The Citizen Lab Initiative of the Prosperity and Peace Pathways Project

Zainab Nuhu, Bayero University, Kano (Nigeria)

Traditional development and peacebuilding research often marginalizes lived experiences, local intelligence, and agency of conflict- and poverty-affected communities, especially women, youth, and indigenous groups. In patriarchal fragile contexts, arts-based methods dance, music, drama, storytelling, and embodied movement are rarely recognized as tools for inclusive, cross-gender knowledge co-creation. This presentation highlights the Citizen Lab Initiative of the Prosperity and Peace Pathways Project, showcasing a transdisciplinary, participatory, conflict-sensitive approach that redefines whose knowledge shapes peacebuilding. In the Lake Chad region, labs engaged 150 diverse stakeholders: women/youth leaders, displaced persons, farmers, fishers, security actors, traditional authorities, repentant insurgents, NGOs, and academics. Combining futures forecasting with arts-based practices, participants mapped fragilities, innovations, and 2050 equitable prosperity visions amid climate change, poverty, and violence. These methods surfaced unspoken views, fostered cross-group understanding, and co-produced locally owned pathways environmental stewardship, women-led cooperatives, youth dialogue platforms challenging top-down models and advancing inclusive, people-centered research and policy.