This four-year regional development project is designed to strengthen the development responses to mitigate the growth of violent extremism in Africa; this is a long-term process and this project should be seen as the first phase of a long-term engagement. This focus is motivated by the ever-increasing presence of violent extremist groups on African soil causing, in the words of UN Security-General Ban Ki-moon, an “arc of upheaval and distress”. Violent extremism is having a devastating impact on the lives and livelihoods of populations across the continent – particularly the most vulnerable, and including youth, women and children. The project will be implemented at the regional and country level. At the regional level the project will support the capacity of the African Union Commission (AUC) and Regional Economic Communities (IGAD, LCBC and ECOWAS) to prevent and respond to violent extremism. At the country level the project will be implemented in three categories’ of countries: ‘epicentre countries’ – Mali, Nigeria and Somalia; ‘spill-over countries’- Cameroon, Chad, Kenya, Mauritania and Niger; and, in ‘at-risk’ countries – the Central African Republic, Sudan, Tanzania and Uganda. The project focuses on interventions in six key areas: socio-economic; rule of law and security; disengagement and reintegration; media and technology; community resilience and gender-specific initiatives. Programming in these areas is supported by two cross-cutting initiatives: research, policy and advocacy; and, capacity-building for regional and sub-regional organizations. It should be noted that the project is designed to focus on the immediate and underlying causes of violent extremism which is aligned to UNDP’s ‘core’ programming, including areas which address weak State capacity, poor service delivery, endemic marginalization and poverty, and the lack of coordination at the national and regional level. This project forms part of Outcome 3 (“Countries are able to reduce the likelihood of conflict”) of the Regional Project Document and is in line with the African Union’s Agenda 2063.
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