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Since the commercial release of Bt cotton, the issue of the purity of the seeds used by producers has been little addressed, further less in relation to the analysis of the seed production and distribution system in the country concerned. This paper examines the case ofBurkina Faso in 2015, a country where transgenic cottonwith two Bt genes was planted alongside conventional cotton until its suspension decided the same year. According to the thresholds for the presence of Bt genes retained in the study to declare the conventional or transgenic nature of the sampled plots, only 29.3%of the plots assumed to be conventionalwere indeed conventional, compared to 92.6% of the supposedly transgenic plotswhich were indeedtransgenic.However, amongtransgenic plots, only40%met the threshold for containing both of the Bt cotton genes that would have been expected if they had been planted with pure Bollgard II seeds. Some of these purity defects may be explained by examining the system of seed production and distribution. In addition, if one considers the chronology of events up to the delivery of the transgenic seeds byMonsanto, these seeds couldnot systematically containthetwoBt genes.Such an initial defect wasmaintained or even accentuated afterwards. It hampered the efficacy ofBt cotton fromthe outset and,worse, the sustainability of its use by facilitating the selection of pests resistant to each of the two genes used, or even to both simultaneously. The case study underlines how important it is, in view of an efficient and sustainable use of transgenic seeds, to produce and preserve seed purity. It also reveals, regardless of the use of transgenic seeds, the need to adjust the internalized scheme of cotton seed production in francophone Africa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides new insights into the vegetation of the black continent (Cameroon, Chad, Gabon, Gabon, Nigeria, Mali and Burkina Faso). It particularly explores the relationship between Africans and trees through the prism of colonization. The regions studied have suffered successive waves of occupation. Each newcomer had a specific relationship with the tree. Today, the result is an unstable balance between the environmental constraints that shape the background of the plant capital, the needs and means of the populations, all guided by cultural habits and pre-colonial and colonial heritage. These inheritances, which are diametrically opposed, are under tension in African societies, with the public administration acting as moderator. With little financial and human resources, it tries to preserve the wooded heritage, especially since we now know it is important in times of climate change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper empirically analyzes the financial development (FD)-growth nexus, and the financial development-total factor productivity (TFP) link in sub-Saharan Africa. The study is based on a VAR approach: Johansen cointegration tests and error correction models. The sample includes 22 countries over the period from 1960 to 2002. Results suggest that FD and economic growth and, FD and TFP are cointegrated for many countries. Moreover, in many cases, the relationship between FD and growth is characterized by bidirectional causality in the Granger sense, whereas the relation between FD and TFP is characterized by a unidirectional causality running from FD to TFP. With few exceptions, it appears that financial development spurs economic growth in countries where that growth is supported by technological progress. The implication of the findings is that any reform that causes betterment in the financial sector will foster economic growth through a sharp increase in technological progress. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Résumé: Alors qu'après une longue période de stagnation la croissance semble être revenue en Afrique, la question se pose de savoir si la nouvelle croissance africaine est durable. Cet article examine dans quelle mesure la croissance africaine est vulnérable aux chocs exogènes et quelles en sont les implications pour le financement internatìonal du développement. It montre en premier lieu la persistance de la vulnérabilité des économies africaines au regard de l'indice de vulnérabilitééconomique des Nations unies (EVI), utilisant une première série rétrospective de cet indice. En second lieu, s'appuyant sur divers travaux récents, il souligne l'importance de la vulnérabilité structurelle pour la croissance et le développement, particullèrement en Afrique. Enfin il examine le rôle du financement international pour réspondre à la vulnérabilité des économies africaines, suggérant de faire de la vulnérabilité structurelle un des critères d'allocation de l'aide de d'adapter les modailités de l'aide pour lui faire jouer de façon efficace un rôle d'assurance. While after a long stagnation growth seems to have come back in Africa, the issue remains to know whether the new African growth is sustainable. This paper examines to what extent African growth is vulnerable to exogeneous shocks and what are the implications for international developement finance. First it evidences the persistent vulnerability of African economies with regard to the U.N. Economic Vulnerability Index (EVI), using a first retrospective series of that index. Second, relying on several recent works, it unerlines that structural vulnerability matters, in particular in Africa. Finally it considers how international development finance can be used to face the vulnerability of African economies, suggesting to use structural vulnerability as one of the aid allocation criteria and to adopt modalities of aid so that it can effectively serve as an insurance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on the early stages of the Missionary Sisters of our Lady of Africa (White Sisters), from the point of view of women. From a feminist and gender studies perspective, this study illustrates how socio-ecclesial roles assigned to women give them (or not) a peculiar character, in the context of the foundation of a missionary institute. The relations of these women with their founder, as well as with the White Fathers, who also bear the weight of socio-ecclesial roles imposed on them as men, are analysed. Concepts of authority and obedience are considered as well as the effects of the shock from the missionary experience itself. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the case of a village named Lacroix, located in a commune mixte of French East Algeria--La Calle--where many European settlers abandoned their land a few years after obtaining it. In the early 1920s, most of the first settlers put their land up for rent or sale to native people, because they were attracted by Tunisia, the border of which was just next to the village. In the 1950s, only five French families were still living in Lacroix. This movement can be considered as a sort of decolonization, even if this concept must be handled with care. Those migrations were very usual throughout the country at that time, but the case of Lacroix is a good example of a colonization area being recovered by the natives. The analysis of this long and complex process shows how the French authorities tried to retain land, creating inventive strategies for over 20 years. The process was very difficult, however, and finally failed, especially because of the conflicts between the local administration and central authorities. Moreover, the General Government showed no interest in this rural part of the colony, located at the Tunisian border. This case also raises the issue of the influence of local politicians, who managed to be heard over the administrator of the village or the settlers themselves. Finally, this paper discusses the objections that colonization had to face to be efficient while French Algeria was nearing its centennial. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper reviews literature on adolescent reproductive health in Africa. It airs to highlight the structural factors which shape their sexual behaviour. The literature was collectçd using IESTOR and Medline databases. We first entered the words "reproductive health" to get an overall idea of existing literature. The field was then narrowed by entering: "reproductive health, youth", "reproductive F~ealth, youth, Africa", "youth, sexuality, Africa". We looked into the references provided in the articles. The paper is structured in three parts. The first presents the major problems associated with young people's sexual behaviour. The second deals with solutions used to tackle these problems. The third concerns the structural factors which shape young people's sexual behaviour. It focuses especially on economic factors, gender inequalities and sexual violence. We conclude that: studies undertaken on reproductive health of a~olescents especially highlight the vulnerability of girls; adolescents' sexual behaviour cannot be separated from their social, cultural, political and economic environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Several African countries are experiencing difficulties in accessing scientific information, mainly due to their precarious situation. They have poor technical infrastructures and depend on a short-lived philanthropic-based information delivery model. African researchers and librarians answered a survey about HINARI, one of these charity programs. The paper is an analysis of the current situation in these countries and lays the foundation for thinking about more viable solutions for Africa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Due to slavery, colonialism, and neo-colonialism, the violent contacts between Europe and Africa engendered social changes and aroused feelings of frustration, hatred, and even revenge. This painful experience appealed to the imagination of various black intellectuals. Through fiction and poetry, they tried to make alienated and subjugated Africans not only recover the quintessence of their "Negritude" but also contribute to the "Universal Civilization." Hence, the topicality in twentieth-century French African literature of this theme: "The Métis Imagination and Cross-Culture: A Literary Approach." This paper is an attempt to examine the evolution of the issue through history, especially in the light of three trends of thought. Firstly, as patriots and upholders of African values, Ousmane Socé Diop and Mariama Bâ systematically reject intermarriage, since they find it detrimental to the black race, and to the progress of Africa as well. Secondly, Abdoulaye Sadji, who is aware of the inevitable social transformations that occur when people of divergent cultures come into contact and conflict, moderates his point of view, considering that interracial marriage entails both advantages and inconveniences. Thirdly, Léopold Sédar Senghor, the president and poet, approves of hybridity, while focusing on cultural, intellectual, and economic exchanges for the fulfillment of the "Universal Civilization." What is worth stressing is that although he promotes mixed marriage, Senghor does not impose it as a sine qua non condition for the accomplishment of this political and humanistic project. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This paper provides an overview of current knowledge of Plio Pleistocene Carnivora from Africa and Europe. In Plio Pleistocene times, many genera extend their ranges in Africa and Eurasia but their evolution are quite distinct in the two continents. In Africa, the modern carnivoran guild of sub saharian Africa originated in the early Pleistocene when took place extinction of archaic species. The north African fossil record is far from complete until the middle Pleistocene. In the middle and late Pleistocene, the modern carnivoran guild is associated with other elements: the simian jackal Canis simensis and two species of ursids Ursus arctos and Ursus deningeri which evolved towards Ursus spelaeus. Western European carnivore faunas show due to migration a constant turn-over of the species. Among felids, Panthera schaubi described by Viret (1954) and attributed to the genus Puma by Hemmer et al. (2004), is morphologically close to the snow leopard Panthera (Uncia) uncia. Canis etruscus is the sister group pf the clade including wolf and coyote and Canis arnensis is close to the African jackals. Ursus deningeri appears in the early Pleistocene together with two arctoid forms Ursus rodei and Ursus dolinensis that may be synonymous to Ursus arctos. The genus Hyaena is present in Europe in the middle and late Pleistocene. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: The symbolic behaviour of the latter Mechta-Afalou hunters of northern Africa. The symbolic universe of Mechta-Afalou’s men is very little known, as Prehistory was mostly interested in reconstituting industrial assemblages and technological modes of their obtention. We will try in this paper, on the basis of the last works of Afalou Bou Rhummel, to accede to some of those activities indirectly bound to subsistence. We will first focus on the longevity of the human occupation of this important rock shelter and of the neighbouring shelters inscribed within the bio-geographical unit of the coastal mountainous massif of the Babors. The territory has been occupied continuously by Iberomaurisian populations during more than eight millennia, just before Holocene. Access to food resources, requesting the numerous strata of nature, departing from fishing art possibilities and going through the universe of molluscs and different varieties of vertebrates, seems to have been controlled by those populations that have, nonetheless, shown a particular preference to the wild ship (Ammotragus lervia). Populations have invested the different areas of the territory with different significance. To grasp each subtlety, far from it, is still not yet possible. Nevertheless, we ought to seek for the significance of choosing the Afalou Bou Rhummel shelter for the establishment of a necropolis gathering several tens of individuals, such as the westward and almost contemporary necropolises of Columnata and Taforalt. Those places were certainly meaningful enough for everyone to have wished to get buried there or at least not elsewhere, in other habitats even occupied at the same epoch. It happens that the shelter has also given, in the form of backed clay statuettes, the oldest artistic manifestations known up to now in northern Africa. This second fact represents the meeting point, in a living place, of two prominent facts of recent prehistory both characterising modern Men: the metaphysical fact and the aesthetic fact. To cite this article: S. Hachi, C. R. Palevol 5 (2006) . [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Despite the enormous victory that has been recorded in decreasing significantly HIV-TB related mortality and morbidity in Sub-Saharan Africa, enormous challenges continue to obstruct proper and enviable control of these conditions. These range from prioritization, ethics, funding, drug resistance and research gaps. Resistance to these diseases could constitute key treatment and prevention challenges to health care systems and the international community if not handled appropriately and promptly. This paper presents key shortcomings of the current funding, management and research policies and highlights possible action areas to remedy this situation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]