Beyond the Headlines: Understanding the Complex Nature of Crises in East Africa

From the devastating wars in Sudan and armed conflicts in Ethiopia to drought-induced displacement across pastoralist territories, East Africa faces a convergence of crises. Yet many of these stories remain largely absent from global headlines. This talk asks why some crises receive sustained international attention while others become normalized, overlooked, or forgotten. To unpack these complexities, the talk examines the local, regional, and global forces shaping East Africa’s contemporary crises. It explores how colonial legacies, geopolitical interests, resource extraction, climate change, struggles over self-determination, and competing claims to resource sovereignty intersect to produce and sustain violence and displacement. It also considers how global hierarchies of knowledge and political attention shape what becomes visible as a crisis and what remains largely unseen.

Asebe Regassa Debelo's research spans a wide range of interdisciplinary areas. Over the past fifteen years, he has worked on multinational federalism in Ethiopia, pastoralism and land grabbing, Indigenous peoples' rights, resource frontiers, large-scale development interventions, land dispossession, conflict and peacebuilding, and human-environment interactions. More specifically, large-scale development projects in East Africa's Dryland and pastoralist peripheries, and the resulting land appropriation and displacement of Indigenous societies, have attracted his research interest. He interrogates how development and extraction intersect with violence and state consolidation. He has also expanded his research interests to migration, borders, and refugees in East Africa, focusing on regional and global border regimes and the perils of waiting in refugee camps. Currently, he is working on an SNSF-funded project, “Pastoralist Futures: Land Transformation in East Africa’s Drylands”. 

Registration

Please register. You will get the Zoom link with the confirmation. The event will be hold in English.