Strategic Hybridisation and the Right to Development: IGAD's Pragmatic Pan-Africanism in South Sudan

Through the case of the Intergovernmental Authority on Development’s (IGAD) mediation in South Sudan, this article examines how strategic hybridisation can operationalise the right to development under the African Union’s Post-Conflict Reconstruction and Development policy. While acknowledging IGAD’s institutional weakness, this study draws on empirical data from 47 interviews, archival research and systematic document reviews to demonstrate how IGAD’s approaches blended liberal, illiberal and pragmatic pan-African logics of peacebuilding that mediated between international pressures, geopolitical dynamics and local realities. It further demonstrates how IGAD’s platform-based diplomacy created regionally legitimate frameworks that sustained a complex mediation process which led to the signing of the 2018 Revitalised Agreement on the Resolution of Conflict in South Sudan (R-ARCSS). While the R-ARCSS is heavily elite-centric, it also comprises participatory dimensions to IGAD’s mediation, revealing how Regional Economic Communities can be platforms for Africa’s emancipatory peacebuilding.