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This book shows how Rwanda's development model and the organisation of genocide are two sides of the same coin. In the absence of mineral resources, the elite organised and managed the labour of peasant producers as efficient as possible. In order to stay in power and benefit from it, the presidential clan chose a development model that would not change the political status quo. When the latter was threatened, the elite invoked the preservation of group welfare of the Hutu, called for Hutu unity and solidarity and relied on the great mass (rubanda nyamwinshi) for the execution of the genocide. A strategy as simple as it is horrific. The genocide can be regarded as the ultimate act of self-preservation through annihilation under the veil of self-defense. Why did tens of thousands of ordinary people massacred tens of thousands other ordinary people in Rwanda in 1994? What has agricultural policy and rural ideology to do with it? What was the role of the Akazu, the presidential clan around president Habyarimana? Did the civil war cause the genocide? And what insights can a political economy perspective offer ?Based on more than ten years of research, and engaging with competing and complementary arguments of authors such as Peter Uvin, Alison Des Forges, Scott Strauss, René Lemarchand, Filip Reyntjens, Mahmood Mamdani and André Guichaoua, the author blends economics, politics and agrarian studies to provide a new way of understanding the nexus between development and genocide in Rwanda. Students and practitioners of development as well as everyone interested in the causes of violent conflict and genocide in Africa and around the world will find this book compelling to read..

This book shows how Rwanda's development model and the organisation of genocide are two sides of the same coin. In the absence of mineral resources, the elite organised and managed the labour of peasant producers as efficient as possible. In order to stay in power and benefit from it, the presidential clan chose a development model that would not change the political status quo. When the latter was threatened, the elite invoked the preservation of group welfare of the Hutu, called for Hutu unity and solidarity and relied on the great mass (rubanda nyamwinshi) for the execution of the genocide.

In this contribution I analyse socio-economic and demographic correlates of the spread of the COVID-19 epidemic across Belgian municipalities. I am interested in the onset of the epidemic, its intensity early on as well as the growth of contaminations in April. The paper uses contamination data from Sciensano, the Belgian health agency in charge of epidemiological information. In the period under investigation, March and April 2020, Belgium used a uniform and restrictive test policy for COVID-19, which changed on May 4th. The data are completed with socio-economic and demographic data published by governmental agencies. Employing linear and log-linear models I find that COVID-19 spread faster in larger, more densely populated, higher income municipalities with more elderly people and a larger share of the elderly population residing in care homes. Richer municipalities managed to slow down the epidemic in April more compared to poorer ones. Municipalities which were more exposed to migration, foreign travel for business, leisure or family affairs were affected earlier on in the epidemic. Income correlates with the contamination rate in particular in the Flemish Region whereas the share of foreign nationalities correlates with the contamination rate in particular in the Walloon Region. ; info:eu-repo/semantics/published

The northern provinces of Burundi have suffered from an inferior education system since independence. This paper shows that the current, northern-led regime has chosen a drastic way to reverse that subordination. The national test (Concours National) at the end of primary school is at the heart of the matter. Using the universe of individual test score data which can be used to construct a school-level panel and applying differencein-differences analysis, the paper shows strong improvements in test scores in northern versus southern schools since the ruling party won an absolute majority in the 2010 elections. Immediately after these elections, schools situated in very poor, rural areas in the north scored as high as schools in non-poor areas of the capital. The paper finds that increased success rates, improved mean test scores and decreased standard deviations are explained by the percent of votes at the municipality level obtained by the ruling party in the 2010 parliamentary elections. Controlling for school budget and cohort size variables does not change the results. The latter are interpreted in the political economy of education reform in Burundi and considered as a case of ethno-regional favoritism in Africa. ; info:eu-repo/semantics/published