Africa Table - CAS Summer Research Award Recipients Present on Cocoa and Crises in Colonial Côte d'Ivoire and the Government's Role in School Quality in Uganda

Join the Center for African Studies for our weekly lunchtime lecture series. This week CAS summer research award recipients will present on their respective studies.

Seeds of the Nation? Cocoa and Crises in Colonial Côte d'IvoireElizabeth Jacob, PhD Student, History Department, CAS Summer Research Fellowship Recipient 2017

Elizabeth studies twentieth-century francophone West Africa, with a focus on histories of gender, labor, and violence. She is particularly interested in practices of female militancy in anticolonial and nationalist movements. Jacob holds a bachelor's degree from Columbia University in history and french & francophone studies.

Jacob's current research examines the origins of the civil crises the destabilized Côte d'Ivoire in the early 2000s. Her dissertation traces the roots of the conflict to the colonial period, highlighting the role of cocoa cultivation and land disputes in the 1940s and 1950s in prompting the ethnic tensions that ultimately fueled the conflict. 

The Effect of Decentralization on Service Provision in Uganda: Does Bringing Government Closer Improve School Quality?Aala Abdelgadir, PhD Candidate, Political Science, CAS Summer Research Fellowship Recipient 2017

Aala Abdelgadir is interested in the political economy of local governance. In particular, she seeks to investigate the incentives of local bureaucrats and how social ties between them and the communities they serve affect the provision of public goods and services in Sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East. Abdelgadir holds a BA in political science from Yale University. Previously, she worked as a research associate at the Council on Foreign Relations.