Scaling What Works: Community-Level Mediation Strategies to Support Peace and Security in Africa

ByIfeoluwa Olawole, Tog Gang, and Maurice Amollo

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Community-based conflict mitigation initiatives have been demonstrated to markedly reduce the triggers of societal conflict in Africa. Their wider application can reshape the local threat landscape.

Asylum-seekers from the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) carry their belongings at the Bunagana border point in Uganda. (Photo: AFP/Badru Katumba)

More than a dozen African countries are experiencing active armed conflict, contributing to tens of thousands of fatalities annually. These conflicts have been devastating for their societies, contributing to the displacement of a record-high 46 million people (about half the global total) and the roughly 167 million people on the continent facing acute food insecurity.1

While community-based peacemaking initiatives may be more fragmented, more local, and less visible than national-level mediation, they can be impactful in reshaping the threat landscape in Africa.

Many of these African conflicts have a strong societal basis—where ethnic, religious, or geographic differences are exploited for political gain. At times, violent extremist groups polarize these intercommunal tensions to mobilize recruitment and foster disillusionment and distrust. Heavily securitized responses to intercommunal conflict, however, may not only fail to address the underlying drivers or triggers to this violence but can also validate the grievance-based narratives of spoilers and exacerbate the problem by feeding the perception that security actors are supporting one side over another.

The focus of much conflict resolution is structured around national peace processes, including elite negotiations and peace agreements between armed belligerents. As a result, community-level peacebuilding is persistently underprioritized, creating an imbalance that undermines conflict mitigation and prevention. This is so despite the fact that most people experience violence in their communities. In fact, it is at the community level that grievances are voiced, disputes flare, and trust in institutions is either built or eroded. Given the intercommunal dimension of many African conflicts, accordingly, peace processes are insufficient if they do not also engage in community-level peacebuilding.

A range of complex drivers —social, political, economic, ecological—fuel conflict and violence, with many linked directly to how societies are governed locally and nationally.2While conflict and violence can have national or international drivers, evidence points to the fact that violence is highly localized, with the majority of conflict events occurring at the community level.3These are often the result of disputes over resources, identity, land use,4and governance performance. Crucially, most flashpoints begin as community-level disputes, then escalate when no credible or fair venues exist to resolve them.

While security operations may suppress symptoms, they frequently do not change the conditions that reproduce violence, as recurring violence is closely tied to several governance-linked root causes:5

Inconsistent due process in the security and justice sectors, as well as corrupt service delivery, are often linked to legitimacy deficits that elevate conflict risk.6Yet many formal national-level peace processes fail to address governance, justice, or livelihood issues, thus leaving the political or social contexts that drive conflict unchanged.7

These patterns underscore the importance of pursuing local venues for peacebuilding as part of comprehensive peace processes.8It means paying attention to marginalized actors who articulate alternative visions of peace, and to the ways they confront barriers, respond to violence, and navigate entrenched systems that perpetuate conflict.

A review of a decade of field research—including randomized controlled trials and quasi-experimental studies—on conflict prevention and violence in various fragile and conflict-affected settings finds demonstrable impacts from interest-based mediation and negotiation (IBMN). IBMN equips locally legitimate actors to reframe disputes around underlying interests rather than fixed positions, facilitating the co-creation of workable agreements.9

IBMN is usually delivered through 2- to 5-day cohort trainings (lasting up to 40 hours) of 25-35 participants, adjusted to audience and program objectives. Sessions are sometimes staggered to allow simulation, broad participation, and real-life application of the skills acquired. Core elements combine an introduction to the interest-based framework, key concepts, and role-plays. Exercises to build practical comprehension, discussions that localize the framework, and referrals to administrative or dispute resolution mechanisms, where feasible, are also provided so that agreements can “travel” beyond the community level.

IBMN has been applied in diverse settings across the globe to improve day-to-day dispute resolution. In Africa, these include multimodule leader trainings in Nigeria, a compact land-use negotiation package in Liberia, and cross-border sessions supporting grazing and water compacts in Uganda and Kenya, among others. The following synthesis distills some of the key findings from these studies.

In the Community Initiatives to Promote Peace (CIPP) program in Nigeria, the mediation package used an IBMN curriculum delivered in 3- to 5-day cohort sessions (20-35 participants per session) with light-touch follow-up mentoring. Trainees were locally legitimate actors—traditional and religious leaders, women leaders, youth representatives, and ward officials. The program operated across six northern states (Benue, Kaduna, Kano, Katsina, Kogi, and Plateau), covering roughly 34 local government areas (LGAs) and hundreds of rural or semi-urban communities (ranging from a few thousand to tens of thousands of residents). Common conflict tensions included farmer-herder competition over land and water access, boundary disputes, and ethno-religious mistrust.

Herders and farmers commune at a water point in Nigeria. (Photo: Mercy Corps)

The CIPP program showed that communities in which leaders received mediation training saw declines in violence alongside improved perceived security, social cohesion, and trust. In practice, this meant fewer residents reporting recent violent incidents, greater willingness to move freely without fear, and more routine social and economic interactions across group lines. Communities also reported higher satisfaction in how local disputes were handled, with trust often improving more gradually.

The intervention resolved over 1,900 communal disputes over the 5 years of the program, increased mediation knowledge (from 50 to 72 percent), and reduced the share of community members who reported they “did not trust at all” the group they were in conflict with (from 88 to 36 percent), illustrating the efficacy of the mechanism (skills, legitimacy, mentoring). Training and mentoring 340 leaders over the course of a year typically costs around $60,000, underscoring the cost-efficiency of the model.10

A randomized control assessment of this region in North Central Nigeria 3 years later found that only 19 percent of respondents in intervention communities reported a violent event. This compares with 41 percent in similar communities that did not benefit from the training.11

A follow-up study is underway to examine economic spillovers, such as:

Assessments are also being made as to the resilience of sustainability pathways—the mechanisms that keep effects going after projects end, such as absorption of mediation functions into local and state institutions and budgets.

In Liberia, a mediation training mirrored the CIPP IBMN package, with about 35 residents per workshop in 8 day-long sessions over 2 months across 86 communities. The program emphasized interest-based skills through lectures, group discussions, and role-plays. Targeted communities experienced fewer disputes that were resolved violently, fewer threats and property destruction in the short run, and more peaceful dispute handling 3 years later.

Community Initiatives to Promote Peace Program (CIPP) in Kano, Nigeria. (Photo: Mercy Corps)

A randomized control trial showed that equipping local leaders and community members with mediation and dispute resolution skills reduced local land disputes and strengthened informal institutions for managing everyday conflicts, with effects persisting for at least 3 years.12

In Syria, community leaders have played an important role in de-escalating localized conflicts. Local clerics, tribal elders, and municipal figures in Daraa and Sweida have de-escalated flashpoints via shuttle mediation—brokering short ceasefires, detainee exchanges, and access guarantees for services and safe passage.13These quick, interest-focused deals (often monitored by community committees) are fragile but have repeatedly helped contain reprisals when national processes stall.

Along the Kotido-Kaabong-Turkana West corridor in northern Uganda and Kenya, a cross-border program trained 543 local leaders and authorities. The curriculum covered conflict analysis and mapping, interest-based mediation and negotiation, legal literacy on customary and statutory land tenure, and community early warning and response. Trainings targeted agro-pastoralist disputes over grazing routes and natural resource use, including tensions at water points and migration corridors, and land-ownership ambiguities between customary and statutory systems. Gender inclusion and youth engagement were embedded into the design. Structured dialogues with government actors advanced policy fixes and climate-adaptation practices that could reduce resource pressure.

It is at the community level that grievances are voiced, disputes flare, and trust in institutions is either built or eroded.

These engagements led to the adoption of various natural resource sharing agreements that formalized peaceful, organized access to water and grazing land, and clarified transboundary migration routes and modalities to support pastoral livelihoods and reduce conflict. Early-warning and response protocols were created between communities, administrators, and security units on both sides of the border to support compliance and deter spoilers. The program also provided small grants to women to collaborate on peace dividend projects, to build climate resilience, improve and adapt livelihoods, and enhance cross-border cooperation. The annual cost for the mediation and negotiation intervention was $50,000.

The training of local authorities and community members is a vital mitigation layer for intercommunal conflicts, given that communities often turn first to local leaders and traditional authorities to mediate and resolve disputes.14In remote areas where government institutions are absent, such figures tend to hold greater trust because of their deep familiarity with, and ties to, local populations.

Program evaluations also underscore the critical role of women mediators in sustaining household and community norms of nonviolence that discourage youth from mobilizing for violence. Women drawn from market associations, mothers’ groups, and peace committees were trained in IBMN as part of a layered package (mediation, resource-governance compacts, early-warning response links, and small peace dividend grants). Leveraging their positions within social and family structures as “insiders,” they convened “kraal” leaders, reformed youth cattle rustlers, government officials, and security actors for cross-border dialogues that contributed to four natural resource sharing agreements. Women amplified these dialogue outcomes through community networks (with innovative mediums like songs and dances) and day-to-day monitoring. This helped to shift norms from retaliation toward restorative settlements, increased acceptance of shared access, and reduced tolerance for youth mobilization for raids.

In Niger, a country facing a widening militant Islamist insurgency, a youth program layered an interest-based mediation and negotiation training onto its core package of vocational training, entrepreneurship support, civic education, and skills development across randomly assigned villages in Maradi and Tillabéri.15Four youth leaders per village (two women and two men, ages 16-34) attended a 3-day IBMN seminar in regional hubs focusing on functional skills such as interests, options, legitimacy, commitments, and communication. These were then cascaded into training with peers through scenario role-plays on locally salient disputes such as farmer-herder crop damage, land and boundary disagreements, and exclusion of youth from community decisions.

A randomized evaluation of the multilayered intervention found that the combined package outperformed the economic-civic package alone. Acceptance of violence fell by 8 percent on items like retaliation and defending religion. Youths in non-IBMN sites were willing to endorse political-religious violence, while those exposed to IBMN were not. Vignette tests showed 11 percent of respondents in non-IBMN villages favored violent responses to everyday disputes compared to near zero where mediation was added.

Women from the Banyamulenge community in the eastern DRC attend the funerals of a herder killed by an armed militia. (Photo: AFP/Alexis Huguet)

Villages with the combined package experienced smaller increases in violent events over time—especially those linked to jihadists—indicating that IBMN training magnifies effects on behaviors and norms linked to mobilization and violence. Because village selection was randomized, the incremental anti-violence effects are directly attributable to IBMN. The core economic-civic program also delivered positive economic gains that held—or improved—when paired with IBMN. Effects were strongest in poorer areas, underscoring that pairing livelihoods with conflict-management skills is more protective against conflict mobilization than either on its own.

By engaging young people—a key demographic and a group often excluded from formal mediation spaces—this bottom-up approach targets a critical conflict prevention dynamic and bolsters understanding of how youth may promote peace. Training youth in IBMN and having them cascade skills to peers produced sharper shifts in behavior and norms. The mechanism extends beyond skills to perceptions of belonging, efficacy, and credible off-ramps. Trained youth de-escalate everyday disputes, redirect rumors, and broker dialogue with elders and officials. These gains reduce the appeal of mobilization to violence while giving youth legitimate roles in community problem-solving.

Evidence from Kenya shows that working directly with at-risk youth through a multilayered package of vocational training and small cash support, civic engagement opportunities, mentorship and psychosocial counseling, and facilitated dialogue with peers and community leaders lowers vulnerability to radicalization and recruitment by violent extremist groups. In the CREATE program, youth were co-designers of activities, met regularly in safe dialogue spaces to surface grievances and practice nonviolent problem-solving, and were paired with local mentors who helped translate skills into jobs, community service, and positive social roles.16These themes aimed to counter the primary militant recruitment pressures of identity and grievance-driven appeals (status, belonging, revenge) amplified by local insecurity and online messaging.

Young people are a key [at-risk] demographic—yet often excluded from formal mediation spaces.

Facilitated dialogue sessions among participants and with community leaders fostered a greater sense of belonging, addressed grievances, rebuilt trust, and, in turn, reduced support for violence while strengthening community resilience. Evaluations found statistically significant reductions in composite vulnerability indices among participants—often reflected in double-digit drops on indicators such as attitudes supportive of violence and self-reported willingness to join violent groups. This was accompanied by improved trust in community institutions and greater economic stability. These findings are consistent with other conflict mitigation research that relational and interest-based problem-solving capacities matter for both risk reduction and recovery.17

In Niger’s PEACE program, conflict-affected villages facing intercommunal tensions exploited by violent extremist groups received a package of community mobilization and participatory planning. The program produced joint community projects, including mediation and dialogue initiatives, infrastructure rehabilitation, natural resource management, livelihoods support, and cultural events. These activities were designed to strengthen social cohesion across ethnic, citizen-government, and other lines of division to make it more difficult for violent extremist groups to exploit identity differences and feelings of marginalization.

A Hausa Fulani farmer and his son work at a farm in the outskirts of Sokoto, Sokoto State, Nigeria. (Photo: AFP/Luis Tato)

Evaluation of the program found gains in bridging social cohesion. Villages with more PEACE activities and higher household participation reported greater trust in their communities as well as improvements in perception of leaders and conflict-resolution mechanisms.18However, effects on vulnerability to violent extremism were mixed. While the overall program did not reduce support for extremist groups on average, mediation and dialogue activities within the broader package were associated with reduced support for violence and reduced support for extremist groups. The implication is that social cohesion-building alone may be insufficient in high-risk settings unless paired with more targeted interventions, including mediation and dialogue, that address specific drivers of violence.

Strengthening mediation skills among security and judicial officials—a vital interface for building trust between communities and a government—has also been a beneficial conflict mitigation tool. An illustration of this is the Promoting Peaceful Communities around Elections (PPCE) program in North Central Nigeria. In targeted councils (with an estimated population of about 545,000 residents) in Plateau and Nasarawa States, training cohorts included 20 security officials, 12 judiciary officers, and 80 community leaders (traditional and religious leaders, women, and youth).

The skills are learned rather than innate, which means they can be taught and institutionalized.

The curriculum for security and judicial officials emphasized collaborative, interest-based problem-solving to address intercommunal grievances framed by mutual suspicion. The program also aimed to build relationships between citizens and security officials and restore confidence in the local judicial system. Trainings were accompanied by mentoring and practice to help build confidence in nonviolent problem-solving, reduce misperceptions, and create credible off-ramps during conflict escalation.

Respondents within the targeted communities reported a 31-percent reduction in violent incidents within 6 months following the program intervention, while areas outside the program experienced an 8-percent increase within the same period.

In Mali and Niger, under the Justice and Stability in the Sahel (JASS) program, community resource committees brought farmers, herders, women, and youth together to set and enforce shared rules on grazing and water use, with local monitoring and agreed sanctions. Beyond these committees, JASS strengthened local land governance and dispute resolution mechanisms, supported locally negotiated resource-sharing agreements and dialogue forums, and incorporated IBMN training and facilitation to help resolve land and natural resource disputes. It targeted hotspots where farmer-herder competition, land and boundary ambiguity, and climate stress routinely trigger disputes and reprisals.

Subsequent to the intervention, JASS program records show that inclusive, community-led land commissions resolved 80-85 percent of disputes they received in the first year of implementation. This improves on baseline results of 59 percent, with disputes often escalating to courts or violence and low perceived fairness in land and resource governance. The commissions also formalized more than 200 local agreements on grazing corridors and water points and, once recognized by local authorities, saw fewer repeat disputes.

Survey respondents exposed to an inclusive, community-led natural resource governance model were about 23 percentage points more likely to believe it would reduce conflict and 18 percentage points more likely to believe the system would strengthen resilience to climate shocks than individuals who did not have access to an IBMN process.19

A conflict prevention forum in Benue State, Nigeria. (Photo: Mercy Corps)

In Nepal, similarly, the Inclusive Resource Management Initiative (IRMI) strengthened local conflict resolution systems and promoted inclusive governance by training stakeholders in mediation and dialogue.20The program helped resolve 61 natural resource disputes and fostered stronger collaboration between communities and authorities, improving accountability, transparency, and participation in resource management.

These findings illuminate that community-based governance arrangements can be a key conflict mitigation pathway by shaping expectations, improving collective efficacy, and creating incentives for cooperative behavior and nonviolent dispute resolution.

Community-based mediation works because it changes perceptions of conflict drivers at the level they ignite. By creating fair, accessible venues to resolve resource and service grievances, community mediation mechanisms rebuild trust in authorities and strengthen civic collective action. In fragile settings where formal institutions are absent or distrusted, customary and community bodies often retain social authority. Equipping them with interest-based mediation and negotiation skills creates legitimate, low-cost routes for dispute resolution and accountability.

IBMN’s effects flow from learned skills and norms. They equip legitimate community actors to identify interests, reframe zero-sum disputes, and craft mutually acceptable agreements to reduce escalation risk and build social cohesion. The skills are learned rather than innate, which means they can be taught and institutionalized in village councils, youth committees, religious networks, women’s associations, relevant government structures, and customary leadership bodies.

Equally important, mediation targets root causes by transforming relationships and strengthening societies, institutions, policies, and social connections. Many local conflicts are embedded in grievances over access to land and water, accountability in service delivery and justice, and the management of public goods. When those issues go unaddressed, security deployments can suppress violence temporarily while resentment hardens. By contrast, interest-based mediation provides a practical route to address grievances, rebuild trust, and restore broken relationships between communities and authorities. The result is not only fewer violent incidents but greater resilience to political, economic, and climatic shocks.

IBMN is an especially useful peacebuilding model for contexts where the government lacks capacity.

IBMN is an especially useful peacebuilding model for contexts where the government lacks capacity. Conventional approaches often depend on formal conflict resolution institutions. However, in fragile and conflict-affected settings—particularly places where weak governance and persistent conflict have undermined the state—such strategies are less effective.21

Mediation is not a substitute for protection or law enforcement, however. It is the necessary complement. Security forces, community leaders, and mediators can be trained to coordinate with clear protocols that protect neutrality and safeguard communities. When agreements emerge from mediation, they should be recognized and supported by authorities, increasing compliance and deterring spoilers without militarizing the process.

IBMN is also relevant for cross-border conflicts. For instance, women residing along the borders of northern Uganda and western Kenya have been involved in the resolution of 26 disputes related to natural resource issues along that international corridor through the Climate Change Leaders Advancing for Peace (CCLAP) program.

Mediation is also relatively low-cost compared to large-scale security operations. Moreover, IBMN can be scaled through training cascades, mentoring, and integration with local governance processes. Mediation consequently offers a set of tools with a pathway to widen coverage and sustain impact.

A credible scaling strategy links local mediation capacity to the institutions that shape incentives and resources. Practically, this means establishing a tiered architecture in which community mediation bodies are connected to district or provincial authorities, and where data on disputes, resolutions, and trends are routinely shared. It means building mediation into the workflows of services that communities rely on—land and natural resource governance, local justice mechanisms, and basic service delivery—so that problem-solving becomes a standard feature rather than an ad hoc response.

Under CIPP in Nigeria, for example, state ministries in four northern states are committed to absorbing CIPP mediators and expanding alternative dispute resolution mechanisms. The Federal Ministry of Women’s Affairs, furthermore, is planning to formalize the linkages between state-level networks of women mediators and the national network.

Effective scaling also means integrating the IBMN framework with interventions that address the material stakes of conflict, such as:

Evidence shows minorities and lower power groups benefit less when mediation runs only through informal authorities.22This can be counterbalanced by intentional participant selection (women, youth, minority leaders), co-facilitation models, transparent case tracking, and community oversight of outcomes.

Integrating IBMN frameworks into official conflict mitigation processes also involves  developing systems to collect data at scale: dispute volumes, resolution rates, time to resolution, compliance, and cohesion or trust indices. Doing so allows for more informed assessments of which tools are working in different contexts. Building these data collection efforts into service workflows and district reporting enables learning that can drive ongoing adaptation.

Scaling IBMN processes will require institutionalizing pilot funding with multiyear windows that braid peace and security, governance, and development resources. This includes funding for the supporting mechanisms (such as mentoring, supervision, data systems, and analysis), rather than just standalone training events. Currently, financing is often fragmented and short-term.23

Community-level research finds significant success in durably reducing conflict and violence from community-level peacebuilding approaches. While community-based peacemaking initiatives may be more fragmented, more local, and less visible than national-level mediation, they can be impactful in reshaping the threat landscape in Africa. A priority policy imperative is to take these conflict mitigation experiences to scale in countries facing or attempting to prevent conflict. More systematic efforts to implement community-based conflict mediation can, in turn, complement and reduce the scope for kinetic security operations.

A family of Fulani herders in search of richer pastures pause in Dakoro, Niger. (Photo: AFP/Marco Longari)

The findings also show that mediation is a learned capacity that addresses root grievances—over land, resources, services, and justice—where securitized strategies alone cannot. To better maximize these benefits, community-level mediation approaches must move from the margins to the center of stabilization and conflict resolution efforts.

Make community-level mediation a core component of peacebuilding strategies.Policymakers should make conflict prevention and mitigation an explicit objective. This includes investing earlier in conflict prevention to avoid costlier security interventions later.24A strategic conflict prevention plan should include community-level peacebuilding approaches. Policymakers and practitioners can do this with dedicated resources, a selection of legitimate and representative mediators, locally adapted IBMN curricula, training and retraining pipelines, and monitoring frameworks.

Center peacebuilding efforts on empowering local leaders. Local leaders (traditional and religious leaders, women leaders, youth representatives) represent a vital layer in the peacebuilding network, given their proximity to spaces where conflict is likely to escalate and the trust they hold with communities. When locally trusted actors are equipped with interest-based mediation skills and supported, communities see fewer violent incidents, improved dispute handling, and higher levels of cohesion and trust.

Ensure representation in conflict mediation processes.While leveraging local leadership structures, programs and interventions must be mindful of local power asymmetries. This necessitates building inclusion guardrails into the design and tracking who benefits from conflict mediation agreements to ensure these processes are inclusive of marginalized groups.

Economic and civic programming should be paired with mediation approaches.Coupling interest-based mediation modules to youth livelihoods and civic projects produces larger shifts in reducing violent attitudes. These effects were strongest in economically deprived settings. Where the risk of violent mobilization is high and recruitment risks are acute, priority should be given to bundling interest-based mediation and negotiation with livelihood investments to consolidate behavior change and reduce relapse. Programs should use local diagnostics (including recruitment exposure, economic stress, grievance) to decide where bundling will most likely add value.

Mediation is a learned capacity that addresses root grievances—over land, resources, services, and justice.

Link local mechanisms to government systems to increase durability. Local institutions and practitioners should formalize referral pathways between community mediation bodies and governmental and judicial authorities so that mediated agreements are recognized in local bylaws. This gives them more credibility and durability.

Bridge peace, security, and development agendas. Conflict mediation should be integrated into governance, resilience, and climate mitigation programs in conflict-vulnerable areas to leverage the synergies of these efforts. Coordination and training with security actors are also essential so that security activities reinforce and protect mediation and dispute resolution mechanisms.25In cross-border areas, investments should be made to harmonize resource management rules and coordinate when disputes span jurisdictions.

Prioritize learning and scaling.Shifts from short project cycles to multiyear, adaptive projects would strengthen the impact of community-level peacebuilding approaches. This includes prioritizing evidence from programs to adapt project implementation and scaling up what works, while factoring in unique local contexts and dynamics. Systematically bringing evidence into strategy dialogues can shift narratives and emphasize what is working.

Dr. Ifeoluwa Olawoleis the Director of Research – Peace and Governance with the international nongovernmental organization Mercy Corps.

Tog Gangis Mercy Corps’ Senior Advisor for Peace and Conflict.

Maurice Amollois Mercy Corps’ Senior Director – Peace and Governance.

Based on reporting by ACSS