In the early 1980s, a group of radical African economists working at the Dakar-based Institut Africain de Développement Economique et de Planification (IDEP) were dismissed. Among them were three Ghanaian economists, Tony Obeng, Cadman Atta Mills, and Kwame Amoa, who applied a neocolonial analysis of global political economy to critique international development policies. Although the precise circumstances of their dismissal remain unclear, it was evident that their revolutionary approach to development clashed fundamentally with IDEP’s methods. Inspired by Ghanaian President Kwame Nkrumah’s theory of neocolonialism and the Latin American school of dependency theory, these Pan-African scholars refuted the dominant, anti-political, dehistorical, and simplistic Western explanation of Africa’s underdevelopment and urgently searched for better explanations. Drawing on institutional records, working papers, interviews, memos, and published and unpublished papers, this article centers Africans and African institutions engaged in development thinking in the larger history of economic thought in the 1970s and 1980s.

In 1864, Umar Taal, one of the most consequential figures of nineteenth-century West Africa, perished in Maasina (Mali), a region he had conquered two years prior. Historians have studied the political and intellectual underpinnings of Taal’s last conquest, but not its ramifications inside families. Exploring colonial-era migrations and marriages in my own family in Mali, I suggest intimate history as mode of historical inquiry and writing to elucidate the afterlives of war. I provide a translocal and gendered microhistory of the aftermath of Taal’s jihad, showing how the ripples of past Islamic revolutions shaped the intimacies of twentieth-century family life.

The domination and exploitation inherent to colonialism entailed casting Africans as violators of European standards, expectations, and even aspirations. This article identifies messaging which permeated the everyday experiences of African wage earners by locating the ways in which employers embedded their understanding of Africans as potential violators into the employment relationship. It examines the records of the Tribunal de Première Instance in Dakar, Senegal, during the decades of high colonialism to reveal the nature of that dynamic, exploring implicit expectations among employers regarding their employees, particularly related to allegations of theft or abandonment of work brought against workers. Analysis of such cases particularly highlights domestic workers, who were overwhelmingly male. The interactions and claims in the justice records reveal clear constructions of violation within the attitudes and actions of non-African employers in colonial Dakar and present the court as a venue for perpetuating that rhetoric.

There has been limited research on African policy instruments’ historical and institutional nature in health policy literature. However, in the field of health systems research, there are many examples that show the permanent use of financing instruments inspired by liberal (pro-market) ideas such as user fees, performance bonuses, or private practice of medicine in Africa. Through an analysis of archives (1840–1960), this article shows the presence of these instruments in the health system during the French colonial period in Senegal. Thus, this study shows that these financing policy instruments’ institutional presence and longevity are part of a liberal approach that predates international organizations’ contemporary (and liberal) promotion. This study uses a historical and institutionalist approach to understand the context, actors, and underlying factors that allowed for this historical continuity, resulting in the permanence of these instruments.

Large carnivores play a crucial role in their native ecosystems, but their populations are rapidly declining across the African continent. West Africa is no exception, with large protected areas often forming the last strongholds for these species. Little is known about the population status and ecology of large carnivores in the region, hampering the design and implementation of effective conservation strategies. We conducted a camera-trap survey during the dry season in Niokolo-Koba National Park, the largest terrestrial protected area in Senegal and the second largest in West Africa, to investigate the spatio-temporal ecology of the four large carnivores inhabiting the Park: the spotted hyaena Crocuta crocuta, leopard Panthera pardus, West African lion Panthera leo leo and African wild dog Lycaon pictus. Spotted hyaenas and leopards had the widest spatial distribution and highest probability of site use. Spotted hyaena site use was positively associated with leopard relative abundance index and negatively associated with normalized difference vegetation index, whereas only distance to the nearest road influenced leopard site use. Distance to the Gambian River was the most important covariate positively affecting site use by lions. African wild dog site use was negatively associated with the relative abundance indices of lions and leopards. Lions, spotted hyaenas and leopards showed strong overlap in their activity patterns. By providing new information on the ecology of large carnivores in West Africa, including where they range and which habitats are critical for their survival, our study will facilitate conservation planning. Our findings lay the foundations for future research to conserve these threatened species in West Africa effectively and to guide ranger patrol efforts, which are key for their long-term survival.

Existing empirical literature provides converging evidence that selective emigration enhances human capital accumulation in the world's poorest countries. However, the within-country distribution of such brain gain effects has received limited attention. Focusing on Senegal, we provide evidence that the brain gain mechanism primarily benefits the wealthiest regions that are internationally connected and have better access to education. Conversely, human capital responses are negligible in regions lacking international connectivity, and even negative in better connected regions with inadequate educational opportunities. These results extend to internal migration, implying that highly vulnerable populations are trapped in the least developed areas.

The Allou Kagne (Senegal) deposit consists of different proportions of palygorskite and sepiolite, and these are associated with small quantities of quartz and X-ray amorphous silica as impurities. No pure palygorskite or sepiolite has been recognized by X-ray diffraction. Textural and microtextural features indicate that fibrous clay minerals of the Allou Kagne deposit were formed by direct precipitation from solution. Crystal-chemistry data obtained by analytical/transmission electron microscopy (AEM/TEM) analyses of isolated fibers show that the chemical composition of the particles varies over a wide range, from a composition corresponding to palygorskite to a composition intermediate between that of sepiolite and palygorskite, but particles with a composition corresponding to sepiolite have not been found. Taking into account the results from selected area electron diffraction and AEM-TEM, fibers of pure palygorskite and sepiolite have been found but it cannot be confirmed that all of the particles analyzed correspond to pure palygorskite or pure sepiolite because both minerals can occur together at the crystallite scale. In addition, the presence of Mg-rich palygorskite and very Al-rich sepiolite can be deduced.

It is infrequent in nature that palygorskite and sepiolite appear together because the conditions for simultaneous formation of the two minerals are very restricted. The chemical composition of the solution controls the formation of the Allou Kagne sepiolite and palygorskite. The wide compositional variation appears as a consequence of temporary variations of the chemical composition of the solution.