Decentralisation in sub-Saharan Africa promises to build responsive institutions, hold officials to account and promote popular participation. Still, existent studies ignore the everyday interface between decentralised structures and citizens, as well as how decentralised institutions function in relation to their local contexts and other “authorities” on the margins. These contexts shape service provision and the impact of local power structures on local communities. Against this backdrop, our conference in Dakar, Senegal, on “Dynamics of Everyday Life within Municipal Administrations in Francophone and Anglophone Africa,” which took place in May 2019, demonstrated three key points of interest: namely, how actors within local bureaucracies interface with those who are outside; how ordinary citizens appropriate the bureaucratic techniques of the state and how these actors negotiate and adapt to the daily practices of municipal administrations. In general, decentralisation is not simply implemented, rather, it creates new frameworks and spaces for both formal and informal public action.

Les associations en Afrique, comme ailleurs, n’ont eu de cesse de se multiplier (Almeida- Topor, Georg, 1989) au point que Lester L. Salamon parle déjà en 1994 d’une « révolution associationnelle globale » aussi signifiante que la montée de l’État-nation (Salamon, 1994 : 109). Le champ de recherche est bien balisé, les associations constituant un champ d’études central en sciences sociales (Agulhon, 1978 ; Cottin-Marx, 2019 ; Diop, Benoist, 2007 ; Laville, Sainsaulieu, 2004 [1997] ; Tostensen, Tvedten, Vaa, 2001). Elles sont un point d’entrée privilégié pour analyser des domaines sociaux variés (culture, santé, activité professionnelle, religion), ou les catégories de personnes qu’elles réu- nissent (par exemple, associations paysannes, associations de jeunes, associations fé- minines). De nombreux travaux se sont intéressés à la trajectoire de leurs acteurs, aux fonctions sociales qu’elles remplissent, ou encore aux associations en tant qu’espace de gouvernance intermédiaire entre l’État et les citoyens (Bierschenk, Chauveau, Olivier de Sardan, 2000 ; Blundo, Le Meur, 2009 ; Diop, Benoist, 2007 ; Tostensen, Tvedten, Vaa, 2001)... Lire la suite.

The question of the practice of urban land in Bamako is the subject of a crucial (in-)security, which is based both on bureaucratic imbroglio and on an epistemological difference of regularisations of access to the ground through national, regional, municipal institutions and the grassroots. To put an end to the illegal occupation of urban land by the population in need of housing, the state and its representatives have undertaken urban redevelopment measures. Land speculation is taking hold where the State’s intervention capacities do not seem capable to control demographic pressure. Households have been and continue to be evicted by the authorities for projects deemed as “urban redevelopment” or “public utility.” Some citizens have regrouped in Associations that have set themselves the task of combating abuses by the state.

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