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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]

Taking Sartre's philosophy as a starting point, our paper is deliberately both theoretical and action oriented. It aims to promote a way to develop the adequate scientific practices which the sustainable development utopia requires. To this end, it is written as a manifesto designed to stimulate debates and controversies. Following a critical review of all that is being said and done in the name of sustainable development in the political sphere as well as in the relationships social sciences entertain with the political sphere, this paper is a call to consider rigorously the difficulties and even the impossibilities of moving "from the utopia to the concepts". Introducing and articulating the almost contradictory dimensions of sustainability in real urban territories demands that a relevant method be developed to investigate this complex object. We propose the concept of "socially sustainable milieu" to try and reach this objective which requires the interdisciplinary linking of physical and social sciences. GIS and modelling need to be associated with anthropological methods. Most of all, the paper underscores the need to set "inhabitants" at the heart of the scientific project, thus reversing the usual focus and starting with an investigation of the way each individual reconciles the "three pillars" of sustainable development and builds his/her relationship with sustainable urban milieus. This may help rise above the still top-down views of governance, thus enabling scientists to contribute to developing the political sustainable utopia in real sites and situations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Linkages between the economic and the social spheres: strategies of the Kanak rural households. Our study results from an action-research project accompanying a development project in New Caledonia. This paper proposes an analytical framework based on the linkages between the economic and social spheres to investigate the strategies of rural households. We plan to reconsider the notions of trade and non-trade concerns as detailed in recent studies in economic anthropology and new economic sociology. This approach enabled us to formalize tools based on the recognition of the "embeddedness" of economic relations in social relationships to analyze actor strategies. The Kanak rural population offers a perfect illustration of the interest of viewing the economic and social organization in this way. Kanak households are undergoing a recent and significant economic development, which means extended integration into the market, but which also encounters some specific social rules in an ambiguous way. Based on the results of inquiries in Kanak households on the East coast of New Caledonia, the article shows that pluractivity, the diversity of agricultural practices as well as of uses of rural prod ucts result from hybridization between trade and non trade logics. Finally, the article shows that such an approach to actor strategies highlights in an original way the phenomena of territorial reorganization in New Caledonia today. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

North-west Kenya is a conflict-ridden and insecure area. This paper analyses the different interventions of the institutional actors, state and NGOs, in response to insecurity. Whereas some consider the resolution of conflict as a prerequisite to development, others explain that conflict is an expression of marginalisation, so that socio-economic development should be considered as a way of achieving security. In fact security and development interventions are most probably complementary. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]