La compréhension des déterminants de la consommation alimentaire et de la situation nutritionnelle des populations est au coeur des enjeux d’amélioration des dispositifs publics d’appui à la sécurité alimentaire et de lutte contre la pauvreté dans les pays en développement. Les crises alimentaires récentes au Sahel et dans de nombreux pays à faible revenu suite à la flambée des prix des denrées alimentaire de base ont mis en évidence les problèmes d’accessibilité des populations pauvres. Les difficultés d’accès à l’alimentation, la pauvreté alimentaire, sont en général associées à la pauvreté monétaire. Pourtant, dans certaines régions, on observe des taux élevés de malnutrition malgré la croissance des revenus. La thèse vise à mieux comprendre la relation entre les revenus et la consommation alimentaire des ménages dans la problématique de sécurité alimentaire des pays du Sud. En complément des outils standards de l’analyse microéconomique de la demande, notamment les fonctions d’Engel, des méthodes empiriques sont mises en oeuvre pour prendre en compte les perspectives qualitatives offertes par les cadres d’analyse de l’accès à la nourriture et des fonctionnements de Sen et des livelihoods. Les analyses statistiques et économétriques sont menées sur le cas du Mali à partir des données de l’enquête nationale budget-consommation des ménages de 2001 qui a porté une attention particulière au volet consommation. Les résultats montrent que, globalement, l’accroissement des dépenses totales (considérées comme proxy des revenus) améliore quantitativement (calories) et qualitativement (diversité) la consommation alimentaire. Mais la comparaison des niveaux de vie des ménages mesurés en termes de pauvreté monétaire et de satisfaction des besoins caloriques révèle des cas inattendus : celui des ménages non pauvres monétaires qui ont une consommation calorique insuffisante et, à l’opposé, celui des ménages pauvres monétaires qui ont une consommation calorique suffisante. L’existence de ces cas, qui ont un poids relatif important dans l’échantillon des ménages maliens, s’explique notamment par les choix de répartition budgétaire et de composition du panier alimentaire au sein des ménages. Elle met en évidence que l’indicateur monétaire traditionnel de la pauvreté n’est pas un indicateursuffisant de la satisfaction des besoins nutritionnels. / Understanding people's food consumption and malnutrition determinants is the main issue for the improvement of public food security and poverty alleviation policies in the developing countries. The recent food crisis in the Sahel and many other low income countries which followed commodities prices increase highlighted the access problem of poor people. Food access problem and food poverty are mostly related to monetary poverty. Yet in some regions, high malnutrition rates are observed despite the income raise. The objective of the thesis is to better understand the households' income – food consumption relationship within the framework of food security in Southern countries.In addition to the standard tools of the microeconomic demand analysis, especially Engel functions, we developed empirical methods to take into account the qualitative perspectives given by the food entitlements and functionings approaches of Sen and the livelihoods approach. The statistical and econometrical analysis draws upon the data of a Malian national survey of 2001 on households' living standards, which paid a particular attention to the food consumption section.The results show that, on the whole, an increase of total expenditures (taken as a proxy of income) raise food consumption quantitatively (calories) and qualitatively (diet diversity). However, living standards comparisons in terms of monetary poverty and calorie needs coverage reveal unexpected cases : monetary non poor households with insufficient calorie intake and monetary poor ones with sufficient calorie intake. The existence of theses cases which represent a relatively important proportion of the survey's sample is explained by the choices of budget allocation and the composition of households' food basket. It underlines that the traditional monetary indicator of poverty is not a suitable indicator of food needs satisfaction.

L’étude des usages et pratiques informationnels des usagers en démarche de recherche d’information est un axe majeur de la recherche en sciences de l’information et de la communication, à en juger par les travaux consacrés à cette problématique et disponibles sur Internet. Si les pays du Nord ont une tradition bien ancrée en la matière, au Sud, par contre, et plus précisément dans les pays francophones d’Afrique au sud du Sahara, peu d’études ont été consacrées à cette thématique. Au Mali, les références de travaux de thèses sur ce sujet sont quasi-inexistantes.La présente étude se place dans ce contexte thématique et géographique, et vise comme public cible les doctorants de l’Université de Bamako. Il s’agira d’abord de définir une typologie de cette communauté d’utilisateurs de l’information (spécialisation, écoles doctorales et laboratoires d’attache, thématique de recherche, etc.), puis d’évaluer ses besoins et pratiques informationnels et enfin d’identifier l’existence de difficultés éventuelles d’accès à l’information et de proposer des pistes de solutions. Pour la collecte de données une enquête réalisée auprès de doctorants et l’observation de leurs comportements en situation de recherche d’information seront privilégiées. Les résultats de l’étude permettront une meilleure connaissance des besoins et pratiques informationnels de la communauté des doctorants de l’université de Bamako et pourraient être utilisés par les unités d’information en vue d’améliorer l’offre de services d’information à leur intention. / The study uses and informational practices of users in information retrieval process is a major focus of research in Information and Communication Sciences, judging by the work on this issue and on the Internet. If the North has a strong tradition in this area, to the south by cons, specifically in Francophone countries of Africa in south of the Sahara, few studies have been devoted to this theme.In Mali, the thesis work of reference on this subject is almost non-existent.This study falls within this thematic and geographical context and aims as public target doctoral students from the University of Bamako. This will be first to define a typology of this information users community (specialization, doctoral schools and laboratories attachment, thematic research, etc.) and then evaluate its information needs and practices finally, to identify the existence of possible access to information problems and propose possible solutions. For data collection a survey of doctoral students and observing their behavior information search situation will be favored. The results of the study will enable a better understanding of community needs and the informational practices of doctoral students from the University of Bamako and could be used by the units of information to improve the supply of information services them.

The purpose of this essay is on the one hand to study Sub-Saharan Africa from a comparative perspective to analyze different explanations to democratization and on the other hand to compare the democratization of the most interesting cases found. To fulfil the purpose, the essay is divided into a quantitative and a qualitative part. The quantitative part starts from four different theories of democratization and thus has a deductive theory testing approach. We intend to use four theories: the modernization theory, the theory of stable institutions as a prerequisite for democratization, political culture and ethnic diversity as an obstacle for democratization, to test how they correspond with the democratic situation in Africa, and at the same time find deviant cases. The second part of the study takes its start from an inductive perspective and examines institutions and citizens of the deviant cases. We have found that the stable institutions indicator and the socioeconomic indicators are the ones out of our indicators that best can explain democratization in Sub-Saharan Africa. The quantitative study also reveals two cases that are democracies although they do not follow the general patterns of democratization. Our research concludes that the most striking resemblance between our deviant cases, Benin and Mali, is that they have both developed stable institutions. This could be one reason why they have managed to democratize despite their harsh conditions.

The diploma thesis is focused on French neocolonialism towards its former African colonies. French neocolonialism is analysed from 1960 so called Year of Africa until nowadays. There are two case studies concerning recent French military interventions in Mali and Central Africa. The objective of this diploma thesis is to analyse French foreign approach towards the defined territory on the bases of specialized bibliography and primary resources, and to answer the question asked by the author of this diploma thesis in the Introduction of this piece and to reach the evaluation. The diploma thesis is structured into three parts. In the Introduction, there is a short summary of the topic and there is also the hypothesis stating that the French foreign policy towards its former African colonies shows characteristics of neocolonialism. The first chapter defines the basic terms such as colonialism, decolonisation and foreign policy. There is also a detailed description of terms necolonialism and postcolonialism. The second chapter analyses French actions in sub-Saharan Africa from 1960 till nowadays from the political, economic, cultural and military point of view. A special part of this chapter is a period from 1990 till our days. The third chapter is made of two case studies: military interventions in Mali and Central Africa that shows the neocolonial approach appearing in the French foreign policy towards sub-Saharan Africa. A part of this chapter is also a synthesis of both interventions. The conclusion of diploma thesis sums up all the knowledge gained thanks to the studying of specialized bibliography and it confirms the hypothesis set in the Introduction of this work.

Using the example of three commodities and three countries, the purpose of the thesis "Trade with selected commodities with focus on fair trade" is to analyse a chosen commodity market in different states. Focusing on developing countries, the work aims to confirm the validity of theoretical models of the international trade. Moreover, extra attention is paid to the alternative concept of fair trade. The thesis is divided into four chapters with the first giving the theoretical basis for the consequential analysis. The second chapter deals with the fair trade movement, the third part examines the concrete industry in the particular country, and the last chapter studies the consequences of fair trade on producers in the Sub-Saharan region.

United nations peacekeeping is a contentious issue. What is mostly agreed on though, is thatthe brave men and women around the world risking their lives in peacekeeping missions around the world deserve the best security and protection the international community can offer. However, little research has been focused on the reasons behind violence against peacekeepers. This thesis theorizes that the presence of a third-party military operation that threatens theoperational capabilities of rebel groups has the potential to cause an increase in rebel violenceagainst a United Nations Peacekeeping operation in the same conflict. Through examiningconflict dynamics in the cases of Mali and the Central African Republic utilizing of astructured, focused comparison, the hypothesized relationship and causal explanations wereput to the test. The expectation was that in Mali, the high levels of violence would be explainedby the effectiveness of the French counterinsurgency operation in the country. In the CentralAfrican Republic, the contrary was expected. However, the hypothesis could not be confirmed. Due to some rather large caveats and limitations, the research gap could not be satisfied. Nonetheless, the study creates plenty for avenues of future research, and opportunities to learnfrom the challenges encountered.

Heart and Minds concept is one of the most overlooked approaches of the counterinsurgency. This is surprising especially because the classic coercive strategies are struggling with producing sufficient outcomes. In fact it is quite the opposite in practice and they fail to supress the insurgency ultimately. Hearts and Minds strategy is based on assumption that if the government is able to gain public support the insurgents will lose vital resource for their fight and they will collapse eventually. In this thesis I am going to explore the potential the Hearts and Minds strategy has and demonstrate its strengths and weaknesses. There are five cases of insurgency to be examined in which the Hearts and Minds has been used successfully or unsuccessfully. The first case is the Emergency in British Malaya. Gerard Templer is considered as an author of the Hearts and Minds phrase, therefore his administration of Malaya should be examined I believe. Second case is the FARC insurgency in Colombia. Third case is the Zapatistas movement in Mexico. Fourth case is the US invasion into Iraq in 2003. Last case is the 2012 Tuaregs uprising in Mali and subsequent development. It is clear from the findings that Hearts and minds has its place among the COIN approaches. Even though it is not best suited for all...

This diploma thesis deals with the topic of Early Warning Systems (EWS), a key part of conflict prevention. It applies a model of quantitative analysis of international media outputs on the case of the Mali insurgency in January 2012. As an EWS tool, it analyzes international media represented by the major global press agencies. The main goal of the thesis is to answer the following research question: Did the international media manage to anticipate the outbreak of the conflict in Mali? The answer should also show whether international media can detect growing tensions leading to a conflict and therefore whether they could be used as an EWS tool. The application of the model should, observing the period from August 2011 to the beginning of the insurgency on January 17, 2012, prove whether the conflict could have been anticipated. In order to contextualize the model, structural factors of instability were identified in the discussion of the dynamics of the conflict that has been repeating itself for dozens of years. A discourse analysis of international media during the observed period was also presented on the background of the securitization theory of the Copenhagen school of security studies. The discourse analysis and the quantitative EWS model have both shown that international media have not...

In this thesis, I explore everyday militarisation in UN peace operations by studying how Sweden's s 'peace nation' narrative is possibly militarised by participating in the robust peacekeeping operation in Mali. The aim is to increase understanding around how militarisation occurs in modern peace operations, domains that are meant to be peaceful but are becoming increasingly war-like. The Swedish narrative is generated through interviews with Swedish peacekeepers that have previously been deployed to Mali and through readings of the Swedish Armed Forces blog Malibloggen. The material is analysed through a narrative analysis inspired by Mieke Bal (2009). I find that the Swedish narrative is partly militarised during participation in the mission, as it can be argued that Sweden arranged its sense of belonging around military values and chose military modes of conflict resolution over civilian to some extent. The soldiers were also cognitively preparing for war and military measures were partially normalised. This result illustrates that when countries that regard themselves as 'peace nations' take part in militarised UN PSOs, their narrative can become militarised to some extent as they arrange their sense of belonging around values of war and military force. This, in turn, has implications for the spread of militarisation across the globe, potentially leading to a lower threshold of war.

Africa is the continent having the most coups d'état. From 2020 to 2022, there were six coups and three coup attempts on the continent. This study aims to investigate the causes of these coups d'état in Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, and Guinea, four former French colonies in West Africa. A new theoretical framework has been developed to investigate this pattern. Indicators of political instability and economic factors are taken from earlier theories, but additional external impact and climate change factors have been incorporated. The method applied in this study is a comparative case study with few cases, combining theory testing, theory building, and theory consuming. The findings indicate that while GDP per capita has improved, it is still unequally distributed among the populace, with high unemployment among the young often leading to migration in search of opportunities. About a year prior to every coup, there has been an increase in political violence. In all four of the cases under investigation, climate change factors such as climate migration and violence resulting from scarcity are present along with disinformation campaigns by Russia, a strong anti-French sentiment, and public discontent with the way the government operates. Both economic factors and climate change factors are found to be closely connected to governance deficits.