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Highlights

Urban Development in African Cities - Nick Dines

Nick Dines is a Visiting Fellow at the Robert Schuman Centre. Since 2017 he has conducted fieldwork in Morocco and South Africa, where he has established important contacts with scholars and professionals working in the fields of international migration and cultural policy.

Nick Dines’ research focuses on the increasingly strategic role of African cities in economic development, cultural policy and migration management. In particular he has explored the ways in which state and elite actors in Rabat and Cape Town have developed new cultural infrastructure and selectively promoted local diversity to enhance the regional and global influence of the two cities.

In addition, his research on Morocco has drawn attention to how the kingdom has recently sought to strengthen its political, economic, religious and cultural ties with Africa. As well as re-joining the African Union in 2017 and applying to become a member of ECOWAS in the same year, it has invested heavily in the communication and transport sectors of West African states and has introduced immigration legislation as a means, in part, to improve its intra-African relations and restore its pan-African standing. Such shifts in Africa’s internal geopolitics need to be understood and monitored in order to make better sense of the continent’s growing role in global affairs and its relations with neighbouring regions.

Nick has contacts with a range of Moroccan and African civil society organisations and scholars working on the field migration, including Mehdi Alioua, Chair of Migration at the Université Internationale de Rabat and Aly Tandian, director of GERM (Laboratoire des Etudes et Recherches sur le Genre. l’Environnement, la Religion et les Migrations) at the l’Univeristé Gaston Berger de Saint-Louis du Sénégal. In South Africa, he is also in contact with a range of scholars and organisations working in the field of international and internal migration, including the Scalabrini Centre of Cape Town.

 

 

Resource Management and Livelihood Systems of Agro-pastoral Communities - Michele Nori

Michele Nori is a Tropical Agronomist with a specialisation in Rural Sociology and a specific expertise on resource management and livelihood systems of agro-pastoral communities. His publications range from scientific papers, to technical notes and advocacy documents on matters related to agro-pastoral livelihoods. His current concern is to provide effective scientific evidence and policy advice on aspects of rural development, food security, natural resource management and rural migration through sound analysis of field realities and practices.

Specifically in the African context Michele has worked in the Horn of Africa, the Sahel and in the Maghreb investigating and consulting on agro-pastoral livelihoods, including in Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda, Sudan, Mali, Niger, Djibouti, Somaliland, Chad, Mauritania, Tunisia, Morocco. 

At the EUI Michele has been recently investigating the interface between mobility and migrations, specifically in the Mediterranean setting through the European Commission Marie Curie-funded project TRAMed, and the RuMiT project. He is currently active on the ERC PASTRES project, a five-year research project looking into the ways Pastoralists live with and through the uncertainties that caracterise their livelihoods.PASTRES is jointly implemented together with the Institute of Development Studies (IDS) at the University of Sussex, UK (see also the Research and Partnerships section).