Richard Marcoux

Parental Death and Children’s Schooling in Burkina Faso

Family and demographic investigations of sub-Saharan Africa have become increasingly concerned with the well-being of orphans, as the AIDS pandemic dramatically raises the numbers of orphans in many parts of the continent. Recent Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) show that the highest levels of orphanhood in Africa now occur in Uganda, Malawi, Mozambique, Zambia, and Zimbabwe, all located in eastern or southern Africa, the most afflicted areas of the continent in terms of HIV. Indeed, most of the current literature on the orphan topic is devoted to these countries. Far less is known about the living conditions of orphans in other parts of the continent, including Sahelian countries such as Burkina Faso. Notwithstanding the lower prevalence of HIV in these countries, they are characterized by high levels of adult mortality. The general decline in Africa’s living standards—impoverishment—is another reason to take a particular interest in the situation of orphans. We agree with York Bradshaw and his colleagues, who wrote that “directly or indirectly, foreign debt and structural adjustment influence mortality, economic growth, immunization, health care, urbanization, and nutrition.” Children’s educational outcomes are equally affected, we would add. Where resources become less available and household choices more constrained, what happens to the schooling of orphans, the most vulnerable of children? Facing many development challenges, Burkina Faso is one of the poorest

Orphans in Three Sahelian Countries: Exploratory Analyses from Census Data.

Important investments in Africa have reduced slightly the levels child mortality but life expectancy still very low. The number of children without surviving biological parents is increasing and orphans are becoming an important social problem. Because Sahelian societies are mostly patriarchal, becoming fatherless or motherless will have different effects on the well being of the child. This paper examines the levels and trends of the survival status of the parents and then, living arrangements of orphans. We describe characteristics of these children with a special focus on education and economic activities. The paper uses the censuses from Chad, Niger and Senegal made available by the African Census Analysis Project (ACAP) held at University of Pennsylvania. These countries collected information on survival status of each biological parent to estimate adult mortality but the potential of this information for research on child well-being is rarely exploited.

Propriétaires ou hébergés? A Propos des difficultés a saisir le statut résidentiel à Bamako

AbstractThis article highlights the complexities surrounding residential status in Bamako—especially that of landlords. An examination of cultural, legal, religious, and land tenure dimensions of residential status allows us to understand better the nature of property in this large city, the capital of Mali. Through comparison of quantitative and qualitative information collected in the course of diverse surveys, the article identifies shortfalls in the methodologies used to produce each type of data. At the same time, the article cites concrete examples which illustrate the ambiguities associated with certain types of residential status.

De la conception néo-malthusienne du « discours de Dakar » de Sarkozy. Note de recherche

En 2007, dans une allocution presentee au Senegal, le President francais Nicolas Sarkozy declarait: « la reali-te de l’Afrique, c’est une demographie trop forte pour une croissance economique trop faible ». En une seule phrase, il resumait ainsi une idee centrale d’une doctrine de population, d’abord formulee par Malthus mais surtout relayee par les neomalthusiens depuis plus de deux siecles. Une analyse de contenu de ce discours re-vele egalement d’autres elements de convergence avec la doctrine neo-malthusienne. Ce qu’il est convenu de nommer maintenant «le discours de Dakar» a fait l’objet d’une masse importante de critiques differentes de la part de plusieurs chercheurs et intellectuels et que l’on peut retrouver dans quelques ouvrages cles publies. A notre connaissance toutefois ce discours n’a jamais ete examine sous le prisme d’une doctrine de popula-tion ; une lacune que nous tenterons en partie de combler avec le present article.

Africa and the francophonie of tomorrow: An attempt to measure the population of the Francophonie from now to 2060

Habib Bourgiba, Hamani Diori and Leopold Sedar Senghor are considered the fathers of the Organisation Internationale de la Francophonie (OIF), an international community created in the early 1960s that currently unites more than thirty countries where the French language is given a major role in public life, education, the arts, law, the media, etc. Some present the OIF as a neo-colonial organization, while others think of it as protecting the world’s cultural diversity in the face of globalization. Regardless, this assembly of countries around the world has played and should continue to play a significant role in international politics. However, the configurational changes this Francophone community has experienced since its inception in the 1960s are nothing compared with those we predict for the next 50 years. In fact, the most recent demographic trends outlined in the United Nations’ latest population projections are leading to a major reconfiguration of the demographic weight of the countries of the world, particularly in Africa. In this context, we were interested to try a forward-looking exercise based on these most recent projections from the UN that could allow us to define the Francophonie of tomorrow by exploring the evolution of Africa’s demographic weight. In the coming decades, what will be the size and the geographic distribution of the Francophone population? How has Africa’s demographic weight in the espace francophone evolved? And how will it evolve in the future? In this article, we try to better define the demographic outline of tomorrow’s Francophonie by drawing on different definitions of the espace francophone, while highlighting some of the political and social issues of this forward-looking exercise for the Francophone community in general, and for Africa in particular.