the Institute for Security Studies in Addis Ababa. In Sierra Leone, the team will be led by Professor Paul Richards from Njala University. The teams will partner with Saferworld in Kenya and Conciliation Resources in Sierra Leone to develop plans to translate the research findings into usable resources for a variety of development stakeholders, including states, national and local civil society, foreign investors, and donor and aid agencies. These will be discussed at knowledge sharing events in Nairobi and Freetown with senior officials. Events in the UK will be organised with targeted stakeholders including British-based overseas private investors in Kenya and Sierra Leone, the British Overseas NGOs for Development association, EU and OECD representatives, the DFID Fragile States and Conflict Team, and the All Party Parliamentary Groups on Conflict Issues and on Africa.