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This thesis starts by arguing that the civil conflicts that erupted in the African Great Lakes are rooted in a continuous pursuit of power, in which ethnic, regional and political identifiers are used by the contenders for power to rally community support. In an introductory chapter, I go back to the colonial era, drawing attention to Burundi and Rwanda, and then describe in more details Burundi's refugee crisis, ex-combatants' demobilization and the 2010 elections, all of which will be addressed in the subsequent chapters. In the second chapter, entitled "On the Instrumental Power of Refugees: Household Composition and Civil War in Burundi", I study changes in household composition following household's exposure to civil war in Burundi. The analyses rely on a panel dataset collected in rural Burundi in 2005 and 2010. To address concerns over the endogenous distribution violence, I use an instrumental variables strategy using the distance to refugee camps, in which the Hutu rebellion was organized from the mid-1990s onwards. The analysis focuses on the impact of violence on demographic changes within households. The third chapter, entitled "Who Benefited from Burundi's Demobilization Program?" and co-authored with Olivier Sterck (University of Oxford) and Philip Verwimp (ULB), assesses the impact of the demobilization cash transfers program, which took place from 2004 onwards in post-war Burundi. In the short run, we find that the cash payments had a positive impact on beneficiaries' consumption, non-food spending and investments. Importantly, it also generated positive spillovers on civilians in their home villages. However, both the direct impact and the spillovers seem to vanish in the long run. Ex-combatants' investments in assets were not productive enough to sustain their consumption pattern in the long run, as they ultimately ran out of demobilization money. In the fourth chapter, entitled "From Rebellion to Electoral Violence. Evidence from Burundi" and co-authored with Andrea Colombo (ULB) and Olivier ...

This paper assesses the impact of the demobilization, reinsertion and reintegration program in post-war Burundi. Two major rebel groups benefited from cash and in-kind transfers, the CNDD-FDD from 2004, and the FNL from 2010. A panel data of households collected in 2006 and 2010 is combined with official records from the National Commission for Demobilization, Reinsertion and Reintegration. Regression analysis shows that the cash payments received by FNL demobilized households had a positive impact on consumption, nonfood spending and investments. The program also generated positive spillovers in the villages where FNL combatants returned. Ex-combatants indeed spent a large part of their allowance on consumption goods and clothing, thereby generating a short-run economic boom in villages. However, the long-run evolution of consumption indicators is negative for CNDD-FDD households, as well as for villages where CNDD-FDD combatants returned, suggesting that the direct impact and the spillovers of the program vanished in the long run.

We aim at understanding the triggers of electoral violence, which spoiled 80% ofelections in Africa during the last decades. We focus on Burundi, a country wherepolls were organized in 2010, only few months after the end of a long-lasting civilwar. We find that an acute polarization between ex-rebels' groups is highly conduciveto electoral violence. In particular, we predict a five-fold increase in electoralviolence between the lowest- and highest-polarized municipality. However, neitherethnic nor political cleavages significantly determine such electoral malpractices.These results are robust to numerous specifications. We therefore argue that policiessupporting the transition of ex-rebel groups from warfare to the political arenashould be reinforced. ; info:eu-repo/semantics/published

In 2009, hostilities were brought to an end in Burundi when the FNL rebel group laid downweapons. In exchange for peace, ex-rebels benefited from a disarmament, demobilizationand reintegration (DDR) program to finance their return to civilian life. A few years earlier,another rebel group (CNDD-FDD) had gone through the same program. In this paper, weassess the impact of this complex program from a theoretical and an empirical viewpoint.First, we develop an agricultural model in order to predict the impact of demobilization cashtransfers on beneficiary and non-beneficiary households. Then, we test the theoretical modelby using a household panel dataset collected in rural Burundi. We find that, in the shortrun, the cash payments received by ex-combatants had a positive direct impact on purchasesand investments of beneficiaries, as well as an indirect positive impact on non-beneficiaries.We also find that the direct and indirect impacts on purchases vanish in the long run. Theseresults suggest that reinsertion grants may favour the acceptation of ex-combatants in theirlocal communities in the short run, but are most likely not sufficient for peace to hold.More generally, it emphasizes the importance of considering spillovers in the evaluation ofdevelopment programs. ; info:eu-repo/semantics/published

Cover -- Title -- Copyright -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Overview Africa's Cities: Opening Doors to the World -- The low development trap - Africa's urban economies are limited to nontradable goods and services -- Crowded, disconnected, and thus costly - Africa's cities are limited to nontradables by urban form -- Crowded cities -- Disconnected cities -- Costly cities -- Closed for business, out of service: The urgency of a new urban development path for Africa -- Cities are "closed for business" -- Cities are "out of service" -- Path dependence and interdependence -- Springing cities from the low development trap -- Formalize land markets, clarify property rights, and institute effective urban planning -- Make early and coordinated infrastructure investments - allowing for interdependence among sites, structures, and basic services -- Opening the doors -- Annex: African cities used in the analysis -- References -- Part I: Crowded and Disconnected African Cities -- Chapter 1 Crowded with people, not dense with capital -- Crowded with people -- Slums: Workers' only option when urban economic density is low but highly concentrated -- High population density at the city's core, rapid tapering on the outskirts -- Not dense with capital -- Not dense with buildings -- Not dense with amenities, not livable -- Case studies: Access to amenities in Dar es Salaam, Durban, and elsewhere in Africa -- Low human capital -- References -- Chapter 2 Disconnected land, people and jobs -- Disconnected land -- Collections of small and fragmented neighborhoods -- Spatial fragmentation -- People not connected to people: High fragmentation, low exposure, little potential for interaction -- People not connected to jobs -- Lack of transportation infrastructure -- Lack of money for transportation -- Inaccessible employment -- References