African Studies Concentration

The African Studies Concentration at AGS is an opportunity for students pursuing the Master’s program in International Relations and Diplomacy to gain specific knowledge in Sub-Saharan Africa and be able to demonstrate an area specialization for future employers.

This option is especially designed for:

• Students who want to work in NGOs, intergovernmental organizations or governmental agencies working in the field of Sub-Saharan Africa

• Students who prepare to conduct doctoral or other scholarly research on Africa

• Students who have an interest in Sub-Saharan Africa

This option tailors the M.A. in International Relations and Diplomacy curriculum around the subject of Sub-Saharan Africa, by including three components:

• A set of two electives on the subject of Africa (more details)

• A reading list on African studies, along with specific research activities (more details)

• An African-oriented thesis topic (more details)

Throughout this process, students regularly meet with the Concentration advisor to receive guidance in connecting the different components of the concentration and in conducting their research.

At the end of the program, students take a comprehensive examination to ensure that they have have acquired the required set of concepts and theories in African studies provided by the program. More details

Students who complete all of these requirements (coursework, readings, African-oriented thesis, and concentration exam) receive a mention of their African Studies concentration on their diploma.

Coursework

The two courses offered in the area are an introductory course on the politics of Sub-Saharan Africa and a course focusing on the way the presence of oil and other resources impacts and shapes the African continent and its interaction with the rest of the world.

IRD-EA-640 : Contemporary Sub-Saharan Africa

This is an introductory course to contemporary African politics. Students need only a rudimentary background in political science, and no background in African studies. It is recommended that students have some idea of the current economic realities facing African countries, and become familiar with post- colonial ideologies, including dependency and underdevelopment theory. Approached through a comparative examination of the life stories of several of its most important leaders, a political biography approach will allow students to investigate postcolonial African regimes with depth and specificity without requiring of them any previous disciplinary background. After a brief introduction to African political geography – students will learn the map of contemporary Africa – they will systematically sample cases from each of the four broadly defined regions of the subcontinent (West, East, Central and South). But instead of dividing Africa geographically, this course will classify states according to their colonial past (Anglophone, Francophone, Lusophone, Hispanophone, Italophone) in order to test, through comparison of empirical case studies, the central hypothesis of this course: Different forms of colonial domination employed by the British, French, Belgian, Portuguese, Spanish, Italian and Afrikaaner settlers resulted in different post-colonial experiences and regimes.

Learning Objectives:

By the end of the semester students should be able to identify all African states on a map. Additionally, they should:

• Have an historical understanding of contemporary African states, both their colonial and post-colonial eras

• Know ‘who rules’ today, the dominant political forces (ethnic, electoral, commercial, etc.) and how political power has been acquired and maintained

• Be able to conduct biographical research on African leaders,

• Be familiar with critical theories of dependency and underdevelopment, neo-colonialism, and imperialism.

IRD-EA-641: The Scramble for African Resources

Natural resources – like conflict oil and blood diamonds – have been blamed for many of Africa’s illnesses, including poverty, corruption, dictatorship and war. This course will explore the debate on the ‘resource curse’ in sub-Saharan Africa, examining such political-economic theories as ‘the paradox of plenty,’ the ‘Dutch disease,’ and the ‘rentier state.’ It also will explore how the politics of extractive economies relate to conflict processes, examining ‘environmental scarcity’ theory, ‘greed versus grievance’ theory, and a number of strong empirical correlations between raw materials export dependency and inter-group struggles for resources in the Third World. Students will apply these theories and approaches to several of the most newsworthy African case studies: Gabon, Angola, Chad, Equatorial Guinea, Congo-Brazzaville, Sierra Leone, São Tomé & Príncipe, Sudan, and Nigeria. The main theme of this course is the ‘oil curse’ in Africa, but other natural resources such as diamonds and timber are also discussed. Its objectives are to describe how primary- resource- dependent development creates dysfunctional politics, economics and government in Africa, and to evaluate initiatives at the international level to change this problem. What makes this course special is its approach, breaking up the vast theoretical literature on the oil curse into separate levels of analysis, moving down from the failure of international governance initiatives to the successes of domestic social forces, to arrive by argumentative structure at the conclusions that real change has come not from above but from below.

Learning Objectives:

By the end of the term students should have a fluency in theoretical perspectives on extractive economies, foreign relations, and political violence, as well as current factual knowledge of politics and economics of country case studies. In the spirit of case study method, students should be able to apply the theories to the cases appropriately, and argue plausible rival theoretical perspectives. Finally students should be familiar with several proposed solutions to the problems evoked over the course of the semester, and should be able to argue the relative merits of each. 

Readings and activities

The third component of the concentration is for students to read from a canonic list of works on African politics. These books are kept in the AGS Library for those students who are doing the concentration. Students receive a set of preparatory questions allowing them to make the most of the readings.

Given our school's privileged location in Paris, it is possible for students in our concentration to meet and interview African politicians, both currently in power as well as those in exile, and to participate in the rich cultural life of African arts that flourish in the former colonial metropole. With its anthropological museums (Musée de l'Homme, Quai Branly), research centers (CEAN, CERI), libraries (BNF, Documentation Française) and thriving cycles of conferences (Sorbonne, College de France) Paris is an ideal place to specialize in African studies. Students are encouraged to take part in the numerous resources which the city has to offer.

African-oriented Master’s thesis

In addition to coursework, students in the African concentration are expected to select as a topic for their Master's thesis a subject dealing with current African affairs. 

Some of the thesis already done by concentration students include a study of the role of Chinese oil interests in South Sudan, the causes of the civil war in Ivory Coast, the rise of the responsibility to protect doctrine in Rwanda, the resource scarcity hypothesis in Niger, and the problems of nation-building in the emergence of civil war in Liberia.

Comprehensive examination

Finally, at the end of their studies at AGS, students take a comprehensive exam on the subject of Sub-Saharan Africa. This exam is a combination of written essays and oral questions. It takes place before the Concentration advisor. Students who have completed all three requirements (coursework, African-oriented thesis, and concentration) should have no problem passing this exam successfully.