On 24–25 March, SIPRI and Uppsala University’s Forum for Africa Studies co-organized the fourth Sahel Symposium on ‘Academic Collaborations and Civic Liberties in the Sahel’. The 2026 edition focused on rethinking and reinvigorating academic collaborations and spaces in the Sahel.
The geopolitical transformations shaping the global landscape are further undermining democratic foundations and fundamental human rights in the Sahel, including freedom of speech and association. Such restrictions increasingly affect academia, risking the marginalization and silencing of knowledge production. The symposium aimed to provide early-career researchers with a safe space to present their findings and engage in dialogue with colleagues from different disciplines and research areas.
Dr Virginie Baudais, Senior Researcher and Director of the SIPRI Sahel and West Africa Programme, moderated and took part in discussions on disinformation in Africa and on how shrinking civic and political spaces can be transformed into opportunities for enhanced north–south collaboration. SIPRI Researchers Marie Riquier and Cyrielle Trebosc discussed their experiences as early-career women academics on a roundtable of the same topic. Luc van de Goor, SIPRI Director of Studies, delivered opening remarks.
The event also hosted the hybrid launch of the new AEGIS Collaborative Research Group ‘Le monde du Sahel: Promoting Academic Collaborations and Spaces’ (Sahel/PAX). The initiative aims to cultivate an intellectual space for research and exchange, and to strengthen collaboration around knowledge produced in and from the Sahel.
About the Sahel Symposium
The symposium was co-organized by SIPRI’s Sahel and West Africa Programme and Uppsala University’s Forum for Africa Studies, in collaboration with Sahel/PAX and the Laboratoire d’Anthropologie Comparative, Engagée et Transnationale, with support from the Royal Society of the Humanities in Uppsala.