Publications
Here we have listed and generated access (where available) to some of our key research outputs in the fields of conflict and crisis-affected sub-Saharan Africa.
Nous avons dressé ici une liste de certains de nos principaux résultats de recherche dans le domaine des conflits et de l'Afrique subsaharienne touchée par les crises, et nous avons donné accès à ces résultats (lorsqu'ils sont disponibles).
Journal articles & Chapters / Articles and chapitres scientifiques
Books/ Livres
Media Publications/Publications dans les média
Burkina Faso:
the key role played by the media in the latest coup
The Conversation February 2022
The dust appears to have settled following the recent coup in the west African state of Burkina Faso. A televised statement on January 31 named Lieutenant-Colonel Paul-Henri Sandaogo Damiba as interim leader and said that the independence of the judiciary as well as freedom of speech and movement had been restored. The Patriotic Movement for Preservation and Restoration – the name chosen by the interim military government – would, a spokesperson said, ensure “the continuity of the state pending the establishment of transitional bodies”......
Burkina Faso coup raises questions about growing Russian involvement in west Africa
The Conversation October 2022
As if fighting in what – for now, at least – appears to be a losing battle in Ukraine weren’t enough, the Wagner Group, a private army of Russian mercenaries commanded by Yevgeny Prigozhin, a close associate of Vladimir Putin, is heavily committed in a range of conflicts and security crises in west Africa.
Already involved in Libya, Central African Republic, Mozambique, Mali, Sudan and Madagascar, the Wagner Group is engaged in training, fighting anti-government forces and brutally quashing protests, all supporting Russia’s fight to supplant the influence of French and the UK’s former colonial powers in Africa.
Mali, a country at the core of violent extremism spreading throughout west African Sahel, has pledged allegiance to Russia at the expense of France, which wound up its operations there in August, despite nine years and a total cost of billions of euros for supporting its military.
‘Radio as usual’? Digital technologies and radio in conflict-Affected Burkina Faso
Journalism June 2023
This article identifies four new realities shaping the ways in which Burkinabe radio journalists deal with the insecurity threat that emerged in 2015 and the rise of terrorism in the region, all of which are related to digital technologies. First, digital technologies may symbolically strengthen the collective radio journalist-listener link; second, digital technologies are also tools that help journalists and audiences face the challenges of the new security situation; and third, digital technologies can represent risks to journalists and listeners. But this research also highlights, fourthly, that digital technologies can be inappropriate, and that the security context is creating a new modernity for former—more traditional—uses of radio. These realities indicate that digital technologies are integral to the appropriating and modernising process affecting traditional modes of listening and reception. Drawing on 37 interviews and three focus groups with Burkinabe community radio journalists in 2022, the article discusses existing literature in the Global North that highlights the significant disruptive effect of digital technology on radio both as a device, and in terms of broadcasting and listening practices, with it being suggested that traditional FM radio’s very survival is threatened. It finally shows that whilst digital technologies might sound a death knell for traditional broadcasting formats in the Global North, suggesting an ‘either/or’ situation, the situation differs in Burkina Faso, and therefore in other similarly affected conflict zones, where digital technologies reconceptualise the use of traditional radio without threatening it.