Ivory Coast is a divided society. The outsized egos of its presidential candidates were fed by a real social crisis that divided the country into a regional civil war. No one familiar with the country’s unfolding crisis should have been surprised by … Continue reading
At first, West African states, the African Union, the European Union, and the United Nations spoke with one voice, insisting that Ouattara had won the election and that a power-sharing agreement (of the kind that has failed miserably in Kenya … Continue reading
800 people were massacred in Duékoué yesterday. I used to work in Duékoué. It would be any other small, rural town, but it has beautiful rock outcroppings that protrude from the earth like extraterrestrial mushrooms and beckon passersby to climb … Continue reading
I was thinking to myself that awfully few diplomats have been writing about the crisis. But I had missed this IHT piece by John Campbell: the Obama administration has little leverage to get Mr. Gbagbo out quickly. …The administration can … Continue reading
Yesterday I blogged Paul Collier’s proposal that regional powers (and the West?) encourage the Ivoirian Army to remove Gbagbo from power. There were many good comments, plus an excellent post from Wronging Rights. Here are some thoughts after reading the commentary. … Continue reading
After the supine response of southern Africa’s governments to Mugabe, Gbagbo must be astonished by what has hit him That from Paul Collier’s commentary on Cote d’Ivoire in The Guardian. Gbagbo’s initial moves make a lot of sense from a regional … Continue reading
It is a shame that Mike McGovern’s new book on Cote d’Ivoire is not out for a few more weeks. You can pre-order here. Here’s an excerpt of the editorial description: There is no civil war in Côte d’Ivoire. Even though a … Continue reading
The Cote d’Ivoire open thread drew in excellent comments. Some highlights: From Joseph Lake and Random African, a rightful pointer to Jeune Afrique (tweeting at @Jeune_Afrique) for deeper reporting on the Françafrique. Tom Cushman reminds us that other African regimes are watching … Continue reading
For no good reason I feel optimistic about Cote d’Ivoire. Optimism would be impossible if the French or Americans or main West African states had dithered or come down on different sides (remember the US state department’s disastrous handling of the Kenyan … Continue reading
What is the lowdown on this? Is it going to be a sham? Stolen? Orderly? Why or why not? I have not seen thoughtful news coverage or analysis, and despite being adjacent to one of the countries I know best, … Continue reading
Guest post by Jeff Mosenkis of Innovations for Poverty Action Berk Ozler counts the numbers of men vs. women asking questions during a seminar speaker’s talk, and guess how the ratio came out (it’s worth also checking out the discussion … Continue reading
Tired of mapping local-level income by night lighting? Try cell phone minutes. On the left, levels of use in Cote d’Ivoire and on the right, variance (i.e. inequality of use). Based on mobile phone communications and history of airtime credit … Continue reading
Three years ago, randomizing Liberian ex-combatants into a reintegration program sounded like a good idea. The problem wouldn’t be that ex-combatants would angrily resist randomization. Far from it. I’ve never experienced a problem with lottery-based program entry. People are excluded … Continue reading
Looked at over the fifty-year span since the publication of W.W. Rostow’s The Stages of Economic Growth: A Non-Communist Manifesto, development economics as a field looks far more like literary criticism than like those natural sciences it emulates. As we … Continue reading
In the motorcycle taxi market in Sub-Saharan Africa, the relation between the owners and the drivers is characterized by a principal agent problem with the following features: (i) the principal cannot observe the final output of the agent and therefore … Continue reading
1. Thabo Mbeki: “What the world got wrong in Cote d’Ivoire” 2. How to write a grant proposal for industry 3. The economic outlook for Africa 4. “He has no courage, has never climbed out on a limb. He has never … Continue reading
Big news. A beautiful, healthy, perfect baby girl strode into our lives Sunday afternoon with what we hope is uncharacteristic drama. At right are Mom, Dad and Amara on plenty of adrenaline after an unexpected (but otherwise uneventful) C-section, a … Continue reading
Texas in Africa has posted notes from a friend in Abidjan. One begins ominously, “I don’t know about if this will be technically a genocide…” I’m not in the business of predicting events at such uncertain and terrifying moments, but … Continue reading
Readers of this blog know that this author is NOT a big fan of external military intervention as an instrument of a ludicrously broadened concept of “development” that includes resolving civil wars. However, any social scientist can only argue on … Continue reading
1. ICG explains how war might be avoided in Cote d’Ivoire 2. A Uganda IPA position of possible interest to budding evaluation researchers 3. Are the social sciences converging? (I think Marc might change his mind if he attended a … Continue reading