Egmont Institute is pleased to host Delina Goxho, Associate Fellow at Egmont Institute’s Africa Programme and PhD candidate at the Scuola Normale Superiore and Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna. Her research focuses on remote warfare and security force assistance practices in West Africa and the Sahel. Her presentation will focus on remote warfare in the Sahel, with a focus on Niger, arguing that from the moment a ‘risk-free’ military mission is set in motion, a series of mechanisms intervene to increase distance, making it ‘remote’. Foreign states intervene remotely in Niger through: trainings of partner forces; use of special forces; deployment of armed & surveillance drones; and the formal or informal support of militia groups

They do so not just to avoid the costs associated with a boots-on-the ground campaign, but also because of their ignorance of the security context in remote locations. Such ignorance depends in turn on rumours and distance. Thus, ignorance, rumours and distance are conceived as mutually reinforcing and as producing increased ignorance, rumours and remoteness, ultimately creating a blinding Vertigo effect.

Delina is associate fellow at Egmont Institute in Brussels, and was based in Niger from 2021 until the coup d’état in 2023, doing research for her PhD at Scuola Normale Superiore (SNS) in Florence. Delina works on remote warfare and foreign military interventions in the Sahel region of West Africa.

Please register by 27 January.

(Photo credit: Delina Goxho)