1 00:00:00,750 --> 00:00:04,590 Good evening, everyone, 2 00:00:04,590 --> 00:00:15,120 and thank you so much for joining us today for our seminar on balancing social and environmental capital for sustainable development in Africa, 3 00:00:15,120 --> 00:00:22,260 co-hosted by the Africa Oxford Initiative and the African House at Christchurch. 4 00:00:22,260 --> 00:00:35,520 Well, the challenge refers to the paradox of sort of balancing universal access to goods and services also for the last mile with Universal, 5 00:00:35,520 --> 00:00:39,300 while with this was the financial sustainability of actually delivering them. 6 00:00:39,300 --> 00:00:41,730 And we'll hear a bit more about this today. 7 00:00:41,730 --> 00:00:53,370 If launched this African House initiative at Christchurch earlier this year, and partly with a view to create a space for collaboration for knowledge, 8 00:00:53,370 --> 00:00:59,370 exchange and partnerships with fellow, well, fellows and researchers from Africa. 9 00:00:59,370 --> 00:01:10,710 So we are absolutely delighted to have the opportunity today to host three hour fox visiting fellows from West, Central and East Africa too. 10 00:01:10,710 --> 00:01:19,290 And we'll be hearing or discussions around sort of inclusive water service delivery in water stressed 11 00:01:19,290 --> 00:01:27,120 environments and about how decisions are made and very complex social and ecological systems, 12 00:01:27,120 --> 00:01:32,280 and also how conflict interferes with the basic provision of services and the 13 00:01:32,280 --> 00:01:39,870 development of rural public policies to advance the sustainable development agenda. 14 00:01:39,870 --> 00:01:48,300 He's based at the African Studies Centre, and his research interests include the Great Lakes and region in Africa, 15 00:01:48,300 --> 00:01:52,920 especially sort of post-conflict development and political ecology, 16 00:01:52,920 --> 00:01:58,530 as well as sort of public policy development and guidelines in Africa more generally. 17 00:01:58,530 --> 00:02:06,300 So now [INAUDIBLE] be presenting on on a sort of an a critical perspective on development and yeah, 18 00:02:06,300 --> 00:02:15,090 fighting against poverty in the African Great Lakes region. A question of power and resistance over to you. 19 00:02:15,090 --> 00:02:26,860 Thank you so much, Johanna. She forgot to say that I was a Francophone researcher, so please be patient with my my English. 20 00:02:26,860 --> 00:02:39,330 Yeah, yeah. So I work on three topics the access to natural resources in Africa Great Lakes Region in Rwanda, 21 00:02:39,330 --> 00:02:49,770 Burundian Congo based on true and armed groups in the same region, and the Afro diasporic critical thinking. 22 00:02:49,770 --> 00:03:01,590 But today, I would present some hypotheses on my work on access to natural resources in Africa and which lakes region. 23 00:03:01,590 --> 00:03:10,140 So in fact, on this topic, my research is best is based on a medical and political question. 24 00:03:10,140 --> 00:03:25,560 And the question is, does people have only a choice between top down and often neo-liberal policies and being bound by poverty without a way out? 25 00:03:25,560 --> 00:03:29,340 To what extent can such a starting point? 26 00:03:29,340 --> 00:03:39,780 Give us another perspective on poverty reduction policies, and this arises the question of whether how those policies imposed, 27 00:03:39,780 --> 00:03:54,630 it's accepted negotiators subverted or resisted, and those questions therefore require us to go beyond the moral needs to fight against poverty. 28 00:03:54,630 --> 00:04:07,740 The call for a political vision of actions again against poverty because those actions actually question power relations, resistance and emancipation. 29 00:04:07,740 --> 00:04:16,800 Finally, those issues can come with epistemological recall and methodological logistical challenges. 30 00:04:16,800 --> 00:04:26,040 In this presentation, I will offer some hypotheses concerning the issue in these issues and in my research. 31 00:04:26,040 --> 00:04:37,050 I will start from a bottom up approach, a push panel debate in French, and I will focus on the Rwanda case. 32 00:04:37,050 --> 00:04:41,550 So since the year that early 2000, 33 00:04:41,550 --> 00:04:55,980 the conceptualisation of the relationship between land and poverty is increasingly assimilated to the land use of as a resource for market production. 34 00:04:55,980 --> 00:05:08,870 Today, donor discourse discourse. Causes more production on land in Africa to boost the economic growth, to be able to fight against poverty. 35 00:05:08,870 --> 00:05:19,580 Indeed, in the past, the non-development of land was not seen as a legitimate reason for dispossession, but today it is. 36 00:05:19,580 --> 00:05:30,350 It has been normal for state and local authorities to dispossess peasants who are not able to insert themselves into markets. 37 00:05:30,350 --> 00:05:44,000 Orientation production shames this discursive churning has real consequences as it has opened up opportunities for state 38 00:05:44,000 --> 00:05:57,110 and local authorities to dispossess the purists seen as unproductive or inefficient farmers as I have already said. 39 00:05:57,110 --> 00:06:06,020 I study this phenomenon in the African Great Lakes region, but now I will, going to focus on the case of Rwanda, 40 00:06:06,020 --> 00:06:17,210 which best illustrates the relationship between the fight against poverty and power and resistance. 41 00:06:17,210 --> 00:06:23,240 Of course, my research in Rwanda is concerned with the way in which we have policies in 42 00:06:23,240 --> 00:06:30,530 relation to the fight against poverty are conceived at the international level, 43 00:06:30,530 --> 00:06:41,420 how they are decoded at the national level and how they are implemented at the local level, especially at the local level level. 44 00:06:41,420 --> 00:06:47,490 My research is based on in this field of research in Rwanda, 45 00:06:47,490 --> 00:06:55,370 I try to understand how local authorities managed to capture land within the new agriculture programme 46 00:06:55,370 --> 00:07:05,600 and how resistance to his to the proceeded to the prescription of this programme took shape. 47 00:07:05,600 --> 00:07:14,780 I propose here four points in terms of results related to the run Rwandan case. 48 00:07:14,780 --> 00:07:26,030 First, in my research in Rwanda, I show how to the irrationality of the aquaculture programme has made possible land grabbing by the state 49 00:07:26,030 --> 00:07:35,450 and local authorities at the expense of ordinary peasants using those land for subsistence production. 50 00:07:35,450 --> 00:07:43,760 My research aims at shedding a theoretical light on the issue of those power relations. 51 00:07:43,760 --> 00:07:55,130 I try to go beyond the caricature of African political space as characterised by an exclusive form of explicit and repressive power. 52 00:07:55,130 --> 00:08:01,730 My arguments assume that another reflection upon paradise is possible. 53 00:08:01,730 --> 00:08:10,940 There is certainly violence that explain the grabbing of of resources in Rwanda. 54 00:08:10,940 --> 00:08:12,740 But beyond violence, 55 00:08:12,740 --> 00:08:26,060 there is also discourses of legitimation and the system of differentiation that explains the grabbing of resources such as the social, 56 00:08:26,060 --> 00:08:32,690 cultural, political and economical capitals. 57 00:08:32,690 --> 00:08:43,910 The four culture concepts like venom, mentality, technologies of the self apparatus and the delusion concept of racism allow me to study the 58 00:08:43,910 --> 00:08:52,640 social historical process that contributes to the possibility of land grabbing in in Rwanda. 59 00:08:52,640 --> 00:09:07,820 Of those explanatory factors of source of resource and of land grabbing are often under researches in in the case of Runda. 60 00:09:07,820 --> 00:09:09,360 Second, in my research, 61 00:09:09,360 --> 00:09:23,360 my research I like highlight that most socio anthropological literature related to claim of a land in Rwanda is driven by an actor oriented approach. 62 00:09:23,360 --> 00:09:33,860 Moreover, it is predominantly behaviourists in that it considers actors involved in power games as try Tajik acts 63 00:09:33,860 --> 00:09:42,860 or fully conscious conscious of their interests and developing strategies to maximise their interests. 64 00:09:42,860 --> 00:09:51,500 I propose a national team reflection, which implies that choice and decision of actors can be influenced by actors 65 00:09:51,500 --> 00:10:00,130 awareness through internalised internalisation of a state of being in which. 66 00:10:00,130 --> 00:10:08,290 Existing power relations are legitimised and seen as natural or logical. 67 00:10:08,290 --> 00:10:17,770 Therefore, I consider Clem making, as should social practise that requires an understanding of actual strategies, 68 00:10:17,770 --> 00:10:25,420 but also adds irrationalities in which they agreement are embedded. 69 00:10:25,420 --> 00:10:35,650 I argue that in order to comprehend claim making over land in the specific context of Rwanda, 70 00:10:35,650 --> 00:10:48,280 one has to understand the underlying power of this act in actual strategy, but also to the power relations that ship actual rationality. 71 00:10:48,280 --> 00:10:58,240 In this way, one can understand the deep foundations of conflicts and the broader challenges in resolving them. 72 00:10:58,240 --> 00:11:04,150 Third, in my research, understanding of resistance is very important. 73 00:11:04,150 --> 00:11:07,630 The resistance against the land grabbing. 74 00:11:07,630 --> 00:11:18,100 First of all, from an nipissing logical standpoint, my research a land to a nominal lease approach of the French critical sociology, 75 00:11:18,100 --> 00:11:29,620 which allows us to understand resistance as a discursive element, which means should be understood through its genealogy. 76 00:11:29,620 --> 00:11:41,920 I study. I study the possibility of performative and subversive agency in the lives of patients who use body. 77 00:11:41,920 --> 00:11:50,590 But these are subject to the activists none of the new Agri Agriculture Programme in Rwanda. 78 00:11:50,590 --> 00:12:03,340 In this way, I land to the idea that resistance should be studied, studied at as such not necessary in dichotomy to power. 79 00:12:03,340 --> 00:12:07,810 Second, from a theoretical stand point, 80 00:12:07,810 --> 00:12:15,700 my research showed that acts of resistance are commonplace and they and that they have 81 00:12:15,700 --> 00:12:24,880 widely documented in the literature on post-genocide rural development in Rwanda. 82 00:12:24,880 --> 00:12:39,490 However, there is sources have these sources have forecasts a lot upon the dichotomy between domination and emancipation, 83 00:12:39,490 --> 00:12:43,780 between power and resistance to give to given norms. 84 00:12:43,780 --> 00:12:49,810 This literature on resistance in Rwanda was strongly influenced by the work of 85 00:12:49,810 --> 00:12:56,680 James Scott on his critique of Crime Xi in relation to the false concepts, 86 00:12:56,680 --> 00:13:00,820 the consciousness of the dominant people. 87 00:13:00,820 --> 00:13:13,540 In this way, this literature literature may overlook experiences of freedom that are born out of new ways to detach oneself from the norm. 88 00:13:13,540 --> 00:13:20,710 As Judith Butler could say, there was agency in bodies of those subjects to the norm, 89 00:13:20,710 --> 00:13:28,030 which which allows that food to subvert subversion of the name itself. 90 00:13:28,030 --> 00:13:37,120 Such a theoretical framework allowed me to study whether and to to what extent extant the 91 00:13:37,120 --> 00:13:45,760 action of the farmers contestations could subvert the agriculture programme more broadly. 92 00:13:45,760 --> 00:14:05,440 Finally, with my team, we use Participatory Action Theatre to access the to access the structural violence and its meaning in relation to the states. 93 00:14:05,440 --> 00:14:14,680 I work in a very sensitive contact with work while insecurity political troubles. 94 00:14:14,680 --> 00:14:24,010 I also work on difficult topics such as land grabbing by elite conflict, armed groups and resistance. 95 00:14:24,010 --> 00:14:30,490 People are often afraid to talk about it, about the issue of land and resistance. 96 00:14:30,490 --> 00:14:42,310 So when they come to a village, I don't ask my question directly because that can be very dangerous for for me and for four people. 97 00:14:42,310 --> 00:14:51,100 I ask what I do it to us, to young people to prepare a theatre on the land issue in the in general, 98 00:14:51,100 --> 00:14:58,630 in the village and through the fiction of the theatre. 99 00:14:58,630 --> 00:15:07,460 The. Milos Alos and Elway's tell us a lot about the problem. 100 00:15:07,460 --> 00:15:12,740 Then we work on theatre fiction to make its comic. 101 00:15:12,740 --> 00:15:23,120 And finally, I invits, let 20 people to the official theatre performance and then I give them the floor. 102 00:15:23,120 --> 00:15:36,140 So the talks with the participants gives me a lot of information when even if we try to remain in the fiction and the anonymous anonymity, 103 00:15:36,140 --> 00:15:55,338 so then we can start again with another group so that these in breath my my work and hope my English was like, Yes, thank you.