Fostering Social Cohesion? A Synthetic Review of Social Cohesion Interventions in Africa

This synthetic review will examine development and reconstruction interventions in sub-Saharan Africa aiming to generate social cohesion. The goals of social cohesion programs include promoting institutions and relations necessary to manage inter-individual and inter-group conflict—the social capital dimension—as well as attitudes reflecting a willingness to move beyond zero-sum or vengeful relations—the reconciliation dimension.

 

Social cohesion features prominently in current development practice. Recent pronouncements by governments and major international agencies reflect a widely held belief that social cohesion provides a foundation for growth and development, is a necessary step in transitions from “post-conflict” reconstruction to “ordinary” development trajectories, and helps prevent latent conflicts in society from becoming destructive and thus throwing a country off a robust development path.  The 1995 Copenhagen Declaration on Social Development formally promoted social cohesion, along with other social goals such as equity, to being a central tenet in current development practice. A 2006 UK House of Commons review re-emphasized this sentiment in more consequentialist terms: “preventing and ending conflicts and helping to ensure they do not recur will do more to create a climate for poverty reduction and development in countries affected than any amount of costly aid programmes.”   In parallel, empirical researchers have found economic growth to be negatively related to income inequality and ethnic fractionalization, suggestive of the important role of social cohesion in development. Social cohesion in contemporary sub-Saharan Africa has featured prominently in both international declarations and cross-national research, owing to exceptional levels of societal fragmentation and conflict measured in countries across the continent. 

 

Most importantly for this review, a pro-social cohesion orientation has informed major development interventions in Africa. This includes programming directed by the World Bank’s Social Development Department, the International Rescue Committee, and CHF International. A clear sense of “what works” is in increasingly high demand. As part of these interventions, and in association with other smaller scale projects, researchers have undertaken to identify the effects of programs that either explicitly or indirectly aim to generate social cohesion. These interventions and associated evaluations will be the subject of the synthetic review.