Etude Sur la Stratégie et le Programme D'appui à la Société Civile Burundaise

The author study's strategies and programs to build civil society in Burundi

Cotton in West and Central Africa: Adapting a Successful Model to New Realities

Produced for review by the United States Agency for International Development under the WACIP project funded by USAID (Programme de Renforcement du Secteur Coton en Afrique de l'Ouest et du Centrecotton, Africa, Crop Production/Industries, Q13,

Les Organisations de la Société Civile et la Lutte Contre la Pauvreté en Afrique Subsaharienne

The paper presents the role played by civil society organisations to bring down the poverty

Monetary Policies, Guild Labour-Strife, and Compulsory Arbitration during the Decline of the Late-Medieval Flemish Cloth Industry, 1390 - 1435

This paper explores the impact of the Count of Flanders' monetary and wage policies upon the fortunes of the Flemish woollen cloth industry in a crucial but penultimate phase of its irredeemable decline, from 1390 to 1435, when it was beginning to yield to the growing supremacy of the now rapidly expanding English cloth trade. More narrowly (leaving larger issues of industrial decline to other papers), it focuses upon the sudden imposition and enforcement of Flemish monetary reforms in the early 1390s, after a half century of inflationary coinage debasements; those reforms greatly exacerbated other existing forces of deflation in north-west Europe. In the view of the count, his officials, and entrepreneurs in the cloth trades, this monetary reform could work effectively only if wages were cut proportionately; and such wage-cutting policies naturally provoked bitter resentment (even though the ongoing deflation in fact raised real wages). In the Flemish cloth industry, the only wage-earning artisans who were organized into a guild, and one that resembled a modern labour union, were the fullers, exclusively male workers, whose tasks were crucial in ensuring the luxury quality of the Flemish industry's chief exports. Their reaction to the post-Reform wage cuts of the 1390s was to go on strike (uutgangen), thus forcing the intervention of the count's officials, who imposed compulsory wage arbitration, establishing new wage contracts that gave the draper-entrepreneurs only half of their demanded cuts. One of these contracts specified the fullers' new wages in terms of both the silver and gold coinages, in an era when the gold:silver ratio was unusually low. After the Flemish count had resumed inflationary coinage debasements in 1416, leading to a rise in the gold:silver ratio (i.e. making gold coins more valuable in terms of the silver), some fullers' guilds now cited these contract provisions and demanded payment in gold coin, provoking new labour strife, which ended only with another monetary reform in 1433- 5. The paper also poses and answers the question: why did the draper-entreprenuers not respond to this labour strife by displacing fullers with water-powered machines? Mechanical fulling would have ruined the reputation for luxury quality on which the industry vitally depended, while reducing prices only minimally.

Apprentissage par renforcement appliqué à la commande des systèmes électriques

International audienceCet article propose une revue de littérature concernant les applications de l'apprentissage par renforcement à la commande des systèmes électriques. L'apprentissage par renforcement a pour caractéristique principale de résoudre des problèmes de commande optimale à partir de la seule observation des trajectoires du système. Il présente l'intérêt de ne pas requérir de connaissance à priori sur la dynamique du système à commander et convient ainsi aux problèmes de commande des systèmes complexes. Dans un premier temps, l'article détaille les caractéristiques des problèmes auxquels l'apprentissage par renforcement s'applique, puis cette technique est décrite

Gold, guilds, and government: the impact of monetary and labour policies on the Flemish cloth industry, 1390-1435

The late Prof. Hans Van Werveke, in two very contentious articles, had contended that the monetary policies of Count Lodewijk van Male (Louis de Male) ‘had checked, for some time at least, the decay of the Flemish cloth industry’ by allowing its industrial entrepreneurs (weaver-drapers) to pay their artisans in continually debased silver coins, thereby reducing their real costs and sales prices, which provided the only means by which ‘it could hold out against foreign competition,’ namely the growing threat from the English cloth trade. Although he subsequently wrote an important article on the 1390 monetary reform of the count’s son-in-law and successor, Duke Philip the Bold, neither he nor anyone else has examined the possible impact of that entirely contrary monetary policy, in strengthening the coinage, upon the Flemish cloth industry, at the very time that the English and Dutch cloth trades had taken advantage of the damages inflicted by the Ghent Revolt of 1379-85 and the Hanseatic Embargo of 1388-92, to invade Baltic and German markets. This study focuses in upon the consequences of that policy in aggravating ongoing conflict in the industry’s labour relations: in particular the ongoing strife between the weaver-draper entrepreneurs and the fullers, the one group of wage-earning employees that enjoyed some protection from a guild organization. This 1390 monetary reform had necessitated a 25-percent reduction in wages, along with other prices; and such wage cuts were bitterly resented, with threats of strikes from the fullers of Ghent, Kortrijjk, and Wervik. While compulsory arbitration from the ducal Council of Flanders did impose settlements, and new wages that endured unchanged until the 1420s, it unwittingly set the stage for subsquent strikes, especially in the case of Kortrijk, by specifying wages in gold coins as well as in silver coins, with a fixed bimetallic ratio. When the duke’s grandson, Philip the Good, resumed drastic coinage debasements in the 1420s (to help finance his wars), and in manner that drove up the relative value of gold coins, the Kortrijk fullers then demanded to be paid in gold; and with the drapers’ refusal and a sharp rise in the cost of living, they and the Ghent fullers engaged in disruptive strikes. But the most serious consequence of Philip the Good’s monetary policy was to provoke an English retaliation in the form of bullionist payment regulations at the Calais Wool staple, where the Flemish drapers secured almost all their wools. Those onerous regulations and the conflicts that followed doomed both the English wool trade and the Flemish cloth industry to a sudden and irredeemable decline.fullers; weaver-drapers; Count of Flanders; monetary policies; labour policies; arbitration; wool; woollen cloth; gold; silver; mints; coinage; seigniorage; bimetallic ratios; guilds; town governments; deflation; inflation

Diaspora, Développement et Citoyenneté: Les Migrants Originaires du Bassin du Fleuve Sénégal

The author analyses the contribution of the diaspora on the development of their locality