NIGERIA BUSINESS RISK BRIEF – MAY 2023 By: PIND and FFP FFP has worked with PIND to develop a new product in support of insurance underwriters, investors, and companies seeking to assess and mitigate the risk of damage or abandonment, inability to access funds, and permanent loss of equity in countries around the world. This document illustrates how the tool can be applied to Nigeria.	WHY WAS VIOLENCE LOWER IN NIGERIA’S 2023 ELECTION: IMPLICATIONS FOR PEACEBUILDING? By: PIND and FFP The 2023 election was unlike any since Nigeria’s Fourth Republic began in 1999. Among the many anomalies and contradictions included high registration and low turnout, a popular third-party candidate, and an electorate less polarized by region, ethnicity, and religion than at any time in the last 24 years. The biggest puzzle, though, was why violence was so low, despite so many evident, proximate conflict drivers. The answer may be in a changing structural context that leaders and practitioners	CASCADING FRAGILITY: FROM UKRAINE TO THE WORLD By: Daniel Woodburn and Emily Sample In the wake the Russian invasion in February 2022, Ukraine’s 2023 Fragile States Index (FSI) score has risen from 68.6 to 95.9, skyrocketing the country’s ranking from the 92nd most fragile to 18th, claiming the unenviable title of “Most Worsened” for the year. Furthermore, Ukraine’s increased fragility has affected not just countries in its vicinity, but states far further afield.	TWISTING AND TURNING: WHY FRAGILITY STILL MATTERS IN A TIME OF GREAT POWER COMPETITION By: Nate Haken As Great Powers move into a posture of increased competition, the FSI warns we must not forget to also look at the world through the lens of fragility. If winning the game of power and influence is achieved at the expense of of dignity, resilience, governance, and livelihoods, then crisis will compound, and everyone will lose.
FRAGILITY REVISITED By: Pauline H. Baker Fragility has been turned on its head: stronger powers are revealing interior weaknesses and poorer countries fear they could become collateral damage or intended targets of aggressive and expansionist goals from political decay, dictatorship, and discord in larger world powers.	INCENTIVIZING PEACE ONLY LEADS TO MORE WAR IN SUDAN By: Reem Abbas and Emily Sample Consistently in the top ten most fragile countries, the hope brought by the 2019 coup has since been dampened by the continued cycle of unstable governance. This has escalated even further in 2023 as the tentative alliance between the Sudanese army and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), a paramilitary force, collapsed violently in April.	PLANNING FOR THE UNPREDICTABLE By: Daniel Woodburn The Philippines was the second most improved in the 2023 FSI. However, it has a history of volatility in the FSI, which in itself signals a kind of fragility.	L’ETAT, C’EST (PAS) MOI: FRANCE’S MYSTIFYING IMPROVEMENT ON THE FRAGILE STATES INDEX By: Daniel Woodburn Despite an unpopular president and rising protest, France is among the least fragile states on the index and has been improving over the last 15 years.