Just got this in the mail: Stipendium: 3 doctoral scholarships (Bonn) in research project on land use and climate change adaptation/ West Africa The three doctoral candidates will work on the following research subjects: 1. Historical relations between demography and land use in West Africa 2. Decision‐making within rural households in West Africa 3. The… Read More »
In London Review of Books: Laurent Gbagbo was born in 1945 in the so-called ‘cocoa loop’ in the south-west. ‘When I went to school, rural Ivory Coast was still subdivided into military “circles” which were administered by French officers,’ he told me when I interviewed him in June 2009. ‘The economy was entirely in French… Read More »
The piece is mostly about Côte d’Ivoire, as one would expect, but he ends it with this: National leaders must learn that to provide democratic legitimacy, elections must be free and fair. The international community must understand that every time it turns a blind eye to electoral abuse, it becomes complicit in degrading democracy’s potential.… Read More »
When the protagonists are black people. That is the only conclusion one can draw from the unhinged claims that the Ivory Coast is on “the brink of genocide” following the disputed presidential elections and the stand-off between the incumbent president Laurent Gbagbo and president-elect Alassane Ouattara. Read it all here. HT to @johnkeithhart