Research questions: This research was focused on exploring the impact of communication technologies on rural populations in the Congo. In particular, this research posed two questions: 1. Do mobile phones produce development in rural areas of the Congo? 2. Do mobile phones improve the living conditions of people? The questions helped examine ways in which mobile phones were or were not engendering development among these populations. Methods: The research was undertaken using four methods: 1. Phenomenology, 2. Sen's capability approach, 3. Participatory method, and 4. Ecological method. Phenomenology aimed to cater to the experiences and meanings of mobile phone uses. Sen's capability approach allowed the interviews to be focused on the basic needs of the poor. Participatory method provided a greater participation of respondents in discussion groups, and ecological method helped achieve a higher inclusion of key players in the targeted area. Major findings: The major findings of this study included: 1. Much of the literature on mobile phones and development was not representative or inclusive of key players and their day-to-day lives. 2. Studies have tended to present snapshots or single-focused accounts of mobile phone and development. 3. Authors of mobile phone research have tended to see rural populations with an urban-led bias, leaving aside the actual characteristics of rural areas. 4. Mobile phones were not limited to a person and her properties, but rather mobile phones were owned and shared by the community. 5. Participants expressed a need for technical skills and means to be available to the community and their members. 6. Households were not separated, but rather they were connected to allow people take care of one another. 7. People were connected through collective solidarities in order to come to the aid of those with special needs. 8. Literature and mobile phone sponsors or companies were disseminating mobile phones with an extractive and commercial tendency, focused principally on fees of batteries, chargers, and prepaid cards. Major contributions: The major contributions of this research revolved around the focus on: 1. technology to enhance the needed technical skills among concerned populations. 2. shared ownership of mobile phones to cater to both users and non-users of mobile phones among concerned populations. 3. connected households to capitalize on the dynamics of family among concerned populations. 4. collective solidarities to accommodate the processes of aiding one another among concerned populations. 5. capabilities, from a commercial or extractive aspect to capabilities to enhance the capabilities of people to afford mobile phones fees. 6. capabilities, from a corporate or business aspect to capabilities to enhance the capabilities of people who did not and could not own a business. 7. human basic needs to enhance the capabilities of mobile phone users with regard to human basic needs. 8. outliers or the marginalized to attend to those left out among concerned populations. 9. mobile phone-centric libraries to enhance the storage and retrieval of needed information among concerned populations.

La présente thèse analyse l’incidence de la concurrence bancaire sur le coût et la qualité du crédit produit par les établissements de crédit. Plus précisément, les investigations empiriques menées dans le cadre de ce travail visent deux objectifs complémentaires. Tout d’abord, évaluer dans quelle mesure le degré de rivalité entre les banques influence la stratégie de tarification des banques et par conséquent le coût de financement des entreprises. Le second objectif de cette thèse consiste à étudier l’impact de la concurrence bancaire sur la manière dont les banques produisent de l’information privée sur leurs clients. Pour cela, nous procédons en deux étapes. En premier lieu, nous examinons l’influence du degré de rivalité entre les banques sur la nature des informations utilisées par les chargés d’affaires dans l’évaluation de la qualité des emprunteurs. En second lieu, nous vérifions l’implication de la concurrence bancaire dans la rupture des relations de long terme. Nous adoptons pour toutes les analyses conduites dans cette thèse une démarche permettant d’exploiter la complémentarité entre différents indicateurs de concurrence utilisés dans la littérature afin d’appréhender au mieux le niveau de rivalité entre les banques. Plusieurs résultats se dégagent des multiples analyses empiriques menées dans le cadre de ce travail. Premièrement, il ressort de nos investigations empiriques que le pouvoir de marché des institutions financières découle de deux sources distinctes: le poids de la banque dans la structure du marché local du crédit et le degré d’efficience de l’établissement de crédit. Par conséquent, l’incidence de la concurrence bancaire dépend de sa capacité à influencer la structure du marché local du crédit ou bien l’efficience des banques. De plus, nous montrons qu’au sein d’un marché bancaire concentré, l’existence de fortes rivalités entre les banques réduit le coût de financement des entreprises si ces dernières disposent d’une relation bancaire principale. Enfin, nous démontrons que la concurrence bancaire accroît la longévité des relations de clientèle et encourage les chargés d’affaires à produire plus d’informations privées sur les emprunteurs. Toutefois, il serait prudent au niveau des banques de suivre l’évolution des comportements des gestionnaires de relations bancaires en matière de production d’informations afin d’adapter les mesures incitatives à mettre en place pour garantir la pérennité de leurs comportements. / This thesis investigates the effect of banking competition on the cost and the quality of lending to firms by financial institutions. Specifically, the empirical analyzes conducted in this thesis aim to reach two complementary objectives. First, assessing the degree to which the rivalry between banks influences their pricing strategy and therefore the cost of corporate financing. The second objective of this thesis is to study the impacts of bank competition on the way banks generate private information about their customers. To this end we proceed in two steps. First, we investigate whether banking competition affects the type of information used by loan officers to assess borrower’s quality. Then, we check the involvement of bank competition in the termination of bank-firm relationships. We consider for all the analyzes conducted in this thesis an approach where the complementarity between different competition indicators used in the literature is exploited in order to better understand the level of rivalry among banks. Several results emerge from the multiple empirical analyzes conducted in this thesis. First, these show that the market power of financial institutions result from two separate sources: the weight of the bank in the local credit market structure, and the level of efficiency of the credit institution. Therefore, the impact of competition between banks depends on the ability of banking competition to influence the local market structure of credit or the efficiency of bank. Moreover, we show that within a concentrated banking market, the existence of strong rivalries between banks reduced the financing cost of firms that had a house bank. Finally, we demonstrate that banking competition increases the duration of bank-firm relationships and encourages loan officers to produce more private information about borrowers. However, it would be safe for banks to monitor the behavior of loan officers regarding their role on information production, in order to design incentives that ensure a sustained effort on their part.