Antonia Witt is Head of the Research Group “African Intervention Politics” at the Peace Research Institute Frankfurt (PRIF). Before joining PRIF, she was a research associate at Goethe University Frankfurt and the University of Bremen, Germany and spent four months as visiting fellow at the University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa. Antonia has a background in African Studies and International Relations as well as Peace and Conflict Research. Her research focuses on authority and legitimacy in the international realm, African regional organizations, as well as societal consequences and perspectives on African interventions. For her doctoral dissertation, Antonia received the Christiane-Rajewsky-Award as well as the Young Scholars’ Prize of the Association for African Studies in Germany. At MIASA, Antonia is the co-convener of IFG 9 on “Sustainable Regional Peacebuilding”.

Interdisciplinary Fellow Group on Sustainable regional peacebuilding (IFG 9)

Preparing for peace: International and local responses to the spread of violent extremism

The likely spread of violence from Sahelian states to the broader region, specifically the coastal countries Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Togo, and Benin has recently become a key policy concern. In light of the apparent failures to effectively address insecurity in the Sahel and given the growing political tensions with military governments in the region, international and regional actors are shifting focus from the current to the potential future sites of violence. From that perspective, the coastal countries are still imagined as able to prepare for a non-violent future; and international efforts are geared towards supporting this preparation. But how to prepare for peace? How is the spread of violence anticipated and made known? And what priorities and strategies determine the various efforts to prevent the anticipated ‘spill-over’?

Building on a growing literature on anticipatory (international) governance, this research project explores different rationales and practices of preparing for peace in coastal African countries and the understandings of (in)security and peace underpinning them. Concretely, it will focus on the intersection or dissection between international practices and priorities of preparing for peace on the one hand and those of local communities living in the areas anticipated to be the first directly concerned by the potential spread of violence. Research will initially be focused on Ghana and then in a second step widened to other coastal countries. Ghana is not only one of the four coastal countries likely to be concerned, but also the seat of the newly revived Accra Initiative, which has become a key focus of international support. Methodologically, the project will be based on semi-structured interviews as well as a survey with a set of closed and open-ended questions conducted in different communities in Ghana’s Upper West and Upper East Region.

Link to PRIF profile: https://www.hsfk.de/en/staff/employees/antonia-witt

Most recent publications:

2023 (ed.). Rule in International Politics, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (with Christopher Daase and Nicole Deitelhoff).

2023. Forging an African Union identity: The power of experience, Global Studies Quarterly, online first.

2023. “Siding with the people” or “occupying force”? Local perceptions of African Union and ECOWAS interventions in the Gambia, PRIF Report 3/2023, Frankfurt/M. (with Sophia Birchinger, Omar M. Bah, and Sait Matty Jaw).

2022. Les « syndicats des chefs d’État » sur le terrain. Perceptions locales de l’Union Africaine, de la CEDEAO et de leurs interventions au Burkina Faso en 2014/2015, PRIF Report 11/2022, Frankfurt/M. (with Simone Schnabel and Adjara Konkobo).

2022. Beyond formal powers: Understanding the African Union's authority on the ground, Review of International Studies 48:4, 626–645.

2020. Undoing Coups. The African Union and Post-coup Intervention in Madagascar, London: Zed Books.