This research note explores the pressing ethical challenges associated with increased online platforming of sensitive research on conflict-affected settings since the onset of Covid-19. We argue that moving research online and the ‘digitalisation of suffering’ risks reducing complexity of social phenomena and omission of important aspects of lived experiences of violence or peace-building. Immersion, ‘contexting’ and trust-building are fundamental to research in repressive and/or conflict-affected settings and these are vitally eclipsed in online exchanges and platforms. ‘Distanced research’ thus bears very real epistemological limitations. Neither proximity not distance are in themselves liberating vectors. Nonetheless, we consider the opportunities that distancing offers in terms of its decolonial potential, principally in giving local researcher affiliates’ agency in the research process and building more equitable collaborations. This research note therefore aims to propose a series of questions and launch a debate amongst interested scholars, practitioners and other researchers working in qualitative research methods in the social sciences.

Rwanda has embarked on an ambitious policy package to modernise and professionalise the agrarian and land sector. Its reform fits into a broader callsupported by major international donorsto implement a Green Revolution in Sub-Saharan Africa. After 10 years of implementation, there is increased production output and value-addition in commercialised commodity chains. These are promising results. However, poverty reduction, particularly in more recent years, seems limited. Moreover, microlevel evidence from the field calls into question the long-term sustainability of the agricultural and land sector reform. In this article, a group of researchers, having engaged in in-depth qualitative research in a variety of settings and over an extended period, bring together their main research results and combine their key findings to challenge the dominant discourse on Rwanda as a model for development. La modernisation agricole et foncière au Rwanda : confronter les résultats macro-économiques aux réalités vécues sur le terrain RÉSUMÉ Le Rwanda a entamé une vaste réforme politique visant à moderniser et à professionnaliser les secteurs agricole et foncier. Soutenu par des bailleurs internationaux, ces réformes s'inscrivent dans une volonté plus large d'introduire une Révolution Verte en Afrique subsaharienne. Après une décennie de mise en oeuvre au Rwanda, on observe des résultats prometteurs tels que la croissance de la production agricole et la création de valeur ajoutée dans les filières agricoles commerciales. Néanmoins, la réduction de la pauvreté au

During the COVID-19 crisis in Africa, several contradictory discourses have tried to predict how the continent will experience the pandemic. Based on a qualitative approach, this article goes beyond generalized and arbitrary predictions and analyzes how three countries in the Great Lakes region of Africa have managed the pandemic. We first analyze which measures the respective governments of the three countriesand their decentralized authoritieshave taken. We also analyze up to which extend international prescriptionsas propagated by the World Health Organizationhave influenced their choices. Second, we analyze how government measures have transformed throughout implementation and interacted with the specific circumstances of each context. Authorities, on the one hand, navigated between rigid and more flexible interpretation of national prescriptions, entering into practical arrangements or adopting force. Populations on the other hand have resorted to acceptance, circumvention, contestation or resistance. Our research ultimately points to the way in which political dynamics, resistance, violence, and local redefine both national policies and their international reference frames. In this way, the governance dynamics of the COVID-19 pandemic in the African Great Lakes region provide a lens through which we can complexify our understandings of real governance in Africa.

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