Thèse en cours : Infrastructures, population dynamics and internal migrations in Sub-Saharan Africa

Université Paris Dauphine
Sous la direction de S. Mesplé-Somps et A.-S. Robilliard
Date d’inscription : Décembre 2018

The thesis investigates the interactions between population dynamics, internal migrations and infrastructures in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). Analysis of this relationship is a major concern in a context where SSA faces the greatest current and future population growth, as well as development challenges due to both observed demographic dynamics and the most difficult climatic and political conditions. Three chapters will composed the thesis. The first chapter examines the impact of the construction of schools on fertility and child mortality in Niakhar, Senegal. In addition to administrative data on school infrastructures, data from the SSD (Système de Surveillance Démographique) over the period 1984-2017, a long term panel which is relatively rare in an African context, will be mobilized. In the second chapter the effects of the expansion of the road network in Mali in the early 2000s on the living standards of people living in villages and small towns will be analyzed. More specifically, the heterogeneity of the impact of road access will be investigated depending on household socio-economic characteristics. Geo-referenced dataset including a 30-year panel of 9,000 Malian localities and individual census data will be used. The third and last chapter examines the dynamics of population growth in relation to internal migrations in Senegal. The same dataset of HDSS of Niakhar used in the first chapter will be associated to climate data and dataset on infrastructures and development projects, to identify the determinants of emigration flows in the rural area of Niakhar and its impacts on the locality of origin.