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Analysts of African business in the 1960s and 1970s stressed the weakness of the local private sector and its subordination to foreign capital and the government. Have economic liberalization and the shrinking of the state changed matters? This paper takes up this question in an analysis of Senegal. Here, relations between the state, foreign capital, and indigenous business interests have changed considerably since 1980, signaling what may be some of the most significant shifts in Senegal's political economy since Abdou Diouf's coming to power in 1981. There has been a shift of commercial control away from the state and foreign interests and toward the Senegalese “informal sector,” and clear moves away from the old pattern of clientelist-style relations between Senegalese business and the regime.
In this paper, we argue that in spite of changes, the political clout and economic ambitions of Senegalese business interests are still limited by their weak hold on productive sectors of the economy. This is clear in the economic policy fights of the 1990s. Much of the contest is a struggle for commercial-sector advantage that pits old-style politician-businessmen against the “informal sector” commercial interests that have been gathering force in Senegal since the 1970s. These changes seem to have less to do with the emergence of “indigenous capitalism” than with diminution of the regime's ability to constrain and canalize the development of indigenous commercial interests.
This paper traces these developments, grounding the analysis of the 1990s in a detailed empirical study of UNACOIS, a sometimes-militant business association that emerged in Dakar in 1990 to represent the Senegalese “informal sector.”
The campaign and eventual abolition of the African slave was momentous on several levels, not least for its impact on the global economy. In Africa itself, it brought about constant conflict. This article traces the ambiguities of the anti-slavery struggle on the part of the colonial powers, with a main emphasis on French colonies. It then proceeds to explore the legacies of slavery in several of these societies before reaching some broader conclusions about the contemporary discourse of legitimacy and memory.
L'emprisonnement, sanction pénale étrangère aux coutumes des détenus africains, fut en soi un facteur de dégradation sanitaire dans la population carcérale sénégalaise. Mais l'état de délabrement des lieux de détention, insalubres et mal aérés, la densité de l'occupation et l'exiguïté qui en résultait, le régime alimentaire insuffisant et le manque d'hygiène corporelle conduisirent à une surmortalité importante. Les autorités coloniales ne furent pas outre mesure préoccupées par cet état de fait, et les contraintes budgétaires auxquelles elles furent confrontées ne permirent pas que soient mobilisés en nombre suffisants personnels soignants et équipements matériels. La santé générale des détenus dans les prisons coloniales s'en ressentit gravement tandis qu'étaient surtout privilégiées les mesures liées à la sécurité.
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