Blog written by Lloyd Banda
How do we make sense of a region where climate shocks, violent conflict, and migration are deeply intertwined, each shaping and reinforcing the other? This question was central to the third in-person meeting of the Climate Sahel Team at the University of Cape Town’s African Synthesis Centre for Climate Change, Environment and Development (ASCEND). The meeting was held at the University of Cape Town and the Climate and Development Knowledge Network (CDKN) offices at SouthSouthNorth from 20–24 April 2026.
The Climate Sahel team is examining the intersection of extreme climate events, conflict dynamics, and migration in the fragile Sahel region through a thematic synthesis of published evidence. The team is exploring how each of these complex domains has been studied across time in the Sahel, how patterns are changing, and what broader insights emerge when the three bodies of literature are brought together. By reviewing evidence on extreme climate events, conflict events, and migration patterns separately, the team is developing a comprehensive report to better understand one of the world’s most complex regional challenges.
After a year of coordinated data extraction and literature review, the April meeting marked an important transition: from evidence gathering to interpretation, synthesis, and impact planning.
From Fragmented Evidence to Systems Understanding
The Sahel is often discussed through simplified narratives, often focusing on monocausal pathways: climate change causes migration, conflict causes displacement, and drought fuels violence. Yet the evidence reveals a far more complex reality.
Climate variability can reduce agricultural productivity, intensify water scarcity, and undermine pastoral livelihoods. These pressures may heighten local tensions or interact with governance failures, grievances, marginalisation, and insecurity. Conflict can displace communities, disrupt markets, and weaken adaptive capacity. Migration may function as a coping strategy, a livelihood response, or forced displacement. In some contexts, migration also increases pressure on already fragile host communities, exacerbating competition for scarce resources and limited public goods.
Rather than treating these dynamics as isolated chains of monocausal associations, the Climate Sahel Team approaches them through the lens of a spaghetti bowl, as an interconnected system. The third in-person meeting reinforced the value of this framework, enabling the team to better understand how multiple risks overlap across time and space.
Presenting Preliminary Findings Across Three Research Axes
A major milestone of the meeting was the presentation of preliminary findings from the project’s three thematic workstreams, which Dr Bouchra Bargam, the first postdoctoral fellow of the team, dubbed “axes”: climate, conflict, and migration.
The climate axis, which is continually coordinated by Dr Bouchra Bargam (University Mohammed 6 Polytechnic University, Morocco), the team assessed how reported extreme climate events in the Sahel have changed over time, with particular attention to differences before and after 2015. Early findings suggest important shifts in the frequency, geography, and reporting of hazards such as droughts, floods, extreme rainfall, storms, and heat-related events, with drought, flood, and extreme rainfall being the main extreme climate events occurring in the Sahel region.
The conflict axis, coordinated by Dr Richard Nyiawung from Waterloo University (Canada), examines changing conflict typologies, including violent extremism, political conflict, identity-based tensions, and resource-related disputes. The synthesis highlights how governance stress, marginalisation, insecurity, and environmental pressures often interact rather than operate independently. The axis also analyses how various types of conflict events emerge and impact livelihood dynamics, including forced migration.
The migration axis, led by Abdul-Rahim Abdulai of Alliance Biodiversity International-CIAT, is exploring mobility routes, displacement patterns, and the diverse drivers and impacts of migration in the Sahel region. Preliminary findings suggest that migration is frequently regional, adaptive, and multi-causal, shaped by degradation of environmental resources, insecurity, and socio-economic vulnerabilities.
The preliminary findings from our three axes demonstrate that the Sahel cannot be understood through single-factor explanations. Instead, overlapping vulnerabilities and feedback loops are central to a comprehensive understanding of climate vulnerabilities, conflicts, and livelihood dynamics in the region.
Harmonising Methods and Building a Unified Output
Beyond presenting findings, the meeting focused on strengthening methodological coherence across the three research streams. Team members refined shared approaches to coding, categorisation, interpretation, and comparative analysis to ensure that outputs across climate, conflict, and migration remain analytically aligned.
The team also agreed on the next publication phase, which includes distinct thematic reports as well as a unified synthesis publication integrating findings across all three domains. This dual strategy will allow both detailed sectoral insights and broader systems-level understanding to emerge from the project.
Bridging Research and Impact Through Knowledge Brokering
A distinctive feature of the third in-person meeting was a dedicated engagement session with CDKN on knowledge brokering and communication strategy. Participants identified target audiences for the research, including policymakers, regional institutions, practitioners, and development partners, and mapped practical pathways for ensuring findings inform decision-making.
This reflects a core priority of ASCEND: producing research that is not only rigorous but also actionable. By aligning scientific synthesis with strategic communication, the Climate Sahel Team is positioning its evidence to contribute to resilience planning, conflict prevention, mobility governance, and climate adaptation policy in the Sahel.
Looking Ahead
With clear timelines now established for each axis, the project moves into its next phase of analysis, writing, and engagement. Planned outputs include multiple academic papers, thematic reports, and policy-facing knowledge products over the coming months.
As climate pressures intensify, conflict dynamics evolve, and migration patterns shift, understanding their intersections has never been more urgent. By transforming fragmented studies into a single body of evidence, the Climate Sahel Team is helping build a stronger foundation for informed and inclusive responses across the region.
