Contenu du sommaire : La question alimentaire en Afrique : Risque et politisation

La question alimentaire en Afrique : Risque et politisation

• La question alimentaire en Afrique : risque et politisation. Introduction - Pierre Janin p. 727
  The food question in Africa : risk and politisation. Introduction. Without pretending to a systematic comparison, this study examines the risks involved in the management of food in several African countries. The articles expose the gap between the initial intentions of food policies, their implementation and local situations. They stress the weakening of the State, the growing strength of trading networks and individual citizen initiatives, which constitute the most of the relations between the actors of the food system, while indicating the plurality of their perceptions, usages and normative frameworks. Such are the stages of a reflection which examines the relationships between theoretical frameworks, development models and the game of actors.
• La politisation de l'aide alimentaire d'urgence au Burkina-Faso - Marie Poussart-Vanier p. 737
  The politicization of emergency food aid in Burkina- Faso. In this article, the author draws the context in which emergency food aid is progressively institutionalised in Burkina Faso. Despite the weakness of food aid supply in contrast to the availability of grain at a national level, the decisions related to distribution are a source of strong politicization between government, aid donors and grain traders. Some polemical, albeit eloquent cases, bring to light the controversies resulting from this aid from the viewpoint of its actors.
• Le pastoralisme au Sénégal, entre politique "moderne" et gestion des risques par les pasteurs - Véronique Ancey, Georges Monas p. 761
  Pastoralism in Senegal: Between modern policy and risk management by livestock raisers. The question of livestock raising in Senegal well illustrates how difficult it is, at times, for policies to take some realities into account. While such policies promptly mobilise recent concepts (such as food sovereignty) or propose modernist network approaches, discourses still often convey ancient clichés on the atavism and irrationality of pastoralists, along with ignorance of local, economic, agro-ecological and societal realities. It is such biased representations that this article puts to question, by examining the sectoral policy implemented in Senegal in order to secure local production systems
• Les politiques alimentaires au Maghreb et leurs conséquences sur les sociétés agropastorales - Véronique Alary, Mohammed El Mourid p. 785
  Food policies in North Africa and their consequences on agro-pastoral societies. Until the adoption of liberalization policies from the 1980's, Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia have favoured a policy of food self-sufficiency based on economic planning and public control of networks. Despite all this, the external food dependency went on increasing during all the period. With liberalization of exchanges, governments stress a concept of food security based on the satisfaction of the needs of the population through local and imported products. What are the consequences of this evolution on livestock systems and on agro-pastoral societies in the steppe areas of Maghreb ?
• Incertitudes et "jeux céréaliers" en Afrique de l'Ouest : quels enseignements politiques ? - Kako Nubukpo, Pierre Janin p. 811
  Incertitudes and « grain games » in West Africa : What policy lessons ? Studies on food insecurity in West Africa are still often based on deterministic or accounting presumptions whereby the role of actors, the logics of action and the perceptions, or even the sociohistorical contexts, appear to be minimised. In this text, we attempt, using the theoretical framework of the « grain-game », to trace the entire complexity in order to draw some lessons relevant to a policy for the reduction of food insecurity. The cooperation between actors hence appears as a mean for enabling a more efficient and equitable sociopolitical regulation of the food system.
• Réalités, perceptions et usages des "famines vertes" du Sud éthiopien - Sabine Planel p. 837
  Realities, perceptions and uses of « green famines » in Southern Ethiopia. In Ethiopia, the mechanisms of redistribution of food aid are profoundly unequal depending on the regions, due to the remarkable ignorance of the various agrarian systems. Therefore, since their appearance in the 1980's, the «green famines » of the Ethiopian South, former granary, receive less aid. The case study of Wolaita, hereby presented, shows how inherited representations of space, territories and societies, shape the management of food aid policy at times without any relevance to food problems, with the resulting risk of aggravating preferences and ethno-regional inequalities as regards development in a weak federal country.

• Piques et polémiques

  • Niger : chronique d'une évaluation censurée - Claude Arditi p. 861
    Niger : Chronicle of a censored assessment. The external assessment of development now appears as being normal in the cycle of a project. In the field however, the reality is different. Relating an experience of evaluation in Niger in 2003, concerning food security, this text shows that the presence of an anthropologist may be proved embarrassing and lead to the censoring of his report. Indeed, there are speeches and- practices, in this UN agency as elsewhere, which scorn the very principle of an outside look, so as to be able to present projects which are 100 % successful.
  • Le modèle de la croissance excluante et l'insécurité économique dans le Mercosur depuis 1990 - Alexis Saludjian p. 883
    Excluding growth regime and economical insecurity in Mercosur countries since 1990. Through a statistical study based on a methodology developed by D. Rodrik, this article gives new empirical evidence of the excluding growth regime that happened in Latin America during the 1990s. Indeed, in spite of macroeconomic volatility, some economists suggest that growth did not benefit in a homogeneous way to the population. The wage earners have been particularly concerned and excluded from the benefits of growth, even though the labour productivity has increased.
  • La libéralisation des échanges a-t-elle un impact sur la croissance ? Les expériences de l'Inde et de la Corée - Prabirjit Sarkar p. 907
    Is there any impact of trade liberalisation on growth ? Experiences of India and Korea Trade liberalisation in developing countries over the last 20 years has often been implemented considering it as a pre-requisite to growth. This paper uses ardl approach to cointegration and examines the relationships between growth and trade liberalisation in the context of India and Korea. Using three indicators of liberalisation this paper finds no meaningful relationship between the growth rate of real gdp or per capita real gdp and trade openness.