The Cross-Border Community Resilience (CBCR) Activity commissioned this Social Network Analysis (SNA) as a framework for building its knowledge base in the Mandera cluster. Particularly, the SNA is instrumental in understanding and mapping the actors across the three domains of the CBCR’s interventions in the Mandera cluster: social cohesion, livelihoods and natural resource management (NRM).

The SNA also highlights the relationships, and information flows among the actors, as well as the gaps/roadblocks and the building blocks for systems level change. On this note, the SNA identifies three kinds of organizations or people: 1) central nodes -organizations or people who are well connected, are critical sources and repositories of information, and who have influence; 2) knowledge brokers – those who create bridges between groups; and 3) peripheral actors – those who are unconnected and can be at risk of exiting the network.

The SNA further investigates the types and dynamics of relationships (e.g., strong vs weak ties) between the various actors/organizations across the three domains. Overall, the results in this SNA support the CBCR Activity in identifying opportunities for fostering collaboration, minimizing risk of conflict and, ultimately, ensuring operational effectiveness.