Conducted by USR 3336, GLOBAFRICA is an ambitious history programme for rethinking Africa’s long term integration into the rest of the World. This multidisciplinary project intends to establish new tools to give a balanced vision of connections between Africa and the other continents before the slave trade and colonialism, in the 18th and 19th centuries respectively. This vision is as remote from the simplistic view of an isolated Africa as from the excessive reification of still fairly unknown connections. Phenomena such as dynamics of populations, demographic and epidemiological crises as well as increasing social complexity and State or cultural formations, are tackled from the angle of intercontinental exchanges. As such, the project will focus on the relations between oceanic and Saharan interfaces on the one hand, and inland political and social configurations on the other. Up to what point, from which period must we consider the African continent as being integrated into the rest of the world? Examining the intensity and actual forms of exchanges will be conducted on the basis of special detailed cases in the said project. 1. Analysis of the economic, political and cultural relations between the Swahili Coast and the political formations of Eastern and Southern Africa from the 11th to the 17th centuries. While we know that this region saw the emergence, at the interface between Indian Ocean networks and the African continent, followed by the spreading of Swahili culture, we know much less about the way it was linked to political and cultural bodies as important as the monarchies of the Great Lakes in the East or the Great Zimbabwe in the South. In this light, the idea is to realign the study of this littoral society by turning the perspective around and observing it from inland. 2. The study of the spreading and impact of the bubonic plague in Sub-Saharan Africa, is taken here as evidence of the continent’s integration into global exchanges before the 15th century. For if Africa experienced a demographic crisis and deep transformations of its socio-political organisation, in the 14th century, in relation to the black plague, our current knowledge on the way this continent took part in a global system that was restructuring fully from the 15th century onwards, will have to be reconsidered radically. 3. Finally, the third case will need to specify the role of exogenous plants in the arrival of new human settlements in the Great Lakes Region, with new economic, social and cultural organisations, by following cultural diversity and comparing this geochronology with historical and archaeological knowledge. From a theoretical point of view, GLOBAFRICA seeks to go beyond the sole commercial pattern of exchanges through a new multidisciplinary approach, by combining a reading and detailed examination of ancient written sources, a study of existing archaeological collections (or collections under elaboration), and input from the hard sciences (paleo-botany, genetics and chemistry). Making our tools more complex in order to grasp “connections” with new elements, such as material culture and environmental elements, or new evidence such as epidemics, all demolishing the idea of isolation. By shifting the focus on inland societies and their interactions with the continent’s interfaces, GLOBAFRICA will also make it possible to go beyond the major Euro-, Indo- and Islamo-centred narratives of external stimuli, which are all too often the elements through which African historical dynamics are explained, so as to change them for a balanced vision and periodisation specific to “African globalisation”.

As the African population continues to grow and move, the continent’s societies have seen increasing social, cultural, linguistic and economic heterogeneity. Cities and metropolitan areas have now reached a crossroads where local authorities have little effective control over the socio-economic processes which they have been charged to manage. Long-term and more recent voluntary and forced movements and forms of inclusion and exclusion going along with them contribute to a rapidly evolving redistribution of power and space that is at once highly visible but yet poorly understood. What makes this particularly visible today in several countries across the continent is the fact that exclusion has taken the form of violent attacks targeting more specifically foreigners or groups identified as ethnic, political, or religious outsiders. This project aims to document these phenomena in two specific areas: that of the changing social dynamics at work in the continent between hosts and strangers, nationals and foreigners and that of the role of the State in managing cultural diversity and socio-economic differentiation. This research project will distinguish itself from several different trends in the study of African societies which have produced a rich and diverse literature in the recent years. It will do so specifically in tackling xenophobic forms of exclusion (from their inception down to violent occurrences or demobilisation). Drawing fro the rich literature on autochthony but without confining to it only, the project intends moving away from the study of violent groups seeking to overtake power either nationally or regionally, and approaches in terms of economies of war, armed conflicts and the (re)emergence of militia groups in the democratisation contexts. Three research questions will guide researchers’ work: 1. The historicity of politics and place in the production of xenophobic exclusion and violence; 2. Forms of mobilisation, counter-mobilisation and demobilisation and 3. The question of State retreat or embededness. Building on a small group of experienced researchers familiar with African terrains and the management of this kind of projects, the partnership relies on a team of 16 senior and junior researchers, based in both Europe and Africa. The comparison focuses on Nigeria, South Africa, Kenya and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Capitalising on data collected previously and particularly the production of original data in a comparative perspective, the project will be divided between phases of collaborative design and phases of fieldwork over a period of 36 months. It is based on a partnership between internationally renowned research and higher education institutions experienced in the logistical management of such programmes.

Urban National Parks in Emerging Countries (UNPEC) : Rio de Janeiro, Mumbai, Nairobi, Cape Town The issue of national parks is generally considered from a “conservation vs. development” perspective. There is an abundant literature on this topic, which mostly emphasizes the need for participative management to include local people in developing and implementing conservation policy, thus reconciling efficiency and equity. When considering protected areas found in the megalopolises of developing countries, however, some of our usual conclusions must be set aside, even at the risk of political incorrectness. When expanding slums, multiplying upper-class residences, and other competing land uses blur the boundaries of national parks they abut-and sometimes subsume-is it still possible to advocate joint management and participation? Some of local dwellers often have no interest in park conservation – in particular as they usually enjoy but limited access to and benefits from it, and remain largely estranged from the “environmental knowledge” which could otherwise motivate support for biodiversity conservation. In the urban South, a similar paradigm shift is needed with regard to policies on housing for the poor. Rather than justifying slum clearance and resettlement, most scholars instead advocate in situ rehabilitation. This approach weakens, however, when confronted with slums that have set up within or beside national parks: rehabilitation in those specific places can undermine the very natural systems such protected areas exist to preserve. These issues are all the more complex given the international context in which they are located: emerging countries (to varying degrees). “Emergence”, in socio-cultural terms, means nothing if not the juxtaposition of increasingly contrasted groups with diverging representation patterns. More rich people, but as many poor as before: broadly speaking, this is the situation in Brazil, India, South Africa and even Kenya. Well-off people adopt dominant ideas from the West, considering urban parks as a recreation areas or as places devoted to the good cause of biodiversity conservation, or as privileged places for themselves to live nearby. On the contrary, some slum dwellers tend to see the protected area as a stock of land to be potentially built on. For the herdsmen of Nairobi and farmers of Mumbai, the park remains a means of livelihood, where agriculture, grazing or collecting firewood are possible. Lastly, the process of “emergence” in these five countries highlights new issues at stake: these parks are called “national” but, since they are located in a local dimension within urban agglomerations, they face the challenge of designing and implementing management strategies at all of these multiple scales. Parks can contribute to the global image of the city and reach the status of iconic logos (Cape Town, Rio) whereas until now, they may have been considered as a local source of income (Nairobi) or neglected by urban decision makers (Mumbai). Environmental objectives can be a rallying factor for local (Rio) even national (Cape Town) integration - at least in a narrative form – but they can also work as tools of spatial and social segmentation (Mumbai).