Our Work Programme

Through the human mobility programme, SID aims to leverage its expertise – built on previous work on migration and development which dates back to an initial partnership with CeSPI  in 2006 – in order to facilitate knowledge generation and critical reflection on the main challenges, policy gaps and to propose possible policy paths to address emerging and future human mobility issues in Africa. The opposite poles of economic integration and fragmentation, political participation and marginalisation, social security and insecurity, legal harmonisation and standardisation are some of the main dichotomies which need to be addressed as multiple challenges posed by mobility.

SID’s work is being organized around the notion of a ‘knowledge observatory’,  a space for strategic conversation on  related issues to inform research, policy making, and public awareness through an approach that is:

• Systemic: grounded into concrete and on going political processes.

• Inclusive: of different perspectives, through a multi-disciplinary approach and a multi-stakeholder process that includes all sides of the policy debate.

• Future oriented: exploring and representing future realities in order to define possible alternative solutions through the identification and combination of actual gaps and future opportunities.

The geographic focus of the programme is primarily based on Eastern Africa (including East Africa region, Great Lakes region, The Horn of Africa).

The presence of two regional players – the East African Community (EAC) and the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) – together with the on-going  preliminary efforts to include mobility in the political agenda, make the region a coherent space for a deeper process of policy dialogue and understanding.

Future expansion of the programme to other regions inside and outside the African continent is also envisaged in order to contribute to the process of political strengthening of South-South and North-South relations whose political agenda are overwhelmingly based on – and thus weakened by – unilateral needs and responses.