Short abstract:

Long abstract:

The Sahel is currently a site of intense securitization in response to the counter-insurgency priorities of several regional and global entities. This securitization is however built on a generalized misunderstanding of the broad evolution of the Sahel as a spatial reality that reflects and captures the flows and ruptures that define a deeper history and reveal deeply embedded and complex livelihoods that are currently under stress. This panel will seek to re-imagine the Sahel as a place that defies easy generalizations, challenges statist assumptions (with their heavy security narrative) and as a place that accommodates multiple temporal and spatial realities. The panel locates the Sahel as a connector in Africa and will use the historic role of endogenous knowledge in the region to illustrate this.

Accepted papers:

When marginalised indigenous knowledge complements scientific practice in the securitization of Sahel region, Africa: an analysis of Northern Nigeria's security architecture  

Excavation and creation: (re)setting personal and national self-confidence in the Nigérien Sahel  

Climate change and livelihoods in the Sahel: revisiting nexus and focusing on endogeneus knowledge  

Conflits armés et insécurité dans le Sahel ouest-africain: défis pour la recherche africaniste  

Re-imagining Sahelian borderlands, a postcolonial perspective  

Sahelian intellectualism in the process of modernity