West Africa

2019 ◽  
pp. 19-40
Author(s):  
Eleanor M. Fox ◽  
Mor Bakhoum
Keyword(s):  
West Africa ◽  
Institutional Environment ◽  
Competition Law ◽  
West African ◽  
French West Africa ◽  
Western Africa ◽  
The World Bank ◽  
Open Markets ◽  
The International Monetary Fund ◽  
Striking Fact

This chapter details how eight nations of Western Africa—Senegal, Mali, the Ivory Coast, Benin, Togo, Niger, Burkina Faso, and Guinea Bissau—transformed from government-controlled economies to market economies. The French West African states have adopted laws to open markets and protect competition, often at the behest of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). However, the project has been set back by political and economic instability, the lack of human and financial capital, and regional preemption of domestic competition law. It is a striking fact that there is virtually no competition law enforcement in French West Africa and no merger control law. The obstacles may ultimately be overcome with focus, leadership, will, and a reset of the institutional environment to allow national law to work hand in hand with regional law.

Drought and Dependence in the Sahel

1978 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 271-298 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicole Ball
Keyword(s):  
West Africa ◽  
Development Strategy ◽  
Safety Margin ◽  
West African ◽  
Colonial Period ◽  
Ecological Stability ◽  
French West Africa ◽  
Self Reliance ◽  
Economic Stagnation ◽  
The Relationship

The relationship between human activity and environmental degradation has been documented in numerous studies. With regard to West Africa, E. P. Stebbing was already warning of ecological degradation due to overcultivation and overgrazing in the 1930s. Less well documented are the reasons why people who understand many of the requirements of ecologically sound farming and herding nonetheless mismanage natural resources to the point of disaster. An examination of the 1968–1973 drought in the Sahel zone of West Africa (formerly French West Africa) suggests that the lack of economic autonomy for Sahelian countries is a major cause not only of their economic stagnation and underdevelopment but equally of the degradation of their ecosystems. Specific policies, initiated during the colonial period and continued by independent governments, can be identified as reducing the ability of West African farmers and herders to exploit their environment with an adequate safety margin. Largely as a result of the 1968–1973 drought, there has been an upsurge of interest in the Sahel on the part of international and national aid agencies. However, it is very possible that the programs devised by these groups will promote neither economic autonomy nor ecological stability for the countries in that region. A development strategy based largely on self-reliance, on the other hand, could be more successful in protecting both the populations and the ecology of the Sahel.

How Ancient is West African Maize?

Africa ◽  
1963 ◽  
Vol 33 (2) ◽  
pp. 115-131 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. D. W. Jeffreys
Keyword(s):  
West Africa ◽  
Sierra Leone ◽  
West African ◽  
The Other ◽  
Vernacular Names ◽  
Western Africa ◽  
Other Hand

Eastern Whites in Western AfricaMy article on Zaburro was written in the expectation that it would stimulate discussion over the antiquity of maize in West Africa, and the matter has been taken up by Professor Portères (1959), on whose publication Mr. Willett has relied for certain inferences in his article in Africa for January 1962. Among the interesting points brought forward by Professor Portères (1959, vi) are the groups of African vernacular names which indicate that maize was introduced by foreigners, strangers, whitemen. A similar observation had been made more than a hundred years ago by Koelle (a. 1854, v), a missionary in Sierra Leone, who wrote: ‘…the names for onion, rice, maize, &c. show that in many countries [in Africa] these articles have been introduced by foreigners.…’ Who these foreigners were Koelle, with his long list of vernacular words for whiteman to choose from, leaves indeterminate. On the other hand, underlying Professor Portères's view that it was the Portuguese or the Dutch who brought maize to the Guynee coast, lies the assumption that the foreigners, the strangers, the whitemen indicated by these vernacular names were the Portuguese and the Dutch.

Contribution a l'etude stratigraphique et structurale du detroit soudanais [with discussion]

1953 ◽  
Vol S6-III (7-8) ◽  
pp. 677-695 ◽  
Author(s):  
Henri Radier
Keyword(s):  
West Africa ◽  
Crystalline Rocks ◽  
West African ◽  
The West ◽  
French West Africa ◽  
Rigid Group

Abstract The Sudan trough in French West Africa is located between the central Saharan massif and the west African shield. It was produced in a zone of weakness in a vast rigid group of crystalline rocks and has been in existence since Cenomanian (Cretaceous) time. Sedimentation in the trough has been sporadic; the formations are neither extensive nor thick. Structural phases strongly developed in the northern part of the central Saharan massif are weakly recorded here.

Measuring and explaining formal institutional persistence in French West Africa

2019 ◽  
Vol 57 (2) ◽  
pp. 183-202 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maya Berinzon ◽  
Ryan C. Briggs
Keyword(s):  
West Africa ◽  
Text Analysis ◽  
West African ◽  
Penal Code ◽  
Analysis Method ◽  
African Countries ◽  
French West Africa ◽  
Institutional Persistence ◽  
Penal Codes ◽  
Colonial Institutions

AbstractColonial institutions are thought to be highly persistent, but measuring that persistence is difficult. Using a text analysis method that allows us to measure similarity between bodies of text, we examine the extent to which one formal institution – the penal code – has retained colonial language in seven West African countries. We find that the contemporary penal codes of most countries retain little colonial language. Additionally, we find that it is not meaningful to speak of institutional divergence across the unit of French West Africa, as there is wide variation in the legislative post-coloniality of individual countries. We present preliminary analyses explaining this variation and show that the amount of time that a colony spent under colonisation correlates with more persistent colonial institutions.

The Archival System of Former French West Africa

1965 ◽  
Vol 8 (01) ◽  
pp. 48-58
Author(s):  
G. Wesley Johnson
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
West Africa ◽  
West African ◽  
Current Status ◽  
World War ◽  
French West Africa ◽  
Parent Organization ◽  
Equatorial Africa ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Government

In September and October of 1964, I visited the various centers once forming links in the archival system of French West Africa. Contrary to what occurred in Equatorial Africa, the French left these archival holdings in place, except for current material which was shipped to the rue Oudinot (Ministry of Colonies) in Paris. The center of the West African system was the Archives of the Government-General in Dakar (later the High Commission). Based originally on the Senegalese holdings, this archive became an independent agency of the federal government and was the parent organization of subsidiary archives for Senegal, Mauritania, Soudan, Upper Volta, Niger, Dahomey, Ivory Coast, and Guinea. It was parallel in structure to the Institut Français d'Afrique Noire (IFAN), which also had its headquarters in Dakar and maintained subsidiary centers for each territory. In some cases, the archives and IFAN centers were amalgamated (during World War II) and the history of the two organizations is often inseparable. This survey is an attempt to describe the establishment and development of these archival centers, how their material was organized and can be used for research, and their current status in the independent countries.

scholarly journals The Question of ECO Stowage: A Response from the Study of the Misalignment of the CFA Franc in WAEMU

2020 ◽  
pp. 24-33
Author(s):  
Nahoussé Diabate
Keyword(s):  
Exchange Rate ◽  
Real Exchange Rate ◽  
World Bank ◽  
West African ◽  
Productive Capacity ◽  
Macroeconomic Policies ◽  
The Real ◽  
The World Bank ◽  
The International Monetary Fund ◽  
Cfa Franc

The objective of our work is to provide an answer to the question of whether or not to link ECO to EURO. For this, we assume that CFA franc is constantly misaligned. Based on WAEMU’s equation of the real exchange rate estimated, we obtain the series of the real exchange rate of balance and the level of misalignment through the HP approach. We use annual WAEMU data for the period 1980-2017 from the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the Central Bank of West African States. This result questions the effectiveness of a fixed stowage of the new currency, the ECO to the EURO. However, before the adoption of this new currency, the evaluation of the position of exchange reserves in ECOWAS is necessary. In addition, strengthening productive capacity and better coordination of macroeconomic policies within the ECOWAS economies is highly recommended. It would also be wise to reconsider the budgetary management of ECOWAS states member in order to achieving more convergence.

Failing to Stem the Tide: Lebanese Migration to French West Africa and the Competing Prerogatives of the Imperial State

2011 ◽  
Vol 53 (3) ◽  
pp. 450-478 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Kerim Arsan
Keyword(s):  
West Africa ◽  
Palm Oil ◽  
Eastern Mediterranean ◽  
West African ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
French West Africa ◽  
The Government ◽  
Territorial Government ◽  
Mediterranean Migration ◽  
Imperial State

In the years before 1939, the functionaries of Afrique Occidentale Française, or AOF, as France's West African possessions were known, consistently failed to introduce effective legislative controls upon Eastern Mediterranean migration under their purview. This was not for lack of trying; from 1905 onwards, administrators both in the territorial government of Guinea and in the Government-General of the Federation in Dakar repeatedly attempted to close their gates to these interlopers of empire, most of them from present-day Lebanon, who first began to venture into West Africa in the last years of the nineteenth century. By the late 1930s, some six thousand citizens of the Mandatory states of Lebanon and Syria resided across AOF. Most worked as produce brokers, shopkeepers, and traders, buying up groundnuts, palm oil, or kola nuts from African producers, and supplying them in turn with consumer goods such as textiles and clothes, processed foodstuffs, alcohol, and matches. Despite their attempts to channel and stem this flow of men and women, AOF administrators proved unable to impose effective legislative checks upon their movements.

The Coin of the African Realm

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeffrey Herbst
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
West Africa ◽  
West African ◽  
Regional Economies ◽  
African Countries ◽  
New Strategies

This chapter examines the politics of the currency in West Africa from the beginning of the twentieth century. A public series of debates over the nature of the currency occurred in West Africa during both the colonial and independence periods. Since 1983, West African countries have been pioneers in Africa in developing new strategies to combat overvaluation of the currency and reduce the control of government over the currency supply. The chapter charts the evolution of West African currencies as boundaries and explores their relationship to state consolidation. It shows that leaders in African capitals managed to make the units they ruled increasingly distinct from the international and regional economies, but the greater salience of the currency did not end up promoting state consolidation. Rather, winning the ability to determine the value of the currency led to a series of disastrous decisions that severely weakened the states themselves.

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