ENACT Capacity Building Course
This capacity building self-guided course is designed to support civil society actors in understanding and responding to the challenges of transnational organised crime threats in their respective geographic locations. The course consists of targeted training workshops, video modules and webinars aimed at building capacity to research and report on organised crime, and sharing tools on how to engage with multiple stakeholders to influence policy and prioritisation.
The course combines theoretical frameworks, contemporary analysis and findings, and case studies from specific experiences from the communities most affected, as well as the practical skills needed to research and respond to criminal markets and actors. The course is designed as a virtual, modular learning series that provides relevant and informative capacity for continental researchers, civil society practitioners and other stakeholders.
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Course outline
The course comprises 7 lessons, which should take a minimum of 14 hours to work through with additional time to do the supplementary activities.
Each lesson includes core presentations with a live facilitator and some supplementary short videos that offer a deeper dive, case study, or think piece on themes and ideas related to the lesson. The lessons include live presentations, exercises, and discussion themes tailored to the African context.
The design of the course as purely virtual sessions provides a flexible learning environment and enables the capacity building content to reach a wide range of participants.
The course is designed to give an overview of organized crime and the contemporary importance of studying the global illicit economy, and offers tools on how to write for a policymaking audience and on grant writing and resource gathering.
Lesson 1: What is organised crime
By the end of this lesson, the participant will be able to understand the debates around definitions of organised crime, how understandings have evolved, and why it matters that a definition is in place. They should be able to apply that discussion to their local context and identify the parameters of the illicit economy evolving in their context.
Lesson 2: Organised crime and the state
This lesson explores the complex relationship between organised crime and state institutions, with a particular focus on corruption as a facilitating mechanism. By the end of this lesson, participants will understand the fundamental concepts and definitions of organised crime and corruption and will have an in-depth understanding of the symbiotic relationship between criminal enterprises and corrupt state actors. The lesson will also discuss the emergence of transnational organised crime as a challenge to state instability.
Lesson 3: Criminal actors
By the end of this lesson, the participant will understand the key features and types of criminal actors involved in organised crime. They will be able to consider who falls inside and outside the definition of a criminal group, and the frequent challenges with drawing the scope of criminality. The lesson will explore the important concept of social legitimacy, and why it is a critical issue underpinning how criminal groups gain traction and influence and how this affects the nature of responses to organised crime. Finally, it will briefly discuss how criminal groups establish themselves and operate within different territories.
Lesson 4: Markets and flows
By the end of this lesson, the participant will understand the diversity of criminal markets that together make up the global criminal economy through the use of the Organised Crime Index for Africa. The lesson will provide an overview of organised crime as a complex economic phenomenon that operates according to many of the same principles governing legitimate, licit commerce. We will examine the basic parameters that define an illicit market, drawing on examples from the East African Wildlife Trade. We will also explore a multidimensional approach to analysing criminal markets which considers the various political economy dynamics at play when addressing the question of why and how criminal enterprises operate and sustain themselves. The Lesson will include a tutorial on how to use the Organised Crime Index for Africa web-tool to measure the scale and scope of organised crime in Africa by country, region and the continent. The Index assesses Africa’s vulnerability to transnational organised crime flows and through this, assists policy makers and practitioners mitigate these flows by using the Index as an evidence base for action. Participants will learn about the types of quantitative information that can be used to capture and measure different criminal markets and actors as well as measure a country’s resilience to organised crime. The session will include particular focus on trends in markets identified through the ENACT Index to be the most prevalent criminal markets on the continent.
Lesson 5 - Skills-based module A: The Fundamentals of the Study of Organised Crime
By the end of this lesson, the participant will have strengthened the skill-set relevant to researching and analysing transnational organised crime. The lesson covers, in relation to the study of organised crime: an overview of the research process, different types of research, organised crime models and limitations thereof, landmark studies in explanatory organised crime research – including Varese’s “Mafias on the Move” and Morselli’s “Inside Criminal Networks” - how to conduct two-phased literature reviews, methodology selection, research ethids, data collection methods, and data quality control techniques.
Lesson 6 - Skills-based module B: Data Analysis, Policy Relevance and Dissemination
By the end of the lesson, the participant will have acquired the skill-set relevant to analysing data collected, accurately presenting their research findings, learning how to frame research findings for maximum policy impact, and disseminating research to ensure it reaches the target audience. Together with Part A, this lesson will therefore build participants’ capacity throughout the stages of the research and dissemination process, empowering participants to better identify and present key findings of research to relevant target audiences.
Lesson 7: Responding to organised crime
By the end of this lesson, the participant will understand the different instruments that have been used to respond to the different manifestations and enablers of crime, including the normative framework such as the UN Transnational Organized Crime Convention and drugs conventions, the criminal justice and enforcement interventions, the AML/CFT and other financial architecture, development responses among others. In discussion, participants will interrogate the strengths and weaknesses of the approach, and the rationale for more integrated and holistic global strategy. The lesson will also consider community resilience responses to transnational organised crime, and explore how these have been adopted by differing actors within the different regions in Africa.
