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Housing matters, no matter when or where. This volume of collected essays on housing in colonial and postcolonial Africa seeks to elaborate the how and the why. Housing is much more than a living everyday practice. It unfolds in its disparate dimensions of time, space and agency. Context dependent, it acquires diverse, often ambivalent, meanings. Housing can be a promise, an unfulfilled dream, a tool of self- and class-assertion, a negotiation process, or a means to achieve other ends. Our focus lies in analyzing housing in its multifacetedness, be it a lens to offer insights into complex processes that shape societies; be it a tool of empire to exercise control over private relations of inhabitants; or be it a means to create good, obedient and productive citizens. Contributions to this volume range from the field of history, to architecture and urban planning, African Studies, linguistics, and literature. The individual case studies home in on specific aspects and dimensions of housing and seek to bring them into dialogue with each other. By doing so, the volume aims to add to the vibrant academic debate on studying urban practices and their significance for current social change.

citizens. --- development policies. --- disciplining. --- empire. --- housing --- Africa --- urban planning --- development policies

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Pastoralists throughout Africa face increasing pressures. In Benin, governmental development policies and programmes in crop farming are changing power relations between herders and farmers to favour the latter. How are the Fulani pastoralists responding to these threats to their existence? Georges Djohy explores the dynamics in local use of natural resources and in inter-ethnic relations resulting from development interventions. He combines the approaches of science and technology studies - looking at the co-construction of society and technology - and political ecology - looking at the power relations shaping the dynamics of economic, environmental and social change - so as to throw light on the forces of marginalisation, adaptation and innovation at work in northern Benin. Having worked there for many years, Djohy has been able to uncover gradual processes of socio-technological change that are happening "behind the scenes" of agricultural development involving mechanisation, herbicide use, tree planting, land registration and natural resource conservation. He reveals how farmers are using these interventions as "weapons" in order to gain more rights over larger areas of land, in other words, to support indigenous land grabbing from herders who had been using the land since decades for grazing. He documents how the Fulani are innovating to ensure their survival, e.g. by using new technologies for transport and communication, developing new strategies of livestock feeding and herd movement, and developing complementary sources of household income. The Fulani are organising themselves from local to national level to provide technological and socio-cultural services, manage conflicts and gain a stronger political voice, e.g. to be able to achieve demarcation of corridors for moving livestock through cultivated areas. They even use non-functioning mini-dairies - another example of development intervention - to demonstrate their modernity and to open up other opportunities to transform their pastoral systems. This book provides insights into normally hidden technical and social dynamics that are unexpected outcomes of development interventions.

Benin --- governmental development policies --- CFA franc --- Fula people --- Gogounou --- Livestock --- Pastoralism

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This ePaper investigates the non-linear effects of geo-referenced World Bank aid projects on economic development at the sub-national level, measured as night-time luminosity. The data framework is based on a grid cell structure at a 0.5 x 0.5 decimal degree resolution, covering approximately 10,600 grid cells across 54 African countries, over the period of 1992 to 2014. This approach addresses endogeneity concerns associated with sample selection and reverse causality. Using a fixed effects quantile regression approach, I estimate the impact of foreign aid at distinct levels of development within countries. Overall, the results suggest a positive and statistically significant effect of aid on night-time luminosity, with the largest impact observed within relatively poorer grid cells. In addition, there is evidence of spill-over aid effects from neighbouring grid cells. These findings are however sensitive to different model specifications and variable transformations. We extend our heartfelt thanks to the Vahabzadeh Foundation for financially supporting the publication of best works by young researchers of the Graduate Institute, giving a priority to those who have been awarded academic prizes for their master’s dissertations.

Planning & Development --- Public Administration --- Economics (General) --- development policies and practices --- economic development --- aid effect --- World Bank

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This paper explores the intersection of urban restructuring and refugee resettlement. Centring around a case study of Buffalo, New York (NY), USA, it adds to the small but growing number of studies on resettlement in post-industrial contexts. Buffalo is experiencing economic and population growth, termed by some as the city’s renaissance (even the refugee renaissance), while others regard it as gentrification and exclusionary development. At the same time, the city has become one of the largest resettlement sites in the country. In politicians’ statements and the media, refugees are credited with being one of the key drivers for this development in the city. Through interviews with various stakeholders, I explore how these phenomena are understood. I argue that this convening of factors creates a particular conception of the figure of the resettled refugee. In Buffalo, refugees emerge as a particularly valued form of other, capable of driving development in a way that fits ideally within the narrative of ‘rust to reinvention’. As such, they become outside economic development agents, divorced from the challenges faced by struggling residents for decades. Resettlement actors navigate this conversation, recognising the challenges faced by refugees and other residents, while at the same time carrying forward prevailing narratives and frames. We extend our heartfelt thanks to the Vahabzadeh Foundation for financially supporting the publication of best works by young researchers of the Graduate Institute, giving a priority to those who have been awarded academic prizes for their master’s dissertations.

Demography --- Urban Studies --- Planning & Development --- Social Sciences, Interdisciplinary --- Social Work & Social Policy --- Cultural studies --- culture religion and identity --- identity --- Islam --- development policies and practices --- economic development --- immigration --- migration and refugees --- public discourse --- urban development --- post-industrial development

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Le monde entier connaît actuellement un profond changement lié au développement du réseau mondial de l'information et de la communication : internet. Ce bouleversement touche toutes les sphères du social et cet ouvrage porte spécifiquement sur les aspects éthiques de l'usage d'internet en Afrique de l'Ouest. D'une manière générale, l'approche suivie dans le cadre de ce projet a été d'étudier en quoi le développement d'internet soulève des enjeux d'ordre éthique qu'il convient d'identifier en vue de permettre une meilleure appropriation et intégration dans le cadre général du développement des

Social ethics --- Mass communications --- Computer architecture. Operating systems --- West Africa --- Internet --- communication technology --- technological changes --- Development policies --- sociocultural environment --- Information technology --- DARPA Internet --- Internet (Computer network) --- Wide area networks (Computer networks) --- World Wide Web --- IT (Information technology) --- Technology --- Telematics --- Information superhighway --- Knowledge management --- Moral and ethical aspects --- Social aspects