Oyewole Simon Oginni

• Mobility and migration
• Social and Cultural Change and Adaptation
• Food and nutrition
• New Technologies
• Urbanisation
• Governance, conflicts and natural resources

• Nigeria
• Cameroon
• Niger
• Chad

Sociocultural determinants of the Covid-19 response in West Africa

"ZEF in the City" - ZEF-A research group on everyday urbanity, creativity and the governance of informality in the Global South

Peace and Security Expert, European Union-African Union YCH (EUAUYCH): Mapping out stabilisation vectors in the Lake Chad Basin (LCB) region. Grants (EuropeAid/163132/DD/ACT/Multi). Providing technical supports to implementing CSOs in four sectors (physical and social infrastruture mapping, health, education, livelihood and youth participation) - 2 million Euros project in three LCB countries (2018-2020).Institutions: EU & AU.

Peace and Security Fellow, African Union-European Union Plugin-in Initiative (2017), Brussels-Addis Ababa-Abidjan. AU-EU proposal on youth, migration, peace and security. Achievement: the proposal received a sum of 10 million Euros grants from the EU to implement innovative projects in 17 countries (Africa and Europe).  

Africa Director, World Peace (OWP), Toronto, Canada (2017-2018); coordinated African conflict index expert recruitment and policy advisors; implemented policy advocacy and media reports on peacebuilding and post-conflict transitions in Africa; Deputy Director (2016); Senior Correspondent (2014-June). 

International Election Observer (2017), Carter Centre, Atlanta, USA: International Election Observation Mission in Kenya. 

Junior Researcher WAI/ZEI Praktikanten im Rahmen des Projekts (2016). Nachhaltige regionale Integration in Westafrika und Europa. ZEI Forschungskooperation mit dem West Africa Institute (WAI),Praia, Cabo Verde.  | Data Analyst Associate (2010-2011), Centre of Health Development for Africa, Yola, Nigeria: Hiv/AIDs support projects in 23 LGAs of Adamawa State.

MSc. (Governance & Regional Integration)

MSc. (Forensic Science: Criminal Investigation)

PCD; conflict analysis and mapping; election forensics; expert witnessing

Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst/German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD)

Federal Ministry of Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ)

Humanitarian urbanism: everyday life in the front-line cities of the Lake Chad Basin

In the last few years, the cities around the Lake Chad Basin (LCB) have attracted a huge population of refugees, internally displaced and returnees due to a decade of Boko Haram’s violent extremism. However, these cities are still at the early state of post-conflict transitions, facing multiple challenges that range from weak governance to widespread poverty to unemployment and poor infrastructure, despite the increased aid interventions. Maroua and Mubi are among the small-size cities at the porous borders of Nigeria and Cameroon. Besides having historical, economic and cultural ties that have spanned centuries, the cities have had their shares in the ongoing Boko Haram crisis in the region: they both have once been under the siege of the violent extremist group, and they continue to attract the displaced population from the neighboring communities at the borders of the two countries. As a result of the prolonged period of the crisis, a lot of things have changed in Maroua and Mubi, including the ways in which people develop strategies to cope with uncertainty and reconstruct livelihoods as well as the social and political configurations of the cities.

To this end, I conceptualise the cities as consisting of three spaces: the political, emotional and humanitarian space. Then, I call the spaces, “cityscape”, which are explained as the interface at which ideas, interests and knowledge are constantly contested, negotiated and transformed as a result of the continuous interactions and shared expectations among multiple actors. Situated within humanitarian urbanism, I propose “cityscape” as an analytical frame for understanding how the lives of the people are governed in cities where the exception rules that regulate the refugees/IDPs camps are no longer enforced, or are relaxed due to the overlapping of ‘the space of the camp’ and ‘the space of the city’

Through a multi-sited ethnographic approach that draws on the interpretative paradigm, I seek to explore ‘cityscape’ and its implications for the livelihoods reconstruction in the two cities. To achieve this, more attention will be directed at the ways in which the displaced families cope with the everyday uncertainty associated with protracted displacement and how they relate to alternative future. The main questions of the dissertation are: how can we put into perspective, the temporal and spatial experience of protracted displacement in Mubi and Maroua? What strategies do the displaced families deploy to navigate the social life and reconstruct livelihoods in the cities? How do they cope with everyday uncertainty and risks associated with being and becoming displaced in the cities? How do these experiences shape the ways in which they relate to alternative future? How do the aid interventions contribute to the re-positioning and the thickening of the space of the cities?

Keywords: Alternative Future, Cityscapes, Livelihoods, Urban displacement, Lake Chad

Prof. Dr. Jörg Blasius, (Director, Inistitut, fur Politische Wissenschaft und Soziologie, Universitat Bonn). 

Prof. Dr. Eva Youkhana (Acting Director, Department of Political and Cultural Change, ZEF). 

Dr. Jan Janosch Förster