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From the Team
The singular purpose of the Engaging Borders Africa project, which we are launching today (02/12/2022), is to mainstream a “soft” approach to preventing and countering violent extremism (PCVE) in the Sahel and Africa as a whole by energizing creative writers and journalists into a new pan-African community of practice.
We believe the leverage of these two key groups and the extensive variety of platforms they offer—from poetry performance to podcasts to guerilla theatre—can change the perceptions of vulnerable persons and communities-in-conflict. In this way, we address the issues attenuated to violent extremism by engaging the very “borders” that rhetoric, hate speech, ethno-religious profiling and the lack of opportunity have made tenuous and volatile.
Our ongoing pilot, with generous funding from the Open Society Initiative for West Africa (OSIWA), aims to generate and popularize organic counternarratives by creating a website to host thirty stories and three short films made by creatives from Nigeria, West Africa and the continent. This follows an open-access, intensive MOOC-style virtual workshop on the use of storytelling, multimedia and artistic expression for the purpose.
We recognize that access to digital platforms and content far outstrips traditional media today, making digital an effective way to mainstream our message where what is called for is addressing youth.
In working with African writers and journalists to craft creative writing and short films, an approach which changes perceptions by subtly questioning the basis of conflict and the argument of extremists is achieved, providing a whole new tool in addition to kinetic military and policing.
Having worked together over the last twelve weeks, my team and I are pleased to present www.engagingborders.com, a scalable and freely accessible bank of counternarratives that demonstrate the importance of dialogue, humanizes opposing sides in conflict, and creates better understandings while facilitating new middle grounds.
Thank you.
Richard Ali,
Project Manager,
Abuja, Nigeria.
