Social cohesion: A new definition and a proposal for its measurement in Africa

Social cohesion is key for sustainable development. While social cohesion has suffered in many societies from the consequences of the Covid- 19 pandemic, high levels of social cohesion have helped to overcome critical situations during the pandemic in other societies. As a consequence, protecting and strengthening social cohesion has become an increasingly central goal for most countries and the international community. Despite the strong interest in the topic, the questions of how to define social cohesion and make it an observable phenomenon through proper measurement are still contested, in both academia and policy circles. To date, no consistent, temporally and geographically spread-out data on the different elements of social cohesion exists that would allow for a global analysis of social cohesion. This rather fragmented picture of analytical approaches calls for a more universal definition and measurement of social cohesion. [...]