Design an Interfaith Early Warning System for Communal Violence in the Middle Belt

Plateau State, Benue State, and southern Kaduna sit at the intersection of Nigeria's most persistent fault lines: farmer versus herder, Christian versus Muslim, indigene versus settler. The violence is rarely spontaneous. It follows patterns: a market dispute escalates, a rumour spreads on WhatsApp, youth groups mobilise, and within 72 hours villages are burning. Local religious leaders often see the warning signs but have no shared channel to act on them. Your task is to design an early warning and rapid response tool that interfaith community leaders in one of these states could realistically operate. This is not a government system. It is a civilian, community-owned tool. You are designing for people who may have mobile phones with intermittent data, who speak Berom, Tiv, Hausa, or Fulfulde alongside English, and who may not trust one another but share a strong interest in keeping their communities alive. Deliver a product brief and a low-fidelity prototype. The product brief should cover: what signals the tool monitors (rumours, displacement movements, market closures, armed group sightings); how information is submitted and verified; who sits on the response team and what authority they have; and how alerts are communicated to both leaders and ordinary residents. The prototype can be a set of annotated wireframes or a clickable Figma mock-up. It should show at minimum three screens: an incident submission form, a tension dashboard, and an alert notification. Good work will grapple with the trust problem directly. It will explain how a tool designed by and for both Christian and Muslim leaders avoids becoming a weapon for either side. It will be honest about the constraints: power cuts, poor connectivity, the risk of false reports, and the reality that some leaders themselves have ties to the groups causing violence.