Planning for multiple disasters along West African borders: between standardisation and localisation
Abstract as pdf
Corresponding Author:
Charline Kopf
University of Oslo Norway
charline.kopf@sai.uio.no
Author(s):
This article homes in on projects geared towards the involvement of ‘local and rural populations’ as a new strategy to prepare for crises in West African borders. Based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Senegal and Mali in 2019, and an internship at an UN Agency, this article homes in on the design, preparation and implementation of awareness-raising campaigns and a crisis simulation exercise along the borders between Senegal and its neighbouring countries. Drawing on border and security studies (Frowd 2014; Frowd and Sandor 2018) and on the literature on crises preparedness and simulations (Collier 2008; Elie et al. 2014; Enria 2019, 2020; Lakoff 2017; Revet 2020), it engages in the everyday operations of actors dealing with securitisation practices exploring how the latter test local and international security forces’ responses, as well as prepare inhabitants to various disaster scenarios. The article is thus an ethnographic engagement with both the notion of preparedness (in the form of a simulation exercise) and of risk and prevention (through awarenessraising campaigns), exploring how multiple crises and disasters are ‘practiced’ and ‘imagined’ together: from terrorist attacks to mass displacement and environmental catastrophes. I argue that what is at the core of the planning of these speculative dangers is a contradictory tendency. On the one hand, crises imaginaries are adapted “to the ground” (drawing on regional and national knowledge and information with the help of ‘local communities’) and on the other, these potential scenarios are standardized, by being increasingly replicated across the continent and beyond.
Preparing for future crises: Temporal possibilities and their materialisations