Global Africa

Jub, Jubal, Jubanti: a call for decolonizing Senegalese administration

Mame-Penda Ba — 2024-10-07

No Abstract

Decoloniality or Innovation: Two New Perspectives on African Administrations

Mahaman Tidjani Alou — 2024-10-07

No Abstract

Spurring the Fight against Corrupt Practices through the Digitalization of Public Administration in Africa

Charly Tsala Ondobo — 2024-10-07

This paper provides new empirical evidence that show that the digitalization of public administration can be a great anti-corruption measure in developing countries. Using a cross-section analysis based on 51 African countries from 2003 to 2020 and a System Generalized Method of Moment’s estimation, we find that the digitalization of public administration spurs the fight against corrupt practices in Africa. These results are strong to a battery of robustness checks. Moreover, the results of the mediation analysis show that the effect of the digitalization of public administration on corruption is mediated by education and citizen participation. From a pure policy perspective, we suggest that automation of tasks, combined with investments in telecommunications to increase internet use and technological penetration, as well as in education, and institutional practice of democracy, could enable African states to spur the fight against corruption through the digitalization of their public administration.

Reforming healthcare systems from “the bottom up”

Jean-Francois Caremel — 2024-10-07

Despite improvements in some of its indicators, Niger’s healthcare system remains fragile and is largely characterized by “unwelcoming medical practices”. This is partly due to the fact that intervention schemes, protocols, and most health policies aimed at reforming healthcare systems are largely driven and funded by international aid actors and struggle to take into account the real-life contexts and day-to-day operations of health services. However, despite precarious working conditions in which they operate, some facilities offer better quality care. These facilities share the commonality of being led by “local reformers.” Invisible, hardly known, poorly promoted, and insufficiently encouraged, they invent solutions adapted to the daily problems of public healthcare services with the means at their disposal. Drawing on ethnographic data, this article offers an analysis of the solutions and innovation systems they propose. By revisiting the experience of operational research, we invite exploration of avenues to support this “bottom-up” approach to healthcare system reform, which can be an alternative, or at the very least, an essential complementary approach to contemporary strategies for improving healthcare.

The Commune of Sirakorola, a Laboratory for Local Innovation

Mahamadou Diawara — 2024-10-07

The commune of Sirakorola is located halfway between Koulikoro and Banamba, on national road no. 27, 110 km from Bamako. The village of Sirakorola was initially the chief town of a district, before becoming the chief town of a commune with the advent of decentralization. Souleymane Coulibaly has been mayor since 2004. Born in 1967 in Sirakorola, he entered school in 1975 and attended up to 9th grade. He left school without a diploma at the age of 17. In 1991, he joined the Adema party, under whose banner he was elected local councilor in the 1999 elections and became first deputy to the elected mayor. This work is based on a series of studies carried out in the commune in 2006 and 20121. The first diagnostic studies showed a commune facing acute political problems, with a mayor’s office blocked by factional struggles. As for the mayor, he was virtually without authority. In 2012, we found a relatively peaceful village. And the management of public services had improved considerably. In the meantime, he and his council have succeeded in turning the town hall into a space for meetings, exchanges and debates, and in changing people’s perception of the town hall by using popular representations and semiologies. Thanks to their work, the town hall has become a new “vestibule” alongside the village vestibules. The mayor’s role in implementing the many innovations was eminent. A great political entrepreneur, he also proved to be an entrepreneur in the Schumpeterian sense of the term, i.e. a bearer of new ideas who breaks out of routines to seize opportunities arising from circumstances that can produce new situations. He is an entrepreneur-innovator with a flair for anticipation, who knows how to realistically exploit potential opportunities. Thanks to his personal commitment and sense of collaboration, he was able to put in place “new combinations of factors” to defuse the difficult situations he was confronted with, and to convince external partners to accompany him on his journey. However, the question is whether, from the outset, the partnership between the two parties was not based on a misunderstanding. A misunderstanding that would prove productive in the sense that it satisfied everyone without being the one prescribed or proclaimed. Whereas for the partners, the aim of setting up the various awareness-raising and mobilization procedures was to achieve greater transparency and accountability in the management of the commune, for the mayor, their interest was to encourage his fellow citizens to become more committed and more involved, and above all, to contribute more to tax collection. The question is, what motivates the mayor to devote so much time and energy to his commune, always striving to innovate?

“It is our Ubuntu philosophy, deeply rooted in us, that keeps us going today”

Rigobert Minani Bihuzo — 2024-10-07

No Abstract

Local initiatives and digitization of epidemic disease surveillance system

Hamidou Sanou — 2024-10-07

Disease surveillance is one of the areas where digital health is increasingly being applied, particularly in low-income countries. In Burkina Faso (BF), the liberalization of the telecommunications sector since 1996 has provided an opportunity for the adoption of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) in the health sector. In 2004, the Ministry of Health and Public Hygiene (MSHP) adopted an e- health policy aimed at covering 95% of health facilities with ICT solutions by 2020. This article paid particular attention to the innovations emerging in the disease surveillance and response system (SIMR) in the face of the state’s inadequate integration of ICTs into the healthcare system. More specifically, we will focus on innovations taking place in health and social promotion centers (CSPS). The study was conducted in Dandé health district in the south-western part of BF. Based on qualitative methods, data were collected through semi- structured interviews with head nurses (ICP) (n=11), Expanded Program on Immunization (EPI) managers (n=10), CISSE members (n=2) and Community-Based Health Workers (CBHWs) (n=15), as well as through observations of ICTs uses. Content qualitative analysis was performed by using concepts of tinkering and bricolage to discussing our results. With the advent of the wireless telephone, the government has tried to build a digital infrastructure, equipping the CSPSs with MoovAfrica (ex-Telmob) telephone chips and a prepaid “fleet” communication system of 5000 FCFA/ month for the collection and transfer of epidemiological data called The Telegram Official Weekly Letter (TLOH). The results showed that the use of this “TLOH fleet” digital device encounters difficulties linked to the MoovAfrica telephone network signal, which is not fluid, specifically in rural localities. Other difficulties lie in the fact that the standard model of telephone acquired by the CSPSs does not have the functionalities to enable How to cite this paper: them to adapt to the challenges of call saturation on the CISSE fleet number. As the fleet is designed for telephone calls only, it is impossible, for example, for health workers to send SMS messages or use the Internet or WhatsApp. To overcome such challenges, the majority of ICPs use their personal phones to send SMS or call CISSE’s personal number(s). As these personal numbers are not registered in the fleet system, ICPs are obliged to bear the cost of calls and SMS messages. In the age of digital convergence, health workers’ strategies for adapting to the new environment involve the use of smartphones and personal megadata. WhatsApp has thus become a palliative to the problem of queuing and the telephone network. Since data is sent every Monday morning until 10 a.m., ICPs prefer to use their own megadata to transfer TLOH via WhatsApp from Sunday evening onwards. Our results also show that, in addition to TLOHs, patient follow-up sheets and investigation sheets are now dematerialized via this WhatsApp application. Several WhatsApp groups (TLOH DS DANDE, INFO_CISSE DS DANDE, for example) and the CISSE manager’s personal WhatsApp account are used as channels for sending data in the form of manuscript photos, Excel or Word files. All in all, our results show the extent to which state efforts are negligible in the implementation of the “e-health” policy, and thus call the attention of health authorities to the need to build a reliable public digital infrastructure that takes into account the environmental challenges of rural localities.

The making of Bottomup Innovations in Urban Water Services in Precarious Neighborhoods of Ouagadougou

Mairama Tamboura — 2024-10-07

Research into the supply of drinking water in urban areas in the Global South has focused on inequalities of access in precarious neighborhoods. The explanatory factors put forward refer to the technical deficiencies of the centralized water network (leakage rate, continuity of service, lack of financial and human resources to maintain infrastructures, etc.) as well as to what is considered to be poor governance. Faced with the limitations of the conventional model, local innovations, initiated by various types of stakeholders (individuals, groups), have emerged outside of the centralized network, hence the term “off-grid”. Long regarded as transitory, do-it- yourself solutions, they are now attracting particular attention and questioning the relevance of the single centralized network model that has been promoted internationally. To what extent can we speak of innovations? While the emphasis is once again put on technical aspects (mini-networks, adaptability of infrastructures to the structure of precarious neighborhoods, etc.) and decentralized modes of governance (proximity, delegation to local operators or associations, pricing adapted to the context, etc.), there are few works that question local dynamics, particularly bottom-up innovations, beyond these technical and regulatory dimensions. In order to present these dynamics of change from a different angle, we have analyzed innovatives experiences in the precarious neighborhoods of Goundrin and Boassa in Ouagadougou (Burkina Faso), based on qualitative surveys and case studies. First and foremost, our article identifies the plurality of meanings conferred to the term “innovation” as applied to the drinking water sector, thus highlighting the complexity of the processes involved, and this beyond the technical and governance dimensions. In addition, we discuss the endogenous dimension of these bottom-up innovations, questioning their interactions with donor-funded projects from above concerning access to water in precarious neighborhoods in African cities. Then, we analyze two case studies, the Goundrin and Boassa neighborhoods, to explain the conditions of emergence of these innovations carried out by “contextual experts” from these neighborhoods and motivated by logics of commitment. These are Y.O., an individual informal operator, and the Yaam Solidarité association, which are helping to improve access to water services by setting up residents’ collectives, mini-water networks, day-to-day do-it-yourself projects and different operating methods. While the commitment of these stakeholders is initially based on a logic of action on a local scale, the spread of these innovations generates unforeseen events that can result in a shift from a logic of cooperation and solidarity to one of competition and profitability. Would institutionalization be a guarantee of the preservation of collective action logics with the aim of achieving social and territorial justice? This article makes an original contribution to the literature on the “off-grid”, which has developed strongly in water services studies in recent years.

The Dangerous Reversibility of Women’s Rights: The Case of Female Genital Mutilation in The Gambia

Isatou Touray — 2024-10-07

No Abstract

Rowing against the Tide of Civil Service Negotiations in Cameroon

Idrissou Mounpe Chare — 2024-10-07

Very few studies have focused on “reformers or innovators from within” in
public services in Africa. To contribute to this debate, this article shows that
pockets of integrity, probity and exemplarity do exist. It proposes a case
study of innovation from within in the field of road safety, favoring a socioanthropological approach and highlighting a citizen who can be described as
a “street-level bureaucrat”, i.e. in direct contact with users. This is Pointinini,
a police officer who, through his singularity in road traffic management in
Yaoundé, opposes “the privatization of public services”, thus individually
nurturing the image of his profession and personally challenging the image of
a totally corrupt police force.