Contenu du sommaire : Afrique : permanences et dynamiques.

Africa : do the terms territory and development adequately describe its present problems ? Some deep-rooted and persistent stereotypes are attached to Africa. Neither political or economic development seem to be able to pull this " cursed continent" out of the violence and poverty that we call a " state of nature". We should wonder, in fact, wether our concepts are well adapted to a situation which is so different from the rest of the world. From a geographical viewpoint, the concept of territory appears central in the definition of identity and the assessment of the basic factors and constraints of development. From a political and economic viewpoint, it has also become a well-established and unquestionable fact. And yet, such an obvious concept for geographers and political and economic analysts must be revised, especially as concerns Africa where territory does not have the same meaning as in Europe. This is what this paper, based on some major studies, aims at showing.

A Logical Management of the Problems to Occur in the Future as Regards the Dry Zones of Tropical Africa. From the Atlantic coastlines to the Red Sea, the dry zones of Tropical Africa have a common denominator : the aggravation of climatic insecurity and the scarcity of water resources. To confront unrestrained population growth and increasing water needs, the rivers crossing the African continent, and which belong to no-one, remain the only exploitable water supplies upon which the respective indépendant nations can count. The management of these rivers present problems that are all more acute in that, in addition to their non-national characteristic, there are great differences in water needs among the populations living upstream or downstream of them but also those who reside along their banks. General agreement among the nations is therefore necessary for an equitable distribution of the water sources, which can easily become the "blue weapon " of retaliations and an obvious factor in a casus belli.

Real Estate and Land Development Dynamics, Urban Expansion in Cotonou, Bénin. In the past forty years urban expansion in Sud-Saharan Africa has assumed the proportions of a major restructuring phenomenon. In Benin, as elsewhere in the Benin golf zone, the General Census of the Population and Dwellings of 1992 revealed a significant growth of the urban population, in particular in Cotonou, the economic capital of the country, where more than half of its population live. This uncontrolled development of the city has caused the peripheral regions to expand into spaces hitherto considered unfit for construction. Cotonou has thus broken out of its original limits and is becoming an "urban monster", where promiscuity and insalubrity now reign, with heightened pollution and severe insecurity. Nor have any measures yet been taken to stem any of this degradation. There is no compliance whatever with the rules of town planning (they would first have to be known, even by the municipal authorities), nor any real tools of regulation of the land and real estate markets. While awaiting a full awareness of this problem, it seems interesting to us to try to understand in what manner abnormal urban operations and land speculation, which is a consequence of them, affect the dynamics of renewed urban growth.

Ilakaka, Madagascar : The Sapphire Rush. Impelled by the dream of acquiring a rapid fortune, Malagasy prospectors have been flocking by the tens of thousands ever since October 1998 to the hamlet unknown until then of Ilakaka, in southwestern Madagascar, to exploit an immense deposite of sapphires. They have been followed by buyers of the sapphire trade, thus placing the locality in the very current of international commerce. On one of the two main highways of the country, the RN 7 which goes from the capital, Antananarivo, to Toliara on the edge of the Mozambique canal, a new city is in full expansion, growing along with the rapid advance of the pioneer front. That front, with its earth heaps, trenches and its wooden shanties constructed in no matter what way and with no matter what material in some cases, dig literally for miles around in a vast savannah where before there were hardly any men in Ilakaka. A landscape anarchy thus characterizes Ilakaka now, and the same can be said of the businesses that have developed in it. In this Far West, the beginnings of regulation and order are still rare an fragile, while the sapphires enrich their foreign purchasers without benefiting Madagascar in any manner, and with the prospectors digging at great risk to their lives under very precarious work and living conditions. In addition, the uncontrolled extension of the pioneer front poses a menace for the local environment, in particular for the Isalo National Park nearby and which is the main eco-tourist center Madagascar.