Home Coming together? Social Network Analysis of humanitarian actors in Burkina Faso

Since 2016, Burkina Faso has been marked by armed violence and insecurity, causing massive population displacements and worsening living conditions.

Ongoing humanitarian assistance programs, such as those addressing priority areas such as emergency education and child protection, are coordinated through a central mechanism to ensure synergies and maximise impact.

The paper uses Social Network Analysis to evaluate the effectiveness of such humanitarian work in Burkina Faso, finding that international non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and United Nations (UN) bodies do not always form adequate networks with local actors.

The results of our study have shown that INGOs and UN agencies still do not take these local actors into account in their programming or networks—a key element of the Grand Bargain.

It concludes that in order to achieve the best possible results in crisis responses, the humanitarian community must lead on implementing coordination mechanisms to ensure synergies between organisations and projects and to increase effectiveness and impact.

Academic contributors