This research explores human response to climate change and asks how this interaction may have helped to form the large-scale prehistoric urbanism in the Timbuktu region. New understandings on the nature of prehistoric urbanism on the Niger Bend have been laid out by employing v…
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This dissertation examines the spiritual economy in Nioro du Sahel, an important Islamic religious center in the West African state of Mali, tracing the development of the plurality of Islamic discourses and practices as well as their inscription in broader social, political and…
This dissertation examines the processes of selecting, training, and mentoring managers, also known as "pilots," and considered as change agents in the development of community telecentres in Mali. These processes are analyzed according to their positive and negative outcomes re…
This dissertation focuses on the economics of infrastructure development and public finance. The dissertation is composed of three papers: The first paper analyzes the optimal solutions for supplying electricity to national economies from both domestic as well as distant energy …
SMA (spinal muscular atrophy) is the leading inherited cause of infant mortality, with an estimated incidence of one in 6,000 to 10,000 live births and a carrier frequency of 1/30 to 1/50 in populations of European and Asian ancestry. SMA has been thought of as a pan-ethnic dise…
This dissertation focuses on reactions to the French canon in four Francophone novels. The study examines the use of allusions to, quotations from, and parallels with French canonical works in an effort to determine how these canonical works are mobilized in the creation of a ne…
This research explores the spatial patterning of archaeological surface features at the Jenné-jeno Settlement Complex to gain a better understanding of the settlement organization represented by the nucleated settlement clusters. This involved an intensive surface survey recordi…
The purpose of this study was to develop a model that can allocate water between users of different areas in a large-scale irrigation project. The objective function of such a model consists of maximizing the net benefit of the project, subject to a number of constraints dependi…
This dissertation examines the relationship between ethnicity and fertility in West Africa based on recent data from national demographic surveys and ethnographic information from the region. Although the total fertility rate differs little across ethnic groups in West Africa, t…
Extensive efforts have been made to find operational metrics of food security and its geographical variation in the West African Sahel since the catastrophic famines of the 1970s and 1980s. Food insecurity has been estimated using many different types of data, including satellit…
Marriage in West Africa is almost universal; polygyny, a form of union where a man is married to more than one wife, is widely practiced in Senegal and Mali. Age at first marriage is very early for girls and divorced or widowed women quickly remarry. The first chapter is a study…
This dissertation examines the legal institutions established under French colonial rule in the town of Kayes in the upper Senegal River valley (present-day Mali), between 1880 and 1913. It traces out the process by which these institutions were established and changed over time…
African literature written in French in the 1970s and 1980s is charged with recurring instances of graphic violence: some have argued that the excess of motifs pertaining to violence is detrimental to the narrative's credibility. In my work, I propose to explore the extent of th…
This dissertation examines the dynamics and mediation of modernity in urban West African expressive culture, particularly as engaged by female vocal singing stars in Bamako, Mali of an urban popular music style called Wassolu. Since the 1990s this historically marginalized migra…
Ce memoire presente une lecture mythocritique de Da Monzon de Segou, epopee bambora, serie de recits traditionnels recueillis par Lilyan Kesteloot dans le Mali des annees 60. L'analyse, qui repose sur les elements theoriques proposes par Gilbert Durand et Pierre Brunel, tente de…
Historical fertility studies and recent world demographic surveys have been kind to researchers who view contraceptive adoption as a diffusion mechanism. In the last decade, major theoretical breakthroughs have been achieved in helping us understand how such diffusion may occur;…
Postmodernism and postcolonialism are both offsprings of modernity. To be postmodern does not mean to totally obliterate modernity. In postmodernity, however, the illusions of progress, order, universalism, hegemony, are dissipated. Reason, the very foundation on which modernity…
This thesis presents the research done within the study of lateritics gravel materials used in construction of roads (case of gravel roads in sahel countries). The main objective of this research is to determine the relationship between the physical and mechanical caracteristics…
This thesis analyses how and why the recurrent costs of water services are shared between different actors in the rural local government areas in Mali which are supported by the international NGO WaterAid. This analysis of the financing arrangements for rural water services is u…