From the “Kabila-Tshisekedi deal” to the challenges of conceptualising political transition in the DRC

Congolese politics have drastically changed since the installment of the new President, Felix Tshisekedi, almost one year ago now. But have our views on Congolese politics equally shifted or do analysts tend to rely on existing approaches and narratives

What explains popular resistance to Ebola humanitarian responses in the DRC?

The humanitarian response to the DRC’s Ebola health emergency between 2018-20 was met with popular resistance by local populations, drawing attention to the perceived failures of humanitarian responses in the country over decades. To declare Ebola a health disaster was to reveal the disease’s connections with politics, in sharp contrast to the lack of protection provided to those living through daily violent atrocities

Tumukule, Tumukwepe: how ‘Citoyenneté’ reshaped the democratic space during Congo’s 2018 elections

Tumukule, tumukwepe is an old saying in Bukavu meaning ‘Let’s take what he gives us, but do not let us get carried away by him’. This expression was given a new meaning during Congo’s latest presidential and parliamentary elections, held at the end of 2018. Congolese citizens massively attended rallies of electoral candidates, and accepted the money and gifts being distributed as bribes to vote for them. Yet, in the end, the Congolese made their own choices based on personal interests and individual preferences

The Rwandan agrarian and land sector modernisation:confronting macro performance with lived experiences on the ground

Rwanda has embarked on an ambitious policy package to modernise and professionalise the agrarian and land sector. Its reform fits into a broader call – supported by major international donors – to 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, micro-level 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 résistance paysanne à l’accaparement des terres par les élites politiques au Burundi : recours à la société civile locale comme forme de mobilisation de l’« agencéité » d’acteurs faibles

Les mécanismes juridiques mis en place au Burundi pour résoudre les conflits liés aux cas d’accaparement des terres par les élites locales constituent une avancée. Il demeure néanmoins soumis aux rapports de force entre acteurs de l’arène foncière. Les paysans pauvres accaparés n’ont d’autres choix que de mobiliser les organisations de la société civile et les appuis extérieurs pour augmenter leur pouvoir de négociation

Disturbing the Aesthetics of Power: Why Covid-19 Is Not an “Event” for Fieldwork-based Social Scientists

The Black Models exhibition is an analogous representation of the colonial relationship that has plagued the social sciences for the last four centuries, which often has made invisible the work of local researchers from the Global South. These parallels are particularly evident in the unequal racial distribution of roles, and of vulnerability, in difficult research contexts. Such inequality of conditions has led to a universalist monologue that is already pervading the social sciences with regards to post–Covid-19 scenarios. How will body-instruments continue to be used for data collection in dangerous and difficult African contexts? Covid-19 offers an opportunity to question the new discourse of Western academics who commission studies in the Global South. For research assistants, this new discourse is just another contradictory monologue, in the same way that Black Models is. For them, Covid-19 is not an “event,”21 an accident that radically reverses the normal order of things. It does not contain the conditions for a radical change in the phenomenon of the exploitation of certain bodies for research purposes. Those bodies have a color: Black

L’agriculture paysanne en Afrique des grand lacs : vers un démantèlement ? Rationalités et enjeux.

Le retour de l’agriculture sur l'agenda du développement en Afrique, sanctionnée par l’idée de la « Révolution verte » lancée par la Banque Mondiale en 2008 et ensuite par le Forum économique mondial en 2013, considère la croissance économique passant par l’agriculture comme une alternative à la faim et à la pauvreté des paysans, entre autres. Cette croissance exige un modèle agricole productiviste et marchand pourtant contesté par les réalités, les pratiques et les rationalités des paysans de l’Afrique des grands lacs. Le présent article cherche à comprendre la manière dont les instruments d’un modèle agricole néo-libéral, basé sur le principe de maximisation des profits, sont malgré tout introduits et imposés à des paysans qui basent leurs activités agricoles sur le principe de minimisation des risques. A partir de l’approche de la "political ecology", l’article opère une analyse discursive qu’il essaye de confronter aux réalités de terrain afin de dévoiler une "gouvernementalité" productrice des discours et de « vérité » sur l’agriculture et le développement, lesquels participent du processus de démantèlement de l’agriculture paysanne sans proposer d’alternative réaliste et viable pour les paysans