Cette thèse s'intéresse au concept d'entrepreneuriat social qui combine un projet économique et une finalité sociale. Durant les premières étapes de développement du projet, les startups sociales sont souvent confrontées à une évolution de leur business model (BM) pour faire face aux contraintes organisationnelles mais également aux menaces et aux opportunités de leur environnement. Notre objectif dans cette recherche est d'identifier les mécanismes qui permettent de concilier l'« économique » et le « social » à travers la problématique suivante : comment garder l'équilibre entre la dimension économique et la dimension sociale du BM de l'entreprise sociale face à son environnement ? Ainsi, nous avons mobilisé une approche mixte (contenu et processus) pour étudier l'évolution du BM des startups sociales. Cela nous a permis de répondre aux questions subsidiaires du « pourquoi » et « comment » ainsi du « quoi » de l'évolution du BM des entreprises sociales. Pour répondre à cette problématique, nous adoptons une approche qualitative par une étude comparative de startups sociales des TIC (technologies de l'information et de la communication) en France et au Sénégal. Les données collectées par entretiens semi-directifs (55 au total) et lors d'évènements (meet-up, conférences, panels, salons, etc.) sont enrichies de données secondaires (sites web, documents internes, rapports, etc.). Ce corpus de données a fait l'objet d'un traitement avec le logiciel Nvivo 11. Les résultats de ce travail de recherche peuvent être déclinés comme suit : D'abord, notre recherche enrichit la littérature de nouveaux facteurs externes et internes qui influencent l'évolution du business model à savoir la levée de fonds, les subventions, l'augmentation de l'impact social et l'autonomie financière. Ensuite, nous avons identifié les éléments du BM qui évoluent avec les phases de développement des startups de même que leurs logiques d'évolution. Puis, notre principale contribution consiste en l'identification des principaux mécanismes qui peuvent permettre de garder un bon équilibre entre la dimension économique et la dimension sociale du BM lorsque ce dernier évolue. Enfin, nos résultats montrent les différences et les similitudes de l'évolution des BM des cas en France et au Sénégal en analysant leur écosystème entrepreneurial. / This thesis focuses on the concept of social entrepreneurship, which combines an economic project and a social purpose. During the early stages of project development, social startups often face challenges in their business model (BM) due to organizational constraints, but also threats and opportunities of their environment. Our goal in this research is to identify the mechanisms that allow to reconcile the 'economic' and 'social' through the following issue: How to keep balance between the economic and the social dimension of social enterprise's BM in the face of its environment? Thus, we have mobilized a mixed approach (content and process) to study the evolution of the BM of social startups. This has allowed us to meet the ancillary issues of the 'why' and 'how' as well as the "what" of the evolution of the BM of social enterprises. To answer our research question, we have adopted a qualitative approach by conducting a comparative study of social startups of ICT (information and communication technologies) in France and Senegal. Fifty five (55) in-depth interviews supplemented with secondary data (websites, internal documents, reports, etc.) was analyzed thanks to the assistance of the software Nvivo 11. As regards our results : first, our research enriches the literature of new internal and external factors that influence the evolution of the BM like fundraising, grants, the increase of the social impact and financial independence. Second, we have identified the elements of the BM that change with the startups development phases, as well as their logical evolution. On the other hand, our main contribution remains on the identification of main mechanisms that can allow to keep a good balance between the economic dimension and the social dimension of the BM when the latter evolves. Finally, our results show the differences and similarities in the evolution of the BM between the Senegal and France thanks to their entrepreneurial ecosystem.

This paper deals with the Deaf community in sub-Saharan Africa, with particular focus on the Republic of Congo, and Senegal. It explores how the humanitarian sector is reaching out to this community, especially regarding Sexual and Reproductive Health. Projects set up by UNFPA Congo and Senegal’s ONG Jeunesse Et Dévelopment, are examined within the framework of communication for development. By researching the nexus between the international organizational world and the deaf community, the plan is to gain understanding through methodological approaches such as semi structured interviews, a focus groups and document analysis including videos, that eventually will provide input that can lead to a more comprehensive and informative communication strategy for this group. As a large part of the Deaf community in the developing world isn’t able to read and write, their fundamental human rights are undermined, this is especially true when it comes to Sexual and Reproductive Health. Research from Kenya and Senegal have shown that people living with disabilities got slightly higher HIV seroprevalence compared to the rest of the population, while a study from Cameroun demonstrates that deaf individuals are three times more likely to contract an STI. Communication for development, behavior change communication, communication for social change as well as media development, got a significant role to play to lead the deaf community towards integration, inclusion and better access to information on Sexual and Reproductive Health. By including the deaf community and let them define their own needs through genuine participation, it is possible to strengthen their rights. Researching the deaf community in the developing world is like studying a micro-cosmos of the entire development debate, as many of the main challenges are present. By empowering the deaf community in Africa, the whole continent is empowered.

During 2020 and 2021, a migration crisis has been developing on the Canary Islands in Spain. Large numbers of African migrants have made the dangerous journey from West Africa to the Canary Islands, risking their lives on the Atlantic Sea. Humanitarian aid organizations, like the Spanish Red Cross, are working intensively to handle the humanitarian needs of the migrants on land and on sea. The purpose of this thesis is to analyze why the migration crisis on the Canary Islands occurs. The migrants originate from different African countries with different reasons why they choose to migrate. In some countries, there are ongoing wars and conflicts, like in Mali. In other countries, people migrate because of poverty, climate change and displacement to seek a better life. This thesis will answer why Senegalese people choose to migrate on this dangerous route on the Atlantic Sea. The study is based on interviews with three Senegalese migrants and two representatives of humanitarian aid organizations. The analysis has been made from different migration theories. It shows that an important reason why the Senegalese migrants choose to migrate is that it is no longer possible to make a living by fishing and provide for their families. This works as an important push factor to migrate. Another push factor is the lack of trust in the Senegalese government. An important pull factor are the success stories from migrants who have made the journey through the Canary Islands. According to the aspiration and capabilities theory, the aspirations to migrate increase when a country goes from being very poor to richer. This is because the knowledge about the surrounding world and the opportunities increase. The study shows that migrants are well aware of the risks when crossing the Atlantic Sea, but they choose the route because there are almost no legal ways for them to migrate.

Cette thèse s’inscrit dans une analyse des dynamiques contemporaines du vieillissement dans les sociétés africaines, particulièrement au Sénégal. Elle propose d’explorer les expériences des « parents » âgés en cours de fragilisation à travers le prisme de la solidarité face au changement social, de saisir les ambivalences relatives, d’une part à leur place au sein de la sphère familiale et sociale, et d’autre part dans les représentations de la vieillesse. Cette recherche déconstruit tout d’abord les représentations de la vieillesse en montrant que les « parents » âgés ne sont pas de « simples assistés », mais des acteurs au sein du réseau familial de solidarité et que « leurs vieillissements » sont pluriels, dynamiques et riches d’inventivité. Ensuite, à partir des enquêtes qualitatives réalisées au Sénégal et de façon complémentaire auprès de migrants sénégalais en France (le Havre), la recherche met en lumière les limites des solidarités familiales dans l’accompagnement social des « parents » âgés et appelle à l’imagination de solutions variées envers les personnes vieillissantes. Enfin, les transformations dans les modalités d’exercice des solidarités familiales envers les personnes âgées invitent à un retournement de regard, sinon de paradigme dominant, dans la façon de penser la vieillesse. Cette thèse est une contribution à la connaissance des expériences multiples du vieillissement. / This thesis is part of an analysis of the contemporary dynamics of aging in African societies, particularly in Senegal. It proposes to explore the experiences of elderly "parents" in the process of becoming fragile through the prism of solidarity in a context of social change, to grasp the relative ambivalences, on the one hand in their place within the family and social sphere, and on the other hand in the representations of aging. This research deconstructs first of all the representation of aging by showing that the elderly parents are not the "simple assisted", but actors within the family solidarity and that "their ageing" are plural, dynamic and rich of inventiveness. Then, from the qualitative surveys carried out in Senegal and in a complementary way with Senegalese migrants living in France (Le Havre), the research highlights the limits of family solidarities in the social accompaniment of elderly "parents" and calls for imagining of varied solutions to ageing people. Finally, the transformations in the family modalities of exercising of solidarities towards the elderly invite to a reversal of glance, if not dominant paradigm, in the way of thinking old age. This thesis is a contribution to the knowledge of the multiple experiences of aging.

Despite the important developments that peacebuilding plays in academia on conflict resolution and management, the field remains unexplored in multiple ways. One of the ways that this can be done is through the involvement of women in a domain that is considered to be relatively less inclusive of marginalized groups. The role women can play in negotiating for conflict resolution is significantly emerging as an important debate in peace research work and studies. Relatively little attention has been paid on the relevance of traditional approaches to conflict resolution particularly on the role that women contribute to using such methods. This impacts in balancing gender representation in peacebuilding processes. This research therefore takes a deeper look into the role of women in peacebuilding using the women groups in Casamance, Senegal as the empirical case study. The main objective of this study is to critically analyze the significant role women play as peacebuilders specifically, highlighting the relevance of traditional knowledge of conflict resolution. Hence, the key research question is to empirically reconstruct the role of women in peacebuilding and analyze how the use of traditional methods of conflict resolution has contributed to peacebuilding in Casamance. In this vein, this study employs a qualitative approach to critically analyze the situation in Casamance using semi-structured in-depth interviews and focus group discussions. This study utilizes the actor network theory (ANT) as the framework for analysis. A core finding of this dissertation reveals a disconnection between the existence of laws and policies on the participation of women in peacebuilding versus recognizing the local practices and initiatives of women groups at the grassroots with regard to implementation. The findings also bring to light the importance of further research in traditional methods of conflict resolution as contributing to peace and security.

Depuis l’avènement en 1963 du régime présidentiel au Sénégal, on observe une concentration extraordinaire des pouvoirs par le président de la République. Les stratégies visant à renforcer la domination présidentielle sur le jeu politique ont ouvert la voie à une présidentialisation du régime qui a placé le titulaire de la charge suprême dans une constante quête hégémonique.Les incidences de cette dernière renseignent sur l’importance et la nature d’un leadership présidentiel qui est devenu le principal moteur du jeu politique sénégalais. Au demeurant, cette quête de domination a des implications, non seulement sur le plan national, mais également sur le plan international.Sur le plan national, les exigences de préservation et de renforcement du pouvoir présidentiel ont fait passer la Constitution au second rang dans la structuration du jeu politique au profit de la présidence de la République. En outre, l’hypercentralisation du pouvoir politique est devenue le mode de gestion érigé en vue de garantir la dépendance des acteurs du jeu politique vis-à-vis du pouvoir présidentiel.Sur le plan international, le leadership présidentiel s’exprime par la politique de puissance qui est menée. Le président sénégalais, conscient de sa légitimité démocratique, cherche à positionner son pays au rang de puissance incontournable sur la scène continentale. Il cherche également à exercer une plus grande influence à travers un leadership moral qui permet de compenser les faiblesses économiques, militaires, etc. du Sénégal par rapport à ses principaux concurrents à l’hégémonie continentale. / Pas de résumé en anglais

L'Afrique de l'Ouest se caractérise par de forts taux de pauvreté et par une protection sociale et des marchés financiers formels défaillants. Dans un tel contexte, les familles remplissent des rôles importants qui façonnent la vie économique et sociale de leurs membres. Cependant, l'efficacité de cette institution fait débat, notamment lorsqu'elle est analysée du point de vue individuel. Ainsi, un nombre croissant d'études en économie du développement se penchent sur les coûts individuels induits par les fonctions familiales. Ma thèse de doctorat s'appuie sur cette littérature et y contribue en analysant la façon dont les décisions économiques individuelles sont prises au sein de la famille au Sénégal, et illustre des cas où la famille ne parvient pas à assurer le bien-être individuel de ses membres.Le premier chapitre s'attache à mesurer les coûts individuels de la redistribution informelle qui a lieu au sein des réseaux sociaux et entre ces derniers, et en particulier au sein de la famille élargie. En effet, en tant que mécanisme d'assurance, de fortes pressions redistributives modifient les choix économiques individuels. En s'appuyant sur des données expérimentales, nous estimons une taxe sociale d'environ 9% et nos résultats indiquent l'existence de fortes distorsions dans les choix d'allocation individuels. Par ailleurs nos résultats montrent que la pression à la redistribution est du fait, principalement, de famille élargie et non du ménage, des cercles amicaux ou du voisinage. Le deuxième chapitre examine comment l'environnement sanitaire contraint les investissements parentaux en termes de santé des enfants. Son objectif est de déterminer si les risques concurrents en mortalité réduisent les investissements des parents dans la santé de leurs enfants. Pour cela nous faisons, dans cet article, l'hypothèse qu'il existe des complémentarités entre les investissements en santé spécifiques à certaines maladies ; et testons celle-ci en nous appuyant sur une intervention récente visant à éradiquer le paludisme au Sénégal. Nos résultats soutiennent ce modèle de risques concurrents et impliquent que les comportements privés d'investissement en santé des parents et les politiques publiques de santé sont complémentaires. Enfin, le troisième chapitre explore comment une stratégie de gestion des risques ex-post, le mariage d'enfants, est lié aux chocs de mortalité au sein des familles. En particulier, j'examine si les décès paternels ont des conséquences néfastes en termes de transition sur le marché du mariage des jeunes orphelines. Mes résultats mettent en évidence la grande vulnérabilité de ce groupe d'enfants en termes de mariages précoces. / In the West Africa subregion, poverty is pervasive and social protection at the state-level, as well as formal financial markets poorly function. In such a context, families fulfill important roles, which shape the economic and social life of its members and are key drivers of economic development. How this private institution performs is, however, quite a debate and a growing body of the literature in development economics has focused on the question of the economic inefficiencies of the family institution. My PhD thesis builds upon this literature and contributes to it by shedding light on how individual economic decisions are taken within the family in Senegal, and in which cases the family fails to ensure individual welfare of its members.The first chapter focuses on the individual costs of the informal redistribution that take place within and between social networks, and in particular within the extended family. Using a lab-in the field experiment, we aim at identifying the hidden costs of social obligations for redistribution on individual resource allocation choices. Our results are threefold: (i) we estimate a social tax of about 9\%; (ii) we provide evidence on strong distortions in individual allocation choices; (iii) our results point at people fearing redistributive pressure from the extended family members, but not from within the household or from friends and neighbors. We expand on prior literature by both identifying the individual cost of informal redistribution and then relating it to postexperiment resource-allocation decisions, and by disentangling intra- and interhousehold redistributive pressure. The second chapter investigates how the health environment prevents parents from investing in child health. Its main objective is to investigate whether the health risks faced by children, and in particular their competing nature as mortality risks, depress parental investment in child health. We argue that there are complementarities between disease-specific investments and we test this hypothesis by exploiting recent interventions that made anti-malaria products suddenly affordable to most households in 2009 in Senegal. Our first contribution is to be the first to use data on private health expenditures to validate a model with complementarities between disease-specific investments. Our second contribution is to show that parental behavioral responses clearly complement anti-malaria campaigns, whereby they magnify their impact on all-cause mortality for children. Finally, the third chapter explores how a quite harmful ex-post risk management strategy, child marriage, relates to changes in family structures (mortality shocks). In particular, I investigate whether paternal death induces adverse marriage outcomes for young orphans. I also discuss the channel that could induce such effects. My results underpinned the high vulnerability of this group of children: when the father dies, the young girls are more likely to marry as child brides and to be child mothers than their non-orphan counterparts. Those girls have more frequently broken marital trajectories, in particular due to divorce. This paper builds upon the existing demographic literature and provides at least two contributions. First, it is, to my knowledge, the first to study jointly the timing of the father's death and other dimensions of well-being such as fertility, marital dissolution and consumption. Second, it discusses the extent to which selection on unobservables might bias the analysis, an issue that is discarded in most studies.

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This dissertation consists of three chapters that address two major resource challenges faced by smallholder farmers in Sub-Saharan Africa: (i) weather shocks and (ii) limited land access for agricultural production. The first chapter looks at how weather shocks affect millet production and millet market price seasonality in Niger. In this paper, we use district-level longitudinal production and price data, along with high-resolution rainfall data to investigate the distinct impacts of positive and negative rainfall shocks on millet production and millet price seasonality in Niger. We find that a one standard deviation decrease in seasonal rainfall from historical averages is associated with declines in millet market price initially after harvest, but strong upward pressure on market prices 6 months after harvest. As a result, drought exacerbates existing price seasonality, which in turn can amplify negative impacts on households. Social protection programs need to account for potential increases in seasonal price variability in the design of programs to enhance household resilience to weather shocks. To better understand the household behavior that gives rise to the price responses observed in the first chapter, we explore weather shock impacts on household millet market participation in Niger in the second chapter. We merge a nationally representative household panel data with high-resolution spatially disaggregated rainfall data. We find that households are more likely to participate in the market as net sellers with negative rainfall shocks, but marketed quantity for net sellers decreases with negative rainfall shocks. Diversification into non-agricultural activities can mediate the impacts of negative rainfall shocks on market participation and lead to increases in volume of sales. Policies that support household involvement in the rural nonfarm economy through training and access to credit to help expand businesses may also stimulate millet market participation. In the third chapter, we use a rich dataset of 1,123 households to examine the determinants of individual household member access to groundnut fields, the predominant cash-crop in the Groundnut Basin of Senegal. The analysis also explores the implications of limited land access on groundnut productivity of young adult and female field managers. We find that young adults and females have fewer opportunities to access land compared to older and male household members. Further, we show that higher productivity may not be driving differential access to fields among older adults. Results suggest that with equal access, young adults may be as or more productive groundnut cultivators than older adults. Programs to increase young adult and female economic opportunities should focus on closing gaps in access to resources for production rather than decreasing observed production disparities. / Doctor of Philosophy / This dissertation addresses two major challenges that small farmers face in Sub-Saharan Africa: (i) erratic changes in weather patterns and (ii) land access for agricultural production. We divide the dissertation in three chapters. The first two chapters focus on weather shocks, while the third chapter focuses on land access. In the first chapter, we discuss how low and high rainfall affect the seasonal variation of market prices for the most important staple grain (millet) in Niger (West Africa). We find that lower rainfall than usual makes households sell their millet in the post-harvest period when market prices are generally low, and makes them buy back millet in the lean season when market prices are often high. As a result, policies that aim support household resilience to climate shocks should design programs that account for potential increases in seasonal price variability. In the second chapter, we study how low rainfall levels affect Niger millet farmers' decision to sell or not sell their harvest, as well as the association between low rainfall and the quantity of millet sold and bought. We distinguish three groups of farmers: (i) net buyers who have higher millet purchases than sales, (ii) autarkic who have zero millet purchases and millet sales, and (iii) net sellers who have higher sales than purchases. Our findings show that lower rainfall increases net sellers' probability to sell their millet, whereas it decreases the quantity they sell. Our results also reveal that households who diversify their sources of income into non-agricultural activities increase millet net sales even with low rainfall levels. Policies that support household involvement in these non-agricultural activities may also stimulate millet market participation. In the third chapter, we study the factors that affect household members' access to a groundnut field in Senegal with a particular focus on young adults and females. We show that females and young adults are less likely to access a field compared to older and male household members. Our results also suggest that with equal access, young adults may be as or more productive groundnut cultivators than older adults. Programs to increase young adult and female economic opportunities should focus on closing gaps in access to resources for production.