Empirically Studying Limits in Sahel Africa
Every system has a point at which it stops working. Some of these points are technical, like a tracker that goes silent below a network coverage range. Some are biological, like a child whose growth never recovers from early malnutrition. Some are climatic, like a rainfall pattern that no longer supports the crop that has fed a region for generations. Others are economic, behavioural, or infrastructural. Breaking points like these exist across every domain that matters for public-interest research. They are rarely measured in public. When they are crossed, the people on the wrong side of them do not always know it has happened.
THRESHOLD is an open research programme that studies these breaking points where they matter most in Nigeria and the wider Sahel. Each study under the programme isolates one system, identifies the variables that determine whether it holds or fails, and produces a quantified model that researchers, journalists, policy teams, and implementers can use directly. The studies define the system, name its components, work out where each one breaks, and document what the world looks like on either side of that point.
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