French Institute for Research in Africa

This article presents the findings of the estimated population of Kibera, often said to be the “biggest slum in Africa.” This estimation was done in 2009 by the French Institute for Research in Africa (IFRA) in Nairobi and Keyobs, a Belgian company, using Geographical Information Systems (GIS) methodology and a ground survey. The results showed that there are 200,000 residents, instead of the 700,000 to 1 million figures which are often quoted. The 2009 census and statistics on Kibera’s population also confirmed that the those findings were accurate.

Based on the case of Boko Haram, or Jama’atu Ahlis-Sunnah Lidda’awati Wal Jihad (“People Committed to the Propagation of the Prophet’s Teachings and Jihad”) to give it its real name, this chapter introduces a general discussion on the relationship between Islam and politics in Nigeria. Unlike Hamas in Palestine, Hezbollah in Lebanon, or the Muslim Brothers in Egypt, Boko Haram is neither a political party nor a charity network. It is political because it contests Western values, challenges the secularity of the Nigerian state, and reveals the corruption of a “democrazy” that relies on a predatory ruling elite, the so-called “godfathers”. But Boko Haram also remains a sect, now engaged in terrorist violence. From Mohammed Yusuf to Abubakar Shekau, its leaders have never actually proposed a political programme to reform and govern Nigeria according to Shariah. In this regard, Boko Haram raises an important question: why has Nigeria never had a religious political party, either Islamic or Christian? Federalism and the alleged ‘neutrality’ of military regimes do not explain everything. Compared with the situation in Northern Sudan, the structure and division of Islam also help us to understand why Nigerian Muslims have never succeeded in setting up a political platform to contest elections with a religious programme, and why violence became an alternative channel for reform.

Almost every human endeavor is supported or driven by Information and Communication Technology (ICT) including education. Teaching, learning, assessment, course registration, payment among other things are now ICT-based. Humans have attempted to use technology to improve their life span and quality, and education is not excempted in this great paradigm shift. This paper focuses on the Information and Communication Technology competence and literacy skills of undergraduate students in Ogun State, using their information literacy skills/competence as determinants of their academic achievement. A descriptive survey design was adopted for this study. The population of the study consists of 10,713 students from Tai Solarin University of Education (TASUED) comprising 4 colleges and 10,000 students of Babcock University comprising 9 colleges. Simple random sampling was used for the selection of a sample of 170 respondents from Babcock University and 130 respondents from TASUED. Three hundred stdents (from 100-500 levels) were the sample of the study. Well-structured questionnaire was the main instrument used for the collection of primary data. The findings of this study show that 80% of the undergraduate students of TASUED and BU have basic ICT literacy skills which entail the ability to source for and access information resources for their research. Furthermore, this study has proved that the use of ICT has improved students’ academic performance. Recommendations were made based on the findings from the study. Key words: Information literacy, academic achievement, undergraduates, higher education, Information and Communication Technology (ICT).

From Fundamental Change to No Change: The NRM and democratization in Uganda

Surveiller et sécuriser son quartier est une pratique ancienne en Afrique du Sud, qui témoigne d’une insécurité diffuse liée à la forte prévalence de la violence en milieu urbain depuis la période coloniale. Ce dynamisme des pratiques citoyennes de maintien de l’ordre se reflète dans la littérature, désormais foisonnante, consacrée au vigilantisme en Afrique du Sud. Trop souvent, les groupes de vigilantes y apparaissent cependant unifiés et homogènes. À partir de deux récits de vie et d’une enquête ethnographique et historique dans les quartiers périphériques du Cap, on a ici adopté une perspective différente, en insistant sur deux points encore peu explorés dans la littérature sur le vigilantisme : sa féminisation et sa dimension biographique. Pour les femmes engagées sur le long terme dans ces groupes, le bénévolat, la professionnalisation et le désengagement sont les étapes de carrières morales qui révèlent de grandes vulnérabilités individuelles : personnelles, familiales et professionnelles. Ces engagements sécuritaires au long cours soulignent en même temps le rôle déterminant du financement des initiatives citoyennes dans le domaine du maintien de l’ordre, et par là même celui de l’État dans un contexte de paupérisation et de massification du chômage.

This paper presents a syntactic treebank for spoken Naija, an English pidgincreole, which is rapidly spreading across Nigeria.The syntactic annotation is developed in the Surface-Syntactic Universal Dependency annotation scheme (SUD) (Gerdes et al., 2018) and automatically converted into UD.We present the workflow of the treebank development for this under-resourced language.A crucial step in the syntactic analysis of a spoken language consists in manually adding a markup onto the transcription, indicating the segmentation into major syntactic units and their internal structure.We show that this so-called "macrosyntactic" markup improves parsing results.We also study some iconic syntactic phenomena that clearly distinguish Naija from English.

In the contemporary context of zoonosis emergence and spread, invasive species are a major issue since they represent potential pathogen hosts. Even though many progresses have been done to understand and predict spatial patterns of invasive species, the challenge to identify the underlying determinants of their distribution remains a central question in invasion biology. This is particularly exacerbated in the case of commensal species that strictly depend on humankind for dispersal and perennial establishment of new populations. The distribution of these species is predicted to be influenced by dispersal opportunities and conditions acting on establishment and proliferation, such as environmental characteristics, including spatio-temporal components of the human societies. We propose to contribute to the understanding of the recent spread of a major invasive rodent species, the black rat (Rattus rattus), in the changing southeastern of Senegal. We address the factors that promote the dispersal and distribution of this invasive rodent from the perspective of human geography. We first describe characteristics of human settlements in terms of social and spatial organization of human societies (i.e. economic activities, commercial and agricultural networks, roads connectivity). We then explore the relationship between these characteristics and the distribution of this invasive rodent. Finally we propose that historical and contemporary dynamics of human societies have contributed to the risk of invasion of the black rat. We argue that the diffusion processes of invasive species cannot be considered as a result of the spatial structure only (i.e. connectivity and distance), but as a part of the human territory that includes the social and spatial organization. Results suggest that the distribution of invasive rodents partly results from the contemporary and inherited human socio-spatial systems, beyond the existence of suitable ecological conditions that are classically investigated by biologists.

Le mouvement Boko Haram est passé en quelques années du statut de secte millénariste à celui de groupe jihadiste international grâce à une stratégie de communication basée sur l’utilisation de la vidéo et incarnée par son leader, Abubakar Shekau. A partir du corpus de vidéos disponible, cet article s’efforce de décrypter les images et les mots choisis par Boko Haram pour diffuser son message mais également d’en extraire des éléments de compréhension des logiques du groupe et de son évolution.

The purpose of this paper is to explain how, in developing countries, the poor have creatively appropriated risky areas where urban settlement is prohibited, resulting in territories rich in organic and unique forms, adapted to the morphological territorial conditions (slope, height, profile) and to different risk situations. In this context, it is important to present the physical and spatial characteristics of slum territories taking into consideration the ways in which they are appropriated, presented, either in a “visible” or “hidden” manner in the urban landscape as well as locating them in a territory (outskirts or urban perimeter). Subsequently, the current urban forms shall be analysed using irregular grid configurations, in corridors, terraces, etc., as developed by slum residents in response to the demands and topography of steep terrain. In order to achieve this, several slum cases shall be referred to in: East London (South Africa), Salvador de Bahia (Brazil) and Lima (Peru). Finally, the key points analysed within this article shall be presented briefly.

A partir de sources orales et d'archives foncières, fiscales et administratives, cet essai sur la propriété africaine rend compte des pratiques foncières, résidentielles et sociales d'un groupe de commerçants africains qui investirent, durant la période coloniale, les quartiers européens de Ouagadougou et de Bobo-Dioulasso en Haute-Volta. La comparaison de ces villes inégalement insérées dans les circuits de l'économie coloniale renseigne sur les marges de manœuvre de ces commerçants, et notamment de leurs aptitudes à jouer des différentes réglementations foncières alors en vigueur. Au-delà des comportements collectifs qui révèlent généralement un double investissement résidentiel (centre européen/quartiers africains), les stratégies individuelles témoignent des liens fréquents entre l'assise foncière des propriétaires, leur envergure sociale et leur rôle politico-administratif.

This article discusses two Kenyan government initiatives in slum upgrading: the Kenya Slum Upgrading Programme (KENSUP) and the Kenya Informal Settlement Improvement Project (KISIP). It gives the objectives, strategies and components of each programme. The article focuses on the KENSUP programme, presenting the achievements of this slum upgrading initiative to date and sums up with the challenges facing slum upgrading in Kenya.

1995: Creation of the Sahaba group (“The Prophet’s Companions”), under the leadership of Mallam Abubakar Lawal. Mohammed Yusuf, born in 1970 in Yobe State, is thought to be among the followers.2000-2003: In Borno State, rivalry increases between Governor Mala Kashalla and Senator Ali Modu Sheriff. The latter, running for governor, criticises the flawed implementation of Shariah in the state and rallies a group of political thugs. Many of the recruits are students of imam Mohammed Yusuf. Subs...

belonging first and foremost though to literary history, for during much of the time of What is striking about the association in a figure such as Jones, however, is that he wrote in come together to reaffirm a conflation that goes back some two millennia.These ideas and ethnologies will not survive the nineteenth century but still exert an influence for the early 21 Global History, East Africa and the Classical Traditions. Ethiopia and India: Fusion and Confusion in British Orientalism Phiroze VasuniaCan the Ethiopian change his skinne?or the leopard his spots?Jeremiah 13.23, in the King James Version (1611)May a man of Inde chaunge his skinne, and the cat of the mountayne her spottes?Jeremiah 13.23, in the Bishops' Bible (1568) I once encountered in Sicily an interesting parallel to the ancient confusion between Indians and Ethiopians, between east and south.A colleague and I had spent some pleasant moments with the local custodian of an archaeological site.Finally the Sicilian's curiosity prompted him to inquire of me "Are you Chinese?" Frank M. Snowden, Blacks in Antiquity (1970)

She specializes in the study of political processes in Niger and Nigeria and the analysis of cross-border movements, particularly religious flows, between these two countries.

IntroductionThe purpose of this paper is to locate the function of political parties in democratic governance. It examines the problems encountered by political parties in the process of building and sustaining competitive political systems. It looks back at the conditions that have led to a resurgence of multiparty democracy in the last two decades and highlights the Ugandan case as a country that has emerged from a failed state to monopoly politics and to back to multipartyism. It points o...

This paper focuses on the individual and institutional responses to the changing cultural landscape in rural south western Kenya. These changes result not only from new conditions in worldwide economic, political and cultural relations, but also human interactions within national and local contexts. By concentrating solely on the family, the findings indicate that the local people have responded by: firstly, abandoning some of their traditional norms and replacing them with modern values, giving rise to problems as these new values are either partially or totally incompatible with present local circumstances. Secondly, blending previously accepted social values with emerging ones is fraught with great difficulties. As is observed, whereas a solution lies in abandoning the ‘moribund’ values and continuing with those that are necessary for modern living, the common practice in the study area has been to discard the more important component of the values. This is illustrated by, for example, “shedding off” the educational component and concentrating on the role of boys’ and girls’ genitals in rites of passage with far reaching implications on the socialization of the young people in the community. In the same vein, the spontaneous elimination of the “institutional defense mechanisms,” which traditionally served to provide individuals with the ability to adapt normally to psychological, social and physical environments and protect the society from disruption, has led to the disintegration of traditional family and marriage systems. This has led to a social crisis with all indications pointing to the emergence of a generation of young people totally unprepared to fit into contemporary society.

HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access archive for the deposit and dissemination of sci-entific research documents, whether they are pub-lished or not. The documents may come from teaching and research institutions in France or abroad, or from public or private research centers. L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est destinée au dépôt et a ̀ la diffusion de documents scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, émanant des établissements d’enseignement et de recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires publics ou privés.

Focusing on the Nigeria Watch project (accessible on http://www.nigeriawatch.org/), this article ponders the study of lethal violence in Nigeria and its challenges. Rumors about violent deaths spread widely in Nigeria, most notably through social media. Academics, journalists or members of the public interested in investigating violent phenomena in the country often struggle to find reliable sources. That is why a team of academics decided to set up the Nigeria Watch Project in June 2006. This article examines and discusses the Nigeria Watch Project and its attempt to further the study of violence in Nigeria. Building on several Nigerian newspapers, Nigeria Watch aims at constituting a database of violent deaths on a daily basis. Deadly incidents are coded in the database along with specific information such as causes of death and location. The data is made available for mapping, understanding and analyzing violent trends in Nigeria. The project guarantees open access to its newspaper sources and a set of basic functionalities. More advanced features are available to password holders, who can use the data to create their own visuals, including graphs, charts and maps. This article also recognizes some limits and shortcomings of the database and, more generally, the difficulties of conducting qualitative and quantitative research on violence in African contexts. For instance, sources are a major point of contention: the database relies on newspaper reporting, which is biased and patchy. Categorizing deadly events results also from subjective choices and can be subjected to criticisms. Despite these challenges, the collected data may eventually contribute decisively to identifying patterns of violence in Nigeria, debunking popular misconceptions or myths and informing evidence-based policies.

This article analyses the pilot public housing project in Kibera Soweto East in Nairobi under the Kenya Slum Upgrading Programme (KENSUP), courtesy of a partnership between the Government of Kenya and the United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-HABITAT), which began in 2004. The article examines the process of temporary relocation of Soweto East Zone A residents, seven years after the launch of this project, and takes a critical look at the effects of this relocation on the affected population. In order to achieve this, data on Soweto East will first be presented followed by information obtained from surveys conducted on Soweto East residents by Amnesty International and UN-HABITAT. The temporary relocation of residents shall then be analysed with reference to book reviews, interviews and site visits. Finally, the key points analysed within this article shall be presented briefly along with the recommendations derived from this study.

BACKGROUND: Nigeria is one of the most terrorised countries due to terrorist attacks and violent clashes. There have been many fatalities resulting from this violence, which started in the late 1960s and has significantly increased recently. Violence in Nigeria has been studied, but not about Nigeria's mortality experience over time. This study described the patterns and trends of deaths related to violence in Nigeria over 16 years. METHODS: Secondary data on lethal violence across Nigeria spanning from 2006 to 2021 were drawn from the Nigeria Watch database, an online database of lethal violence in Nigeria. Univariate analysis of the data was conducted to map the trends, patterns and sources of lethal violence across Nigeria. RESULTS: Nigeria recorded no fewer than 169 033 violent deaths between 2006 and 2021, with 2014 reporting the highest number (22, 873) and Borno State being the most affected, followed by Lagos, Kaduna, Zamfara, Plateau, Delta, Benue, Rivers and Adamawa. The highest number of deaths (51, 425) was attributed to crime, followed by insurgency (50, 252) and road crashes (27, 645). Other significant causes of death were political issues (8, 324) and cattle grazing (5, 501). CONCLUSION: Violence-related mortality is prevalent in Nigeria and significantly contributes to adult mortality. The government must develop strategies to identify, intervene in and end high-risk conflict situations to stop the growing contribution of violence to Nigeria's mortality experience.