This research assessed the value chain of gum and resins, which are available in four woreda in the southern lowlands of Ethiopia. They are Moyale Somali, Moyale Oromia, Dhas and Dire woreda. The output of this research is the elaboration of three value chains. The first is a general one for all the woreda, while the other two concern the Moyale and Dubluk markets. The assessed products are the gum arabic from Acacia trees and the resin exuded by the dunkhal tree - Boswellia family. The aim of this study was not only to understand the way in which resins and gum gain value through the chain and the profit each stakeholder gains, but more importantly how pastoralists use resin and gum collection to diversify their income. The first chapter analyses what it means to be a pastoralist in the Moyale area and its challenges. The second chapter describes how the policies of the central state influenced the pastoral access to rangelands and water and the way in which this contributed to the increase of conflict among the different groups. A particular focus is on the settlement. The third chapter describes the different ethnic groups living in the studied area and their management system to preserve resources and cope with the dry season. This chapter considers the dynamic evolution of the relations among the various groups in terms of negotiating access to resources while facing political and climatic challenges. The fourth chapter illustrates the physical context and the environment, and the way in which it has been managed in order to preserve the pastoral lifestyle. The fifth chapter describes the characteristics of gum and resins in the studied area. Finally, the sixth chapter describes how the value chain methodology was applied in this specific study and its outputs.

A 30 anni dalla Dichiarazione di Alma Ata, l'Organizzazione Mondiale della Sanità, sia nei lavori della Commissione sui Determinanti Sociali della Salute che nel corso della sua 62^ Assemblea (2009) ha posto nuovamente la sua attenzione al tema dei determinanti sociali della salute e allo sviluppo di una sanità secondo un approccio "Primary Health Care", in cui la partecipazione ai processi decisionali è uno dei fattori che possono incidere sull'equità in salute tra e nelle nazioni. Dopo una presentazione dei principali elementi e concetti teorici di riferimento della tesi: Determinanti Sociali della Salute, partecipazione ed empowerment partecipativo (Cap. 1 e 2), il lavoro di tesi, a seguito dell'attività di ricerca di campo svolta in Zambia (Lusaka, Kitwe e Ndola) e presso EuropeAid (Bruxelles), si concentra sui processi di sviluppo e riforma del settore sanitario (Cap. 3), sulle politiche di cooperazione internazionale (Cap.4) e sull'azione (spesso sperimentale) della società civile in Zambia, considerando (Cap. 5): le principali criticità e limiti della/alla partecipazione, la presenza di strumenti e strategie specifiche di empowerment partecipativo, le politiche di decentramento e accountability, le buone prassi e proposte emergenti dalla società civile, le linee e i ruoli assunti dai donatori internazionali e dal Governo dello Zambia. Con questa tesi di dottorato si è voluto evidenziare e interpretare sia il dibattito recente rispetto alla partecipazione nel settore sanitario che i diversi e contraddittori gradi di attenzione alla partecipazione delle politiche di sviluppo del settore sanitario e l'emergere delle istanze e pratiche della società civile. Tutto questo incide su spazi e forme di partecipazione alla governance e ai processi decisionali nel settore sanitario, che influenzano a loro volta le politiche e condizioni di equità in salute. La metodologia adottata è stata di tipo qualitativo articolata in osservazione, interviste, analisi bibliografica e documentale. / 30 years after the Declaration of Alma Ata, the World Health Organization has given the attention on social determinants of health and on the development of healthcare according to “Primary Health Care” approach, both during working session of the Commission about Social Determinants of Health and during its 62nd Meeting (2009), where the participation to decisional process is an aspect that can affect the equity of health among and within nations. Starting from this framework the thesis, after a presentation of principal elements and theoretical concept - Social Determinants of Health, participation and participatory empowerment (Chapt. 1 and 2) -, focuses on: development and reform processes of health care service (Chapt. 3); international cooperation politics (Chapt. 4) and action (often experimental) of civil society in Zambia, considering (Chapt. 5) the main critical issues and limits of participation; the presence of instruments and specific participative empowerment strategies; decentralization and accountability politics; good practice and emerging suggestions from civil society; the broad outlines and functions of international donors and the Government of Zambia. This doctoral thesis aims at highlighting and interpreting both the recent debate regarding participation in health sector and different and contradictory level of attention to participation in development politics of health sector and the emerging of issues and practices of civil society. All this affects spaces and participation forms of governance and also decisional processes in health sector, which influence politics and health equity conditions themselves. The thesis has benefited from some periods of fieldwork carried out in Zambia (Lusaka, Kitwe and Ndola, in the Copperbelt region) besides to a research period EuropeAid Offices in Brussels. The methodology used has been articulated in observation, interviews, bibliographic and documents analysis.

L'obiettivo di questa tesi di dottorato è quello di individuare alcune tematiche che permettano la comprensione, anche e soprattutto dall'interno, di un processo storico, politico, economico e socio-culturale che ha fortemente caratterizzato e condizionato la sponda sud del Mediterraneo e, in particolare la Tunisia. I fili conduttori della ricerca sono lo studio del sistema-Paese Tunisia, della sua storia dall'indipendenza fino ai nostri giorni, del funzionamento delle istituzioni politiche, della complessa relazione tra etnie, religione, partiti politici e poteri istituzionali, delle relazioni internazionali e dell'economia. Ampio spazio viene assegnato all'analisi del ruolo della donna in Tunisia alla luce del Code du Statut Personnel, che ne regolamenta la posizione e le funzioni nella società tunisina. Infine, viene affrontato il tema del Partenariato euromediterraneo, con particolare attenzione all'area socio-culturale: quest'ultima fa sì che la Tunisia si ponga oggi tra i Paesi Terzi Mediterranei maggiormente all'avanguardia nella cooperazione. / The objective of this thesis of doctorate is to characterize some thematics in order to permit the understanding, above all from the inside, of an historical, political, economic and socio-cultural process. This has strongly characterized and conditioned the south side of the Mediterranean and, in particular Tunisia. The threads of the search are the study of the system -Country Tunisia, of its history from independence until our days; of the operation of the political institutions; of the complex relation between ethnic groups, religion, political parties and institutional powers; of the international relations and the economy. Wide space is given to the analysis of the role of the woman in Tunisia to the light of the Code du Statut Personnel. It prescribes the position and the woman's functions in the Tunisian society. Finally, it is faced the topic of the Euromediterranean Partnership, with particular attention to the socio-cultural area. In such a way Tunisia today places between the Mediterranean Thirds Countries mainly to the vanguard in the cooperation.

This doctoral thesis seeks to explore the socio-political economy of antiretroviral treatment (ART) as an HIV prevention strategy in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) and, specifically, in Mozambique. We begin with a look at the social construction of HIV in SSA as a ‘sexually transmitted disease’ despite its very low transmission efficiency through heterosexual sex. This inordinate focus on sexual transmission in SSA to the exclusion of other routes of transmission (i.e.: blood-borne transmission) not only allows new infections to continue to occur in areas that do not receive attention, but also has both fed and been fed by a political and social climate that paints an extraordinarily negative picture of those who are infected with HIV. Alternatives to the ineffective and misguided sexual behavior prevention paradigm are introduced to conclude Chapter 1. Chapter 2 then explores, in depth, the most efficacious form of HIV prevention currently in existence: antiretroviral treatment (ART) for infected persons. ART for an infected partner is 96% effective at preventing transmission of HIV to an uninfected partner. Due to this startlingly high efficacy and recent increases in coverage, we may be preventing more new cases of HIV annually through ART than through the use of condoms and abstinence combined in Mozambique. The financial implications of a paradigmatic shift to explicitly considering ART as a prevention strategy are discussed, particularly as they relate to PEPFAR's very specific regulations for the allocation of funds. As PEPFAR funding constitutes over 95% of Mozambique's HIV-specific funding, these regulations and earmarks have created deep path dependence and whittled away at national and local ownership of policy. The third chapter of this thesis then focuses on Mozambique's severe human resources for health constraints and current efforts in health systems strengthening. These strategies include task shifting and human resources scale-up, issues which, while being general to the health system, are also inordinately important for continued ART scale-up. The fourth and final chapter contains the case study in Maputo, Mozambique. This qualitative study attempts to examine the effects of the sexual behavior prevention paradigm on people living with HIV and receiving ART. As these patients are our best hope for halting the HIV epidemic, it will be important for us to view our decades-old prevention messages from their point of view and understand how these messages may also affect their adherence as well as their willingness to be tested initially and to enroll in treatment. The interviews were carried out with patients, guardians of pediatric patients and clinicians at two health facilities in Maputo. Analysis of these interviews supports the hypothesis that traditional prevention messages found in public health campaigns, the media and in health facilities themselves, may be creating and exacerbating stigma that discourages people living with HIV to be tested and treated.

This PhD dissertation is a collection of four essays focusing on the demand and supply of small business finance in Kenya. The studies are the result of primary research conducted over three years with both demand-side players, more specifically micro and small-scale entrepreneurs operating in a low-income area in Nairobi. And the main suppliers of small businesses finance in Kenya - commercial banks - which provided data on the size, characteristics and evolution of their SME finance portfolio between 2009 and 2013. Since commercial banks are not the only players in the provision of finance to small firms, the dissertation studies the entire financial landscape of both formal and informal financial providers, including institutions such as microfinance institutions, savings groups and moneylenders among others. The dissertation is divided in two parts: the first half of the dissertation analyses the determinants, effects and challenges of access to formal and informal finance by small enterprises in Nairobi (Essays 1 and 2). These two essays use primary data collected through a survey questionnaire with 344 micro and small enterprises in a low income neighbourhood in Nairobi. The analysis describes the financial landscapes in which businesses operate and the effects of access to credit on firm performance (e.g. investments, profitability and employment growth.). The second half of the dissertation analyses the supply-side, more specifically the relation between formal financial sector development and economic growth (Essay 3) and the characteristics and development of bank financing to SMEs (small and medium enterprises) in Kenya (Essay 4). Essay 3 relies on secondary time-series data taken from the World Bank databases, whereas Essay 4 uses original survey data administered to commercial banks in Kenya in two survey rounds in 2012 and 2014. Each essay in this dissertation is a standalone study with its own literature survey, research questions, data and methodological approach. The main findings of the demand-side chapters is that informality has significant effects on access (or exclusion) to bank finance, but is less relevant when we investigate informal financial instruments such as self-help groups and family/friend loans. Essay 2 of the dissertation shows that different types of loans have different effects on the performance of businesses, and that loans from commercial banks seem to incentivize investments and employment creation more than other types of loans. The supply-side chapters on the other hand show that there is a long-term association between financial sector development in Kenya and economic growth, and that there is a reciprocal relation of causality over the long-run. Finally, Essay 4 shows that bank financing to SMEs has grown steadily over the last few years and that banks are increasingly exposed to small businesses in their lending portfolio. However, the financial products to SMEs tend to be unsophisticated and concentrated in few sectors.

Starting from the consideration that gated estates and complexes are increasingly becoming part of the urban, peri-urban and rural landscape of many societies undergoing transformation, the aim of this dissertation is to explore what difference it makes to live in an enclosed space in order to understand not only the choice of living in such environments, but also their spatial, social and political implications and manifestations. This work does so by adopting a relational perspective and by comparing two different neighbourhoods of Johannesburg, South Africa: a newly built gated golf estate (Eagle Canyon) and an old open suburb (Northcliff). In order to develop insights into the ways in which life in a gated community is related to the life outside, an ethnographic study of three years has been carried on in the gated golf estate and in the open suburb. This work argues that gated enclaves, internally organized and managed by specific institutions, not only provide the space in which the "good life" is lead, but most importantly set the standard and the terms of this good life and provide a system of justification for it. Putting in dialogue the two suburbs, this dissertation points out that gated estates provide the sace in which an escalation of belonging takes place. The novelty of the study lies in the discovery that the relationship between Northcliff and Eagle Canyon and then between Eagle Canyon and other gated estates is not simply of one between different urban phenomena but, in addition, is one of political scale. Northcliff is to the City what Eagle Canyon is to the nation. In other words, these respective communities instantiate, symbolically, different scales of political community.

The South Atlantic Ocean and its islands (Saint Helena, Tristan da Cunha, Ascension) were a periphery of the British Empire. Nevertheless this region faced a dramatic transformation during the Global Age of Revolutions (1780-1830) and moved from being a transition zone between Europe and Asia into a proper maritime system. The great global issues of labour (slavery, indentured labour, white emigration), environment (environmental imperialism and imperial environmentalism) and Empire (colonial government, authority and freedom) evolved in the micro-histories of the South Atlantic islands in a very peculiar way, making them precious case-studies to assess wider themes in a new perspective.

Cosmologies of destinations investigates some commonly neglected dimensions of forced migration. It examines the key symbolic structures and social mechanisms which encourage and sustain the mobility trajectories of Eritreans from their home country to Ethiopia, Sudan, Italy and beyond. The central argument is that, in refugee-producing countries which suffer from protracted crisis and livelihood disruption, refugee movements become much more than a form of reactive mobility. Within these communities, becoming a refugee is not only a way to escape oppressive conditions but also the outcome of socially and symbolically embedded strategies aimed at personal realization and family well-being. Building on a multi-sited ethnography of the everyday life of Eritrean refugees in a number of settings (including homes, refugee camps, urban squats, and other settings of sociability) in their home country as well as in Ethiopia, Sudan and Italy, the thesis explores the range of social and economic resources needed to circumvent legal and geographic borders, and the moral and cultural norms that underpin these practices. It contributes to the theorization of refugee mobility, which is currently somewhat underdeveloped, by providing a framework to analyse high-risk forced migration, based on an emic understanding and systematic description of the living conditions, life aspirations and risk perceptions of Eritreans in their home country and in transit to Europe. The study feeds into the broader debate on the blurring boundaries between labour and forced migration by emphasising the social and cultural, along with the structural, determinants of mobility and immobility. The thesis is divided into five chapters. The first analyses the conditions that make exit a widespread and legitimate, albeit controversial, option for young people in Eritrea. The second chapter provides accounts of refugees' everyday lives in the first safe countries (Ethiopia and Sudan), chronicling the dynamics that trigger secondary movements towards Europe. The third analyses the lives of Eritrean refugees in Italy, documenting the conditions that activate further mobility within Europe. The fourth chapter describes the migratory infrastructures that allow for these refugee movements, including the role played by transnational marriages, smugglers and family networks. The final chapter provides a micro-analysis of decision-making, aimed at explaining the willingness of refugees to take great risks at different stages of the migration process. A methodological note narrates how the research was carried out in the various sites and analyses the implications of multi-sited ethnographic fieldwork with refugees.

Since the early 2000s, there has been a sharp increase in speculations that China’s development trajectory may provide a model for other developing countries—particularly those in Africa—to follow, and that this poses a profound challenge to the dominant global development paradigm. A highly-charged media and policy debate has increasingly made its way into the academic literature, with central questions focusing around the lessons that African and developing countries are drawing from China and around the desirability of such emulation. Due to the exploratory and recent nature of this growing literature, however, very few studies have been sufficiently grounded in empirical or theoretical analysis. This dissertation seeks to remedy this situation by examining the ideational influence of China’s development on those ultimately charged with evaluating and implementing these purported ‘models’: developing country elites. Drawing on the theories of cross-societal emulation (Westney 1987) and lesson-drawing (Rose 1991), it finds that elites in two countries cases—Ethiopia and Kenya-indeed seek to emulate countries in East Asia. China, however, is viewed as only one source of potential ‘lessons’, and its elites often embed its experiences within a wider East Asian development trajectory. In both country cases, this emulation challenges many of the assumptions that have driven development since the 1970s. Unlike the Washington Consensus, the development paradigm prompted by this lesson-drawing is historically-contingent and views nation-building by a strong, visionary political leadership as the country’s single most important priority. Because it favours large physical infrastructure projects, rapid economic growth, technologically-optimistic solutions and a civilisatory discourse, its divergence from the more recent ‘Augmented’ Washington Consensus is even more striking. In these and in other central lessons drawn, the development approach it most resembles, in fact, is the modernisation theory of the 1950s and 1960s. Despite the fact that both Kenya and Ethiopia thus possess modernising elites that seek to emulate aspects of the East Asian experience, different dynamics drive the process in each national context. In Ethiopia, a country slowly emerging from a history of communism and isolationism, a strong and ideologically unified ruling party looks to China, South Korea and other countries with a history of strong state intervention. In Kenya, by contrast, a coalition of business leaders, technocrats and planners view Singapore and Malaysia as potential models by virtue of a shared colonial history and divergent post-colonial path. Kenya’s vision, whilst more moderate, is also more constrained due to the relative lack of influence its modernisers wield in the political process. In both cases, historical factors bound and condition elites’ choice of model. The emerging literature on the ‘Chinese Model’ of development deserves credit for beginning to theoretically and empirically substantiate an important current policy debate, but it also vastly underestimates the importance of its predecessors. Given the extent to which Ethiopian and Kenyan elites root their emulation in the region as a whole, the East Asian ‘developmental state’ model is one such fore-runner. Most importantly, however, this emulation illustrates the enduring topicality of many of the assumptions of modernisation theory—assumptions that are likely to play a central role in informing African and even global development paradigms in the future.

La tesi intende analizzare l’idea coloniale in Francia durante la Terza Repubblica, le modalità attraverso cui essa veniva veicolata e gli argomenti con cui l’espansione veniva giustificata. Dopo un’introduzione storica, la ricerca si concentra sulle diverse “voci” che concorsero alla promozione e propaganda coloniale. Vengono analizzati il contributo dei diversi attori – primo fra tutti il “parti colonial” - che parteciparono a sostenere le motivazioni dell’espansione, oltre alle modalità e ai canali utilizzati, in un contesto in cui l’opinione pubblica era restia ad affezionarsi e a comprendere la necessità di un impero. La parte successiva si concentra sui contenuti del discorso di giustificazione e motivazione dell’imperialismo francese, tramite il richiamo di alcuni teorici e politici del periodo e dei principali temi -economici, politici e umanitari (la cd. “mission civilisatrice”) - evocati in tale contesto. L’ultimo capitolo è dedicato in modo particolare alla diffusione della cosiddette “scienze coloniali” e alla creazione, influenzata dall’esigenza di formare i futuri amministratori coloniali, di cattedre o sezioni coloniali negli istituti di studi superiori. E’ possibile in tal modo individuare un collegamento tra diversi gruppi ed entità operanti nel campo politico, economico e scientifico e, attraverso l’analisi degli appunti dei corsi, esaminare in che modo l’idea coloniale fosse trasmessa in tale ambito. / The research aims at analyzing the colonial idea in France during the Third Republic, the different ways it was conveyed and the main themes adopted to justify the colonial expansion. After a first historical overview, the second chapter focuses on the different actors that contributed in promoting the colonies and the colonial propaganda (above all the “parti colonial”), in a context in which the majority of the French citizens seemed not really interested in supporting the colonial empire nor in understanding its needs and methods. Subsequently, the research analyzes the different themes the supporters of the French colonial movement adopted to justify the need of a colonial empire at the economic, political and “humanitarian” levels. The last chapter is focused on the diffusion of the “colonial sciences” and the creation of ad hoc colonial sections or schools aimed at training the future colonial administrators. The analysis highlights the links between the different actors of the political, economic and scientific circles. Also, thanks to the exam of the student’s notes it is possible to see how the colonial idea was conveyed in this field.