GIGA Institute for African Affairs

A record number of armed conflicts puts the lives of millions at stake. The majority of these conflicts have involved external interventions to foster peace and security, but they are heavily contested and often occur without long-term exit strategies. The project thus investigates the ending of external interventions into armed conflict. It focuses on sanctions, peacekeeping missions and military operations to study exit dilemmas and post-exit legacies related to these different types of intervention.
Leibniz Association, 2026-2031

The Cluster of Excellence “Climate, Climatic Change, and Society” (CLICCS), based at Universität Hamburg, is guided by the overarching question: "Which climate futures are possible and which are plausible?" This GIGA co-led project in the cluster's second phase investigates the socioeconomic and distributional impacts of renewable energy expansion and land-based carbon offsets in the Global South. It also scrutinises how these impacts lead to new or reinforce existing social conflicts.
DFG, Excellence Strategy, 2026-2032

As part of the overall MOTRA II project, the GIGA sub-project aims to gain generalisable insights into the influence of international events and developments on politically extremist attitudes among the population living in Germany and among party political elites, how these attitudes change over time, and how they interact with each other.
BMFTR, BMI, 2025-2028

Religious leaders are active for (interreligious) peace in many contexts and, for example, use their rhetoric to advocate for peace. The effectiveness of religious leaders’ rhetoric depends on the interplay of religious leaders being the messengers and the contents of their words—the message itself. This project (re)tests the (comparative) effectiveness of religious leaders as peace messengers and effective content of peace messages. The project also examines effects of an intervention.
DFG, 2024-2026

The production of raw materials and agricultural goods is often associated with unsustainable labor and environmental conditions - particularly in countries of the Global South. In response, several European countries have introduced binding corporate due diligence regulations since the mid-2010s. Given their complexity and global scope, value chains pose a particular challenge for effective sustainability governance. This project investigates the largely unexplored impacts of these regulations - especially on conditions in the countries of production.
Volkswagen Foundation, 2024-2028

GIGA‘s Digital Transformation Lab (DigiTraL), funded by the German Federal Foreign Office, analyses the political drivers and real-world consequences of the digital transformation taking place around the world. The Global South in particular is an important actor in and shaper of this transformation.
FFO, 2024-2026

In recent years, the world has experienced an unprecedented number of mass protest events. Yet despite valuable research endeavours, one area that has not been systematically addressed is the conditions under which such protests turn violent. This is a significant limitation, as violent protests have serious detrimental effects: They harm people as well as infrastructure, erode trust between citizens and government, and polarize societies. To address this shortcoming, the Dynamics of Mass Protest (DMP) project will systematically study the heterogeneous and dynamic nature of protests.
DFG, 2024-2026