Évaluation des politiques et institutions nationale: Le Burkina classé parmi les meilleurs en 2012

Posted on June 27, 2013 by mkevane

En effet, la dernière édition du rapport CPIA Country Policy and Institutional Assessment de la Banque mondiale, attribue au Burkina Faso une note globale de 4,28, l’une des plus élevées après celles du Rwanda, du Cap Vert et du Kenya.L’évaluation CPIA mesure 16 grands indicateurs du développement portant sur quatre domaines : i gestion économique, ii réformes structurelles ; iii politiques d’intégration sociale et d’équité ; et iv, gestion et institutions du secteur public. Les pays sont notés sur une échelle allant de 1 faible à 6 élevé pour chaque indicateur. La note globale CPIA représente la moyenne des 16 indicateurs.Les notes CPIA présentent des variations entre les divers groupes de pays. Par exemple, la mauvaise gouvernance, l’insuffisance des capacités du secteur public et les troubles civils ont réduit la note moyenne des États fragiles africains à 2,7—soit un niveau très inférieur à la note moyenne des pays non fragiles, qui est de 3,5 . De même, les pays riches en ressources de la région, dont la note CPIA moyenne s’établit à 3,0, traînent derrière leurs homologues pauvres en ressources, dont la note moyenne atteignait 3,2 en 2012.

via Évaluation des politiques et institutions nationale: Le Burkina classé parmi les meilleurs en 2012 « Alertes 24H/24 « Burkina24 – L’Actualité du Burkina 24h/24.

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Not sure I have the whole picture…

Posted on June 26, 2013 by mkevane

Kerfluffle in Burkina Faso over some stolen, smuggled gold, magistrates demand resignation of Minister of Justice…. (and before you think that 23,000 kg is a lot, remember that in French numbers , is a . so it is 23 kg only… about $1 million worth).

Le 6 mars 2012, le sieur DAMBINA Sékou était arrêté sur la route nationale n°4 au poste de péage de Koubri, route de Pô aux environs de 2 heures 30 du matin par les éléments de la Brigade Nationale de Lutte Anti –Fraude de l’or BNAF en possession de 23,528 kg d’or.

via MONDE JUDICIAIRE – Les Editions Le Pays.

Posted in Burkina Faso | Comments Off on Not sure I have the whole picture…

Burkina Faso : le tournant politique de 2015 pourra-t-il avoir lieu ?

Posted on June 26, 2013 by mkevane

A decent piece summarizing current political situation leading up to 2015, which will be a very interesting transition for Burkina Faso.  Pundits and alarmists will have a field day I am sure.  I think the lesson I draw from watching Sudan for three decades is this: no matter how much a focal point – election of 2015- seems like a focal point, it really isn’t.  Sudan goes from focal point to focal point…. even the splitting of the country in two in some sense barely changed underlying dynamics. So much as you want to say November 2015 will be the reckoning, January 2016 will have politics as usual going on in the country…

Le leader de l’UPC Union Pour le Changement, Zéphirin Diabré, qui tient la tête de l’opposition semble travailler pour une opposition plus unie et plus forte. Il est même apprécié par une grande partie de l’opinion publique. Mais un ancien ministre du président Compaoré peut-il conduire l’opposition pour vaincre le CDP ? Sans doute, pourquoi pas ? Il saura déjouer les glissades politiques mais pas la manipulation ethnique ! En décembre 2012 quand je suis allé accomplir mon devoir politique, j’ai surpris une conversation entre deux dames. La première avouait qu’elle allait voter UPC et la deuxième lui rétorquait que le leader de l’UPC est un Bissas [sic] ethnie du Centre Est du Burkina qui n’a pas bonne réputation auprès des Mossés qui sont majoritaires dans le pays. Aussitôt la première dame changea sa décision de vote, vers un autre parti. C’est donc dire que le Burkina n’est pas à l’abri des votes ethniques. Au grand bonheur de certains manipulateurs politiques !

nb.  I pretty much totally disagree with the author’s point about ethnic manipulation… and certainly don’t approve of a generalization based on an overheard conversation!  As far as I am aware, there is very little research confirming strong ethnic biases in government, and the recent campaign of Alphonse Bonou did not go very far in the southwest…  (at via Burkina Faso : le tournant politique de 2015 pourra-t-il avoir lieu ? | Contrepoints.

Posted in Politics | 2 Comments

Research Initiative: Test the Impact of a Radio Campaign Addressing Child Mortality

Posted on June 25, 2013 by mkevane

Very interesting research project.

The intervention that this research initiative is exploring is a 2.5-year radio campaign that began broadcasting in March 2012. It involves the broadcast of health messages using radio spots (60-second adverts) and radio phone-in programmes (see videos below). DMI and LSHTM are broadcasting this behaviour change campaign to 7 randomised geographic areas (clusters) across Burkina Faso and are using 7 additional clusters as controls. Organisers say that a controlled trial using radio would not normally work due to the risk that people in “control” areas would listen to radio stations broadcasting from “intervention” areas. However, Burkina Faso has a very localised, radio-dominated media environment, so organisers can use local FM radio stations to broadcast messages to intervention areas without “leaking” into the control areas.

…. The model predicts that a campaign can reduce childhood mortality by 8-15% per year, by the third year. It also predicts that its cost-effectiveness (at between US$2 and US$10 per “disability-adjusted life year” or DALY) is better than any other currently available intervention, including bed nets for malaria and childhood immunisations.

Midline results (on behaviour change) are expected in late 2013, with full endline data (including child mortality outcomes) being published in 2015. The evaluation includes a baseline survey of 50,000 households and an endline mortality survey with a sample size of 100,000.

via Research Initiative: Test the Impact of a Radio Campaign Addressing Child Mortality | The Communication Initiative Network.

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There is probably an interesting story here: Mayor of Ouagadougou “fires” all the youth employed at quasi-minimum wage ($75 per month) working as traffic guards (they are really helpful)

Posted on June 25, 2013 by mkevane

Pour le président du conseil municipal de la commune de Ouagadougou, c’est un manque de respect et de reconnaissance à l’endroit d’un gouvernement qui a été à l’origine de la mise en œuvre du projet en fin 2010. Si Marin Casimir Ilboudo reconnaît que des difficultés existent faiblesse du salaire, irrégularité des paies, tenues insuffisantes, celui-ci a indiqué qu’ils ne sauraient balayer du revers de la main, ce que le gouvernement a fait pour eux : « Au lieu de rejeter tout en bloc, les jeunes de la brigade devaient être reconnaissants vis-à-vis du gouvernement pour avoir initié le programme parce qu’il permet d’octroyer un salaire mensuel de 37 000 FCFA à plus de trois mille jeunes. Ce qui coûte plus d’un milliard de FCFA par an à l’Etat ».Pour M. Ilboudo, le montant est bon à prendre car supérieur au Salaire minimum interprofessionnel garanti SMIG qui est de 35 000 FCFA. « Personne ne vous a contraints à souscrire au projet. Si vous estimez que le gouvernement ne fait rien pour vous, personne ne vous retient », a-t-il ajouté.Pour l’heure, le maire de Ouagadougou a mis fin au contrat des volontaires pour la sécurité routière. Cependant, le fil qui liait les deux parties n’est pas totalement rompu : « Pour ceux qui souhaiteraient revenir, ils ont 48 heures pour rédiger une demande dans laquelle, ils reconnaîtront leur tort et présenteront leurs excuses », a indiqué le maire.

via Commune de Ouagadougou: “Les volontaires virés pour comportement “inspectueux”.

Posted in Economy | Comments Off on There is probably an interesting story here: Mayor of Ouagadougou “fires” all the youth employed at quasi-minimum wage ($75 per month) working as traffic guards (they are really helpful)

Smackdown time… ouchie!

Posted on June 24, 2013 by mkevane

I think you have to be a development economist with a 15 year old indeed to appreciate this line which made me burst out laughing two minutes ago (11:25 pm Ouagadougou time) while we house-sit at unnamed European embassy staffer house with air-conditioning full blast!!!!!

… explaining why societies with a high degree of sharing nevertheless exhibit selfish game play, Ensminger suggests that ‘self-enforcement need not develop when second party enforcement is ever-present’ (2004:359). This seems somewhat improbable, since second party enforcement is an ineffective approach, involving massive transaction costs, however small and face to face the group, as anyone who has ever had to enforce domestic labour by teenagers will know.

Massive indeed!  Getting the table cleared often requires a long lecture that goes back to first principles… “A. The moral foundations of civil behavior  B. Consequences throughout history of uncivil behavior. C. Digression on internal logic of consequentialism” … Thank you Cecile Jackson.

Posted in Burkina Faso | Comments Off on Smackdown time… ouchie!

Hard to criticise without seeming a spoilsport…

Posted on June 18, 2013 by mkevane

I wish them luck, but nothing on the website suggests they really have any idea what they are doing other than doing something “cool”…  They claim their “digital library” will be profitable… yet the turnover in cybercafe’s (isn’t that what a “digital library” is?) is huge, and the management problems severe.  Do they know?  Do they know that half of WorldReader’s Kindle’s broke within one year?  They apparently have nothing on the ground… do they even know about Osu Children’s Library Fund?

We are building a library the likes of which the world has never seen before. It will be the first that will actively engage users as content creators, the first that will operate on a sustainable business model, and the first designed to maximize the potential of high-speed information exchange in developing markets.By backing this Kickstarter project YOU will be the first in the world to see these designs go into construction, be the first to receive original works created at the library via digital subscription, and have your name hand-written on the wall of the library to recognize your contribution to inventing the library of the future.

via LIBRII: NEW MODEL LIBRARY IN AFRICA by Architecture for Humanity DC — Kickstarter.

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Friends in high places…. Matthiasson wines in Napa

Posted on June 16, 2013 by mkevane

What a great plug for Jill and Steve, who deserve it!

Matthiasson is another example of the antithesis of Napa Valley’s glamorous side. Steve and Jill Klein Matthiasson are farmers, essentially — he is a leading vineyard consultant — and their wines bear an agricultural stamp, as fresh, lively and alive as the best produce from a farmers’ market, made from grapes that they either grow themselves or monitor before they purchase. Their wines are a pleasure, whether Friulian varieties blended with sémillon and sauvignon blanc, straightforward chardonnay, an unusual refosco, a shapely merlot or a mouthwateringly tangy rosé made from syrah.

via California Wines Score Style Points – NYTimes.com.

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100 million dollars – upcoming Obama trip to Africa

Posted on June 15, 2013 by mkevane

I always like to do the basic math.  We (FAVL) set up village libraries for about $15,000 and that covers about five years of operations until the office of the mayor can take over.  Let’s say there is no book renewal or much maintenance afterwards… still you get about 10 years of 500 villagers reading a lot.  How many villages?  Well, 100 million divided by $15,000 is 6,666… so village libraries could be established pretty much across the entire Sahel, for this one ten day trip… What do you think about that?  Maybe President Obama can just make a Skype call instead?  Oh wait, those are tapped by NSA.

Lorsque Barack Obama se déplace, cela coûte cher au contribuable américain. Selon le Washington Post, sa prochaine visite en Afrique pourrait coûter jusqu’à 100 millions de dollars. Cela comprend le transport de plus de 50 véhicules, dont 14 limousines officielles, la présence d’avions et de navires militaires, et le déploiement de dizaines d’agents du secret service chargés d’assurer la protection du président et de sa famille qui va l’accompagner.

via La prochaine tournée en Afrique d’Obama: un coûteux voyage de 100 millions de dollars – Etats-Unis – RFI.

Posted in Development thinking, General | 1 Comment

Sahel climate change alarmism

Posted on June 14, 2013 by mkevane

I got in a good Twitter back and forth with Michael Boyce of Refugees International…. what is right characterization of livelihood change in Sahel…

@MP_Boyce Compare rainfall/temp dist 1960-90 http://tinyurl.com/jw9bz7x  with 1990-09. Basically the same, no? #Sahel more complx than yr story.

Posted in Economy | Comments Off on Sahel climate change alarmism

Le Roi du Djadjo de Bali Nebie

Posted on June 10, 2013 by mkevane

Over the past week I read Le Roi du Djadjo by Bali Nebie.  I met Bali in February, when Jean-Pierre Jacob, the anthropologist, suggested we have a beer with him.  Jean-Pierre had found his book in the FAVL library we keep at headquarters, and had really been impressed.  Bali had come by and given it to our former representative Monique Nadembega.  Anyway, we met Bali and had a great conversation, mostly between him and Jean-Pierre about the “secret man-lion societies” that were (and remain) prevalent in many villages in Africa.  This is a central element of the story Le Roi du Djadjo.

While I enjoyed the conversation I also could not help thinking to myself “anthropology stuff…”  Growing up in the Catholic Church, every Sunday for about 15 years I was fully immersed in myths and ritual behavior.  While there were no exorcisms, I was constantly exposed to group-think.  Indeed, the whole experience of mass is a collective and deliberate “We believe…”  I’ve always then been a bit bored rather than fascinated by the arcana and mechanisms of belief.  If a fully “scienced” society like the one I grew up in had collective shared beliefs about magic and magical happenings, why wouldn’t a society where almost no one was literate?  I have no doubt that some shared beliefs are “better” than others.  In some ways that was the power of Jesus, Buddha and other major figures of world religions, to offer compassionate and subtle shared belief systems as opposed to tight and exclusionary ones (never mind that major religions often turned that compassionate and tolerant impulse into a justification for conquest “you really do need to hear the good news whether you like it or not…”).  And many small local religions have powerful lessons to teach about spiritual practices and respect for nature and insights into our common human dilemmas.  But at some level the arcana is all the same… transubstantiation… is it really so different from “eating souls”?

So finally last week I got around to reading Le Roi du Djadjo, and what a breath of fresh air.  Prose-wise, it is no great shakes.  Adequate.  But it is a deliberate de-mystification, and for Burkina Faso, that is a huge deal.  Bali has written a major work, and I’m surprised at how little it is known.  The fact that he has met with complete indifference I can only attribute to the continued stake that many (most?) Burkinabè have in leaving magical practices as social domain where explicit inquiry and critical thinking are impolite. In much the same way that questioning the basis of Catholicism was impolite when I was growing up, and is still considered by almost everyone to be rude behavior today.  I have no compulsion to be rude, and neither does Bali… I think.  But he puts it out there and hopes his book will testify and transform.  No compulsion in religion!  Anyway, if you read French, I definitely encourage you to read Le Roi du Djadjo, available here in Kindle edition.

Here’s a nice appreciation of the book:

Un soir que j’étais fatigué, trop pour prendre mon livre d’histoire en cours, je me suis mis à feuilleter le vôtre, dans mon idée c’était seulement pour le regarder un peu et non pour le lire, comme il me plaît de le faire avant mes lectures. Ensuite, Je n’ai pas pu le quitter et je suis allé jusqu’à m’endormir de fatigue dessus, je ne voulais pas le lâcher ! Félicitations ! Ce livre, d’abord dans la forme, donne une écriture plus souple que le 1er, le style est bien travaillé et il est agréable à lire. Quant au fond, il n’est rien de moins que remarquable. Je pense que vous êtes un homme d’avant-garde, éclairé par la rationalité et votre vision est alimentée par une connaissance sociologique très pertinente. J’ai adoré votre livre, vraiment.

Posted in Culture, General | Comments Off on Le Roi du Djadjo de Bali Nebie

From Sudan: I Almost Got Arrested For Wearing Pants | Blog #45

Posted on June 7, 2013 by mkevane

The rickshaw dropped us off by the office. Across the street, a large truck was parked, with two police officers standing beside it, talking to a young woman dressed not unlike myself; Jeans, white round-neck top, black cardigan. While one officer was “loading” a sit shai tea lady dressed in a tobe traditional garment Sudanese women wear onto the truck, the other was having a somewhat heated conversation with the young lady in jeans, pointing at her top, gesticulating that her pants were tight, that her top was too low-cut.I watched along with my friend, stunned, wondering why the sit shai was being arrested if the issue was attire. My friend turns to me, says, “I think you should go in the office”. I didn’t move

An excellent collection of postings from Sudan.  via I Almost Got Arrested For Wearing Pants | Blog #45.

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David Kpelly, fantastic blogger….

Posted on June 6, 2013 by mkevane

Mais c’est la forme de la déclaration qui choque. Il est quand un peu aberrant de voir un ministre d’un grand, vaste et vieux pays comme le Mali qui depuis plus de cinquante ans maintenant crie sa souveraineté, aller s’arrêter devant les représentants d’autres pays, devant des caméras et des micros – au grand mépris de la mémoire de tous ces pères-fondateurs nationalistes de nos Etats qui avaient tant cru en ce continent – et lancer : « Nous avons besoin d’argent, c’est pour cela que nous sommes là. » Même les talibés, ces petits enfants laissés-pour-compte que des marabouts véreux transforment – au nom de l’islam – en mendiants, savent cacher leur quête sous des bénédictions qu’ils récitent d’une voix mielleuse aux passants.

via Afrique, mon pleurer-rire.

Posted in Development thinking, Mali | Comments Off on David Kpelly, fantastic blogger….

What has happened to heights of women in Africa over post-colonial period?

Posted on June 5, 2013 by mkevane

One of those questions that is relevant and interesting.  Akachi and Canning use the DHS surveys and trace how birth cohorts have attained different height.  Interestingly, in the simple time trend heights are steady (on average just under 160 cm or about 5’2″).  Only a handful of the 20 countries have significant time trends, and these are small.  Of course, there are mortality selection effects, and for earlier cohorts stunted children may have been more prone to die and not reach adulthood.  Once country-level GDP and infant mortality are controlled for, the trend in height appears to be downwards.  Unfortunately, Africa is one of the only world regions with declining per capita GDP for several decades, followed by rising GDP, so interpreting the conditional time pattern is hard.

This negative time dummies effect may reflect omitted variables that negatively impact height and is indicative of a negative trend in the biological standard of living in Sub-Saharan Africa. It may also reflect a changing relationship between health as measured by mortality rates and stature.This suggests the need for a more detailed measure of health than mortality rates,particularly measures that reflect the disease environment and morbidity, in understanding the evolution of heights. However, the interpretation of the time effect remains an open question.

There is lot of variation between countries (and I imagine between ethnic groups).  The Sahel countries are quite a bit taller.  Madagascar quite a bit shorter.
Akachi, Y. and D. Canning (2007). “The height of women in Sub-Saharan Africa: The role of health, nutrition, and income in childhood.” Annals of Human Biology 34(4): 397-410.

Posted in Development thinking | Comments Off on What has happened to heights of women in Africa over post-colonial period?

Encore des voitures de $100,000?

Posted on June 4, 2013 by mkevane

Vraiment je ne comprends pas la Banque Mondiale…Peut-être le car de transport ca se vend a $100,000, mais des 4×4?  Et plus généralement, si le secteur minier et “porteur” pour le gouvernement, pourquoi la Banque ne refuse d’octroyer des crédits pour appuyer les structures gouvernementales concernées et demande qu’ils s’autofinancent?

D’un coût total de 300 millions de FCFA, Toutes taxes comprises TTC, ce don est composé de 8 véhicules, soit 5 véhicules 4×4 station wagon, 1 véhicule 4×4 pick-up, un car de transport de 30 places et une voiture de ville de type berline.

via Sidwaya – Le Quotidien.

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More kids go to school with cash transfer programs that make kids go to school?

Posted on June 3, 2013 by mkevane

However, using the categorization above, the picture is much clearer. In a random-effects meta-regression model with effect size as the dependent variable and this moderator describing the ‘intensity of conditionalities’ as the only independent variable, the coefficient estimate is large and statistically significant at the 1% level. The linearization suggests that each unit increase in the intensity of the conditionality is associated with an increase of 7% in the odds of being enrolled in school:

via Do Conditions Moderate the Effects of Cash Transfer Programs? Preliminary Findings from a Systematic Review | Impact Evaluations.

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Does Great Literature Make Us Better People?

Posted on June 3, 2013 by mkevane

Gregory Currie, author of this well-commented oped in New York Times, appears in the oped to have little interest in actually following through…. the piece comes across as lazy philosophy, making a trivial point and dressing it up as something profound…. he is doing exactly what he says is lazy… speculating and not measuring anything. To me even his speculation is lazy… why “great literature” instead of “regular literature”?  A hard question, for example, is whether the moral lessons of Junie B. Jones stick more than those of Dostoevsky…

Our FAVL project, “Youth of Tuy Reading” in southwestern Burkina Faso hopes to answer one version of this question.  (“Does contemporary West Africa youth literature – in French – change youth who have gone just a few years beyond poor quality primary schooling, and who are the among the most disadvantaged people in the world”).  We’ll keep you posted, preliminary results early next year.  If you are interested in improving the quality of the answer, please make a large donation to Friends of African Village Libraries… for JTL project, Jeunes du Tiy Lisent.  Mr. Currie, that means you.  Put your book royalties where your pen is… or as Hemingway said, is it all typing not writing?  (Large here means, oh, $27,500.)

Everything depends in the end on whether we can find direct, causal evidence: we need to show that exposure to literature itself makes some sort of positive difference to the people we end up being.

via Does Great Literature Make Us Better People? – NYTimes.com.

Posted in Reading | Comments Off on Does Great Literature Make Us Better People?

Why am I so skeptical about the cost – benefit outcome of the MCA rural land tenure project?

Posted on June 3, 2013 by mkevane

To me, after having seen the Programme Nationale de Gestion de Terroirs (PNGT), it seems like more of the same: a huge chunk of the budget goes into the shadowplay of per diems and training sessions, and everyone knows that little on the ground has really changed, except some aggressive agribusiness and connected figures take advantage and get a leg up on everyone else.  I’m more philosophically inclined to appreciate an outcome like “2.5 million pieces of paper with some sort of land title delivered to villagers” than “25000 rural residents (i.e. teachers, delegates, and other people connected to get the per diems) participated in training sessions”… the first changes the trajectory in millions of small ways, the second is pretty much guaranteed to reward the wrong people.

Pour cette 2e phase, le projet sécurisation foncière du Millénium challenge account (MCA) du Burkina élargit la zone d’intervention à 47 communes, soit les 17 communes pilotes de la phase 1 et 30 nouvelles communes. Ainsi, l’atelier de Kombissiri avait pour objectif de recueillir les réactions et recommandations des acteurs au niveau central, notamment les institutions ayant des accords de mise en œuvre du Compact sur ce plan d’intervention dans les 47 communes concernées. Cette phase 2 s’étend jusqu’en juillet 2014.

I am not against per diems, obviously people need to be compensated, but most of the sessions people attend are pretty worthless as a general rule.  Heck, we even debate whether university lectures in the richest most educated communities of the world have any effect… imagine then someone reading a French document to a group of non-French speaking villagers, in a monotone with no eye contact…

via Projet de sécurisation foncière : le MCA lance la deuxième phase dénommée LPT45 – leFaso.net, l’actualité au Burkina Faso.

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Stylish and sexy… that’s us!

Posted on June 3, 2013 by mkevane

Elliot, Leslie and I were just at Villa Kaya four days ago… Elliot in bathing suit having a sprite, Leslie and I very dusty… we didn’t feel…. no, we were, people kept glancing over at our table… I may even have heard the word chouette describing Elliot!  Seriously, a nice place three blocks from our house.  The owners deserve lots of credit for trying… young hipster entrepreneurs… Hope they succeed.

We were having cocktails at Villa Kaya, an upscale tapas bar that had, since opening some months before, been adopted as the nightspot du jour for Ouaga’s energetic expat community. The tables were set in a sandy courtyard shaded by towering neem trees. The walls were painted blood red and hung with West African objets d’art. Everything looked stylish, sexy — chouette, cool, in the parlance of the French girls chattering at the table. It was decidedly unlike anything either of us — my companion, a longtime resident, had recently repatriated to Paris — had seen in Ouagadougou before.

via Ouagadougou’s unruffled rhythms – The Washington Post.

Posted in Burkina Faso, Culture | Comments Off on Stylish and sexy… that’s us!

Respect? Mais pour qui?

Posted on May 30, 2013 by mkevane

Ancien président du Sénégal, maintenant secrétaire général de l’Organisation internationale de la francophonie, mais il semble ne pas avoir lu aucun roman africain depuis ses jours de collegien… Et Mabanckou?  Monénembo? Kourouma? Khadra? Achebe?  Oubliez-les… chez M. Diouf c’est toujours Corneille et Racine.  On comprend donc pourquoi les jeunes de l’Afrique de l’ouest ne lisent pas.

Quel a été votre premier émoi littéraire?

En classe de sixième, j’ai été particulièrement ému à la lecture du Cid de Corneille. Ce fut un grand moment dans ma vie de collégien. Aujourd’hui encore, certaines phrases me reviennent: «Nous partîmes cinq cents; mais par un prompt renfort, nous nous vîmes trois mille en arrivant au port…», «Que peut-on m’ordonner que mon bras n’accomplisse?», «À qui venge son père, il n’est rien d’impossible», «Jamais nous ne goûtons de parfaite allégresse: nos plus heureux succès sont mêlés de tristesse.» Bien entendu, nous avons aussi dû lire tous les classiques comme Racine, Molière, sans oublier ce géant de la littérature qu’était Victor Hugo.

Quelle a été l’importance du livre de l’enfance à l’âge adulte?Vos influences?

Le livre a représenté pour le jeune Sénégalais que j’étais une formidable ouverture sur le monde. Par la langue française, qui est la langue officielle du Sénégal grâce à Léopold Sédar Senghor, j’ai pu avoir accès à tous les grands auteurs francophones, dans des domaines aussi différents que l’histoire, les sciences, la philosophie et, bien sûr, la littérature. Jeune étudiant, j’ai notamment été influencé par Montesquieu.

Quels sont les titres qui vous ont marqué, les auteurs que vous appréciez le plus?

J’aime beaucoup Victor Hugo, Racine, Corneille. Quelqu’un a dit que Corneille peint les hommes tels qu’ils devraient être; Racine les peint tels qu’ils sont. Par mon exigence éthique, ma recherche de la vertu et de l’héroïsme, je préfère Corneille pour les thèmes qu’il développe! Bien entendu, j’aime l’œuvre de Léopold Sédar Senghor, mon père spirituel et mon maître, comme celle de Césaire. J’apprécie aussi beaucoup les écrivains africains, comme Birago Diop: un écrivain sénégalais qui, tout en écrivant en français, arrive à vous faire pénétrer dans l’esprit de notre civilisation. Son écriture est telle qu’on a l’impression d’entendre les intonations de nos langues nationales… Enfin, il y a Hampâté Bâ, un écrivain malien qui a écrit Amkoullel l’enfant peul, un très beau récit. C’était un homme très tolérant, très ouvert. Il est venu me rendre visite, une fois, à Dakar.

Que lisez-vous en ce moment? En avez-vous seulement le temps?

Mon emploi du temps ne me laisse, il est vrai, que peu de temps pour la lecture. Je lis beaucoup de littérature spirituelle, qui est plus reposante pour l’esprit et qui, d’une manière générale, nous pousse à nous interroger sur le sens de la vie. La Bible et le Coran sont deux textes essentiels à mes yeux. Autrement, pour me distraire avant de dormir, j’avoue lire et relire les bandes dessinées d’Astérix ou d’Iznogoud, dont je reste un inconditionnel!

via Malijet Entretien avec … Abdou Diouf, à propos de la lecture Mali Bamako.

Posted in Culture | Comments Off on Respect? Mais pour qui?