"Siding with the people" or "Occupying force"? Local perceptions of African Union and ECOWAS interventions in the Gambia

Abstract

How do African citizens experience and evaluate African regional inter­ventions? This re­search report exa­mines the case of The Gam­bia to assess local percep­tions of the African Union and ECOWAS, particu­larly of their inter­ventions in that country since 2016. It is the result of colla­bora­tive and empiri­cally comprehen­sive research carried out across the country in 2021/2022. We demon­strate that percep­tions of the interven­tions in The Gambia are complex and diverge starkly, at times even contra­dicting each other. We explain this com­plexity as resul­ting from spatial, tempo­ral, and sociopo­litical factors that affect how these Afri­can regio­nal inter­ventions are (diffe­rently) perceived.