Conflict Prevention through Youth Employment in Niger

There is great potential that peace can be supported and built through economic development programming, such as those that support employment. At the same time, case-study evidence on whether such links materialise in the real world are scarce. Work to date is insufficient to show a conclusive pattern that definitively links these programmatic inputs to peaceful outcomes. In this project, we tackle this question from another angle and ask, “How can employment programs better be designed to maximize their peacebuilding potential?” To do so, we consider the case of the construction industry in Niger and discuss what training and cash-for-work programs in this sector might achieve and what modifications can be made to standard intervention designs in order to maximise the chance that programs will deliver positive effects in social, as well as economic, domains.