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Paper short abstract:

This paper has 2 objectives: firstly, it maps the often conflicting EU's discourses on the Sahel, to understand how they shape EU's policymaking on agricultural development and peace. Secondly, it maps the main EU stakeholders influencing and negotiating agriculture and peace policies for the Sahel.

Paper long abstract:

Issues of policy incoherence are considered a technical issue that can be resolved with adequate design, yet it remains a wicked problem that is far from being solved. This paper focuses on the competing discourses and intricate relations of EU's stakeholders negotiating policies for agricultural development and peace in the Sahel. Most importantly, it shows how these conflicting discourses and relations lead to (in)coherent policies.

The study will take a keen look at the issue of policy (in)coherence between two objectives that are intertwined in practice though separate at policy-making level: agricultural development and peace/security. The reason for choosing these two development objectives is that while peace/security is considered to be a political objective and process (particularly in militarized contexts), the objective on agricultural development is generally regarded as more neutral. In practice however, there is evidence that food security and access to land are strictly intertwined with peace and security issues. Therefore, the discourses around these two objectives are divergent, heightening the tensions in reconciling the objectives in coherent policies. Moreover, the high level of politicisation of policies for the Sahel makes agricultural and peace policies highly sensitive.

This study focuses on EU policymaking for the Sahel. The EU is, globally, the biggest donor; and is one of the main proponents of the Agenda 2030, which include objectives on agricultural development (SDG2 & SDG15) and peace (SDG16). The timespan of the study will not precede 2015, when the Agenda 2030 was launched.