Contenu du sommaire : China, Ltd. Un business africain

Unavoidable localization : Chinese state-owned construction enterprises in Ghana
Interrogating directly the Chinese construction State-owned enterprises (SOEs) in Ghana, this paper illustrates that the relationship with the Chinese state is not the main factor that differentiates SOEs business behavior and development. The best-performed SOEs in terms of business development and social responsible behavior are not the largest SOEs in China, but provincial SOEs or less strategic central SOE groups. The level of autonomy becomes a significant factor only when it correlates with time as adaptation to the local context takes time for all kind of enterprises, which yet is largely ignored in the China-Africa analysis. With time the SOEs in Ghana become a highly independent and gradually a local enterprise, headed with their entrepreneurial subsidiary directors.

Trans-border Mobility and Cross-cultural Business Networking among Chinese and Nigerian Petty entrepreneurs. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in Guangzhou and Lagos, this paper examines two intertwined transnational mobility processes : Chinese entrepreneurial migration to Nigeria and Nigerian trade migration to China. The authors interpret Chinese and Nigerian petty entrepreneurs' transnational trade activities within a theoretical framework of economic globalization from below, which operates largely under the radar of the state, yet remains connected to state practices in complex and contradictory ways. The paper rejects a strict binary between the legal and illegal by considering both the state's perspective and migrants' perspective in regard to globalization from below. In addition to examining the institutional barriers faced by Chinese and Nigerian petty entrepreneurs in their host states, the paper explores the strategic development of trans-border and cross-cultural business networks by the two groups in their efforts to facilitate the flow of people, goods and information between Guangzhou and Lagos. The authors also move beyond political and economic analyses by contemplating some of the cultural implications of these business networks, particularly internet-mediated communications, in helping bridge cultural gaps and diversify popular perceptions held by more locally based Chinese and Nigerian traders towards each other.

Integration Strategies and Shifting Power Relations among Generations of Chinese Migrants in Madagascar. Madagascar is home to a large community of inter-generational Malagasy of Chinese descent and a fast growing population of new Chinese migrants – known in Madagascar as “les anciens” and “les nouveaux” (the old and the new), respectively. Focusing on the social and economic integration strategies of Chinese migrants who arrived in the late-1990s and early-2000s, this article investigates the social and economic dynamics between the different generations of Chinese settlers in Madagascar. A shift in relations, of competition in particular, is manifested in rivalry over leadership in local Chinese associations. The traditional power of Chinese social, economic, and political organization, the Chinese congregation, is being challenged by the creation of a new business association led by more recent Chinese immigrants who have become economically successful and settled into their new environments with long-term perspectives. It is argued that the growing influence of established Chinese entrepreneurs in Madagascar is changing power relations between the old and new Chinese communities, positioning them as pivotal interlocutors between the old Chinese community, more recent Chinese investors and traders, and elements of the Malagasy business community on the island.

Negotiating Profits and Fakeness : The China-Nigeria Trade in Pharmaceuticals
This article examines the China-Nigeria trade in pharmaceutical drugs. It assesses the work of traders along the supply chains originating in Chinese production sites and ending in Nigeria's drug markets. It explores the great variety of actors and their different relations to producers, intermediaries and the state. While ethnicity and nationality play an important role in these supply chains, it is argued that the trade cannot be fully understood through an ethnic lens. Moreover, the article highlights the physical points of interaction between traders and the state and how they are negotiable, as well as attempts of traders to define the legality of their work and the ‘fakeness' of Chinese drugs. Thus, traders do not only negotiate the profits they make but also the quality and legality of their products.

The Revolution of the Chinese Goods in Africa
Although Sino-African trade has increased significantly during the last fifteen years, this article aims to examine the consequences of the arrival of Chinese goods in the daily life of African societies. Omnipresent, even in the most remote villages, they coincide with Africa entering an era of mass consumption. These goods are frequently analyzed through the sole lens of their cheap prices. Yet, they contribute in fact to the emergence of a new material culture. In this article, we look at African consumers of made in China, but also at African traders of the Chinese goods, as a key category of actors in this emerging material culture. It is eventually argued that African traders' activities also reconfigure power relations surrounding the access to extraversion.

Operation Somme : The French Connection and Seyni Kountché's Coup d'État in Niger, April 1974This article revisits the question of French involvement in African regime change by analysing an example from the past : the putsch by Seyni Kountché in Niger (1974), which led to the fall of President Diori. The French were accused of involvement because Diori had disagreements with them. The article discusses this with the help of archival material so far never consulted : the papers of Jacques Foccart. It shows that the French were not only not involved in the putsch but also taken by surprise by Kountché's action. Moreover, in the wake of the coup they took measures for an airborne operation to save Diori, code-named “Plan Somme”. This was called off because of the fait accompli in Niamey and the interregnum in Paris after Pompidou's death. The analysis is set against the background of changing Franco-Nigérien ties, Nigériens' reactions to regime change and the wider vicissitudes surrounding France's Africa policy.

Religious Revival in Mozambique : between Continuity, Rupture and Historicity
Research on religion in Africa has focused ever more in the last twenty years on the question of the “religious revival”, and it has usually focused on the question of the ruptures and innovations that resulted from it. This article questions the reality of the “religious revival” in Africa and explores, on the basis of a case study, the issue of change and continuity in religious change. In a first section, the text looks at the nature of the religious revival in Mozambique ; it then examines the historical and denominational continuities which exist in the revival ; a last section investigates the impact religious transformations have had on the political realm. The conclusion tries to unpack the question of ruptures and continuities and to think the question of a religious revival beyond this dichotomy.

The Central African Republic, from the Seleka Rebellion to Anti-Balak Groups (2012-2014). Uses of Violence, Persecutory Pattern and Media Perspectives on the Conflict. This article explores the historical, political and social dimensions of violence in the Central African Republic (CAR). The current conflict in CAR (2012-2014) opposes groups from the former Séléka rebellion, who took power in a coup on March 24th 2013, and so-called anti-balaka self-defence groups, who take on to Muslim communities while staging extreme violence against their victims' bodies. Moving beyond a simplistic perspective that sees the conflict as the result of a cleavage between “Muslim” fighters and “Christian” armed groups – a vision that international media have been propagating rather uncritically –, the article analyses the intricate links that have shaped exchanges and clashes between populations established on the Central African territory and those originating from the Chad-Sudan region since the 19th Century. In recent years, the complex relations between the Central African government and its neighbouring states, Chad especially, as well as the grievances by armed groups established in the border areas between the two countries have contributed to the deterioration of the political climate. It is also in this context that claims to autochthony have emerged within the Central African population.