African Peacemaking Database: Beginning the World's First Grassroots Peace Index

precis: The African Peacemaking Database is a collection of knowledge intended to catalogue and nourish, for the very first time, traditional and daily practices of positive peace throughout the African continent. Existing peace and conflict databases focus on peace within the context of the government and its institutions, use data sources and definitions rooted in Western ways of knowing, and concentrate on measurement and analysis. Through research and partnerships over the past two years in Eastern and Southern Africa, we fill these gaps by partnering with the United Religions Initiative so that local, intercultural Pan-African leaders can lead Peace Mapping workshops in existing interfaith circles on a country-by-country basis. This essay discusses the implementation of an Indigenous Methodology rooted in local knowledge on a continental scale to harvest peace practices and traditions from women, youth, and elders so that community strengths of reconciliation, daily peacemaking, and rituals of music, dance, and storytelling are shared with the wider world.