The National Peace Council has launched the Development and Resilience Index Against Violent Extremism (DRIVE), a research initiative aimed at bolstering the country's resilience to violent extremism. 

The DRIVE initiative, launched in Accra yesterday, is aimed at fostering national ownership and institutional participation in resilient programmes and peacebuilding strategies through the use of data.

The pilot project, scheduled to run from October 2025 to June 2026, will focus on northern Ghana—particularly border communities that are more vulnerable to spillover effects from conflicts and terrorism in neighbouring countries.

Pressures

Speaking at the event, a Board Member of the National Peace Council, Rev. Dr Hilliard K. Dela Dogbe, underscored that while the country stands as a beacon of peace in a region facing complex and evolving security challenges, there are still significant pressures—particularly along the northern borders—that require urgent attention.

“While we have so far prevented large-scale violent extremist attacks, the pressures along our northern borders and the underlying social stressors within our communities remind us of the undeniable fact that peace cannot be taken for granted,” he said.

Rev. Dogbe indicated that the DRIVE  was not just another research exercise, but a cutting-edge, evidence-based decision-making tool designed to help the state and its partners understand what makes communities resilient or vulnerable to violent extremist influence.

“By combining community perceptions, psychosocial factors, governance indicators, and development realities, DRIVE gives us something we often lack- clear, localised, and actionable data to guide prevention efforts,” he stated. 

Experience 

Drawing a parallel with the country’s western neighbour, Côte d’Ivoire, the clergyman noted that the DRIVE initiative was successfully piloted in border regions at risk of extremist infiltration, demonstrating the effectiveness of the approach.

According to him, the findings revealed that resilience was not uniform, but varied from one community to another, shaped by factors such as trust in institutions, the inclusion of youth and women, the quality of public services, freedom of worship, and relations between civilians and security forces.

He added that these insights enabled national authorities and development partners to target interventions more precisely and effectively.

Rev. Dogbe affirmed that, while northern Ghana faced direct cross-border risks, challenges such as intergroup tensions, institutional mistrust, and uneven service delivery affect the nation as a whole.

He asserted that the DRIVE offers the country a dual benefit; thus, “targeted prevention in at-risk areas and a broader national tool for monitoring social cohesion, democratic confidence, and early warning signs of instability”.

Rev. Dogbe added that DRIVE aligned seamlessly with the nation’s existing frameworks, including the National Framework for Preventing and Countering Violent Extremism and Terrorism. 

Expected Impact

The Coordinator of Programmes at the Resilience Pour La Paix (Resilience for Peace), Mirko Hoff, who led a similar project in Côte d’Ivoire, lauded the government’s efforts to build resilience against violent extremism in the North, as present efforts are yielding results and showing promise.

“In northern Ghana, the state and civil society are undertaking enormous efforts to build resilience to violent extremism, so that Ghana can continue to be the beacon of hope and peace.

He indicated that the DRIVE would further enhance these efforts by providing robust statistical evidence to target interventions.

“The DRIVE comes as a tool to build on all of that experience, expertise and knowledge on the ground. It helps to measure exactly the social dynamics that lead individuals or communities to go towards violent extremism or to resist it and to work with the state.

“At the end of the day, the data will allow all Ghanaian actors to be more effective in their interventions and their efforts; because they will know exactly in a given district what are the stressors, what are the vulnerabilities that they have to address, what are the resilience capacities that they can build on to make a change, and who to target, what group is most vulnerable or most resilient that they can work with,” he added.