Jean-Benoît Falisse

• University of Edinburgh

In the 2000s, the government of Burundi and the United Nations created villages to permanently reintegrate over 5,000 uprooted families. Most of these ‘Peace Villages’ soon became areas of socio-economic instability. The dominant narrative blames inefficient aid coordination, while returnees deplore their marginalization in the process and in local...

Le financement basé sur la performance (FBP) a amplement voyagé en Afrique. Une analyse des entretiens avec des acteurs clefs et de la littérature grise montre que sa mise en œuvre au Burundi répond à un usage stratégique, comme outil de réalisation de la politique de gratuité partielle des soins, et renforce une élite technocratique au ministère d...

Health Facility Committees (HFCs) made of elected community members are often presented as key for improving the delivery of services in primary health-care facilities. They are expected to help Health Facility (HF) staff make decisions that best serve the interests of the population. More recently, Performance-Based Financing (PBF) advocates have...

This paper explores the effects of anti-corruption sensitisation messages on bribe-taking and public service delivery. In a novel lab-in-the-field experiment in Burundi, 527 public servants were asked to allocate rationed vouchers between anonymous citizens; some of these citizens attempted to bribe the public servants to obtain more vouchers than...

Human African Trypanosomiasis (HAT), commonly known as sleeping sickness, is closer than ever to being eliminated as a public health problem. The main narratives for the impressive drop in cases allude to drugs discovery and global financing and coordination. They raise questions about the relationship between well-funded international clinical res...

Background: Educators' mental health is crucial for educational outcomes, yet limited attention has been given to the psychological effects of violence on teachers, particularly in conflict-affected regions. We explore the relationship between exposure to violence and teachers' mental health in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and Niger,...

This is the latest version of our article on violence against teachers in the DRC, which will be published in the Feb 2025 issue of the Comparative Education Review

Debates about displacement and borders have undergone a jolting series of changes in the United Kingdom in the past two decades but especially in recent years. Under Conservative Party governments, the UK has been firmly implanted in global conversations as a country proudly in denial of its imperial tendencies, with post-Brexit anti-migrant racism...

This chapter considers how activism networks—including counter-colonial social mobilisation that might take various forms—can help to generate vital spaces of learning inside, and outside, the classroom. Reflections explore the roles of diaspora and other diverse groups in society in anti-deportation rallies, including in raising critical conscious...

There are increasing calls for attention to “decolonising” education curricula—as well as critiques of superficial decolonising endeavours at universities. Thinking around decolonisation, much like thinking around displacement, routinely suffers from the politics of abstraction, simplification and co-optation. Indeed, Edward Said cautioned long ago...

This chapter explores the idea of university space as an avenue for critically exploring policy and legal biases, situated practice and approaches to comparative thinking around displacement and borders. It probes into approaches to teaching and thinking in relation to colonial violence in the reproduction of power, gender, race and class relations...

This chapter concludes with a call for pedagogic experimentation and reflection while seeking to challenge the workings of racism, contemporary legacies of colonialism, and capitalism—inviting students and faculty to think creatively, explore diverse ethical lenses and de-centre technocratic state-centred narratives of borders and displacement whil...

While it is no secret that politicians are employing racist anti-migrant rhetoric in political strategies, the ambiguous role of universities is much less evident. Some university activities in the UK are co-opted into violent state logics of xenophobic racism by acting as “border” controls for the UK Home Office—monitoring and reporting on interna...

Introduction Attacks on schools in contexts of armed conflict affect every dimension of education, from school governance to students’ ability to learn (GCPEA, 2022). While abundant literature is concerned with attacks against students and children, violence against teachers in contexts of violent conflict is significantly less well documented and...

Introduction Traditional, complementary and alternative medicine (TCAM) providers are central for many when seeking healthcare. Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) are no exception. This paper seeks to better understand the use of TCAM by IDPs and its connection with the local integration of IDPs into the social fabric of the communities where they...

We designed and randomly evaluated the impact of a textbooks for self-study scheme in eastern DRC targeting student achievement in primary schools. Students in treatment schools were seven percentage points more likely to pass the national exam, and those who passed obtained higher scores. We also evidence higher scores on a French language test. T...

Community governance, the direct (co-)management of public services by community members, is a popular approach to improve the quality of, and access to, healthcare services–including in so-called ‘fragile’ states. The effectiveness of such approach is, however, debated, and scholars and practitioners have emphasised the need to properly reflect on...

Public trust is key for compliance to government protocols in times of health mitigating COVID-19 measures and its vaccination initiative, and thus understanding factors related to community health volunteers (CHVs) trusting the government and conspiracy theories is vital during the COVID-19 pandemic. The success of universal health coverage in Ken...

Background Understanding and improving access to essential services in (post)-conflict settings requires paying particular attention to the actors who occupy the space left ‘empty’ by weak or deficient State institutions. Religious institutions often play a fundamental role among these actors and typically benefit from high trust capital, a rare re...

This report presents the results of the midline study of the Building Resilience in Crises through Education (BRiCE) research project, which is led by the Institute of Development Studies (IDS) and the Institut Supérieur Pédagogique de Bukavu (ISP Bukavu). The research project is part of the BRiCE education programme funded by the European Commissi...

Can class help understand refugee camp dynamics? We mobilise the concepts of exploitation, life chances, and cultural and social capital to analyse socio-economic stratification and inequality in Nyarugusu refugee camp in Tanzania. The research draws from a longitudinal survey with Congolese and Burundian refugee households and over 200 qualitative...

Purpose To understand challenges faced by faith leaders in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) in engaging with current public health strategies for the COVID-19 pandemic; to explain why long-standing collaborations between government, faith-based health services and leaders of faith communities had little impact; to identify novel approaches to...

A growing literature documents the significant barriers to accessing care that Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) face. This study focuses on gender-based violence (SGBV), an issue often exacerbated in times of forced displacement, and adds to extant debates by considering the wide range of social connections (pathways and actors) involved in prov...

Human African trypanosomiasis (HAT) is considered a highly promising candidate for elimination within the next decade. This paper argues that the experiential knowledge of frontline health workers will be critical to achieve this goal. Interviews are used to explore the ways in which HAT workers understand, maintain, and adjust their skills amidst...

This report presents the results of the midline study of the Building Resilience in Crises through Education (BRiCE) research project, which is led by the Institute of Development Studies (IDS) and the Institut Supérieur Pédagogique de Bukavu (ISP Bukavu). The research project is part of the BRiCE education programme funded by the European Commissi...

Access to justice is often described as key for building and consolidating peace and enhancing socio-economic development in fragile and post-conflict states. Since the 2000s, legal empowerment has been one of the most popular approaches to improve such access, and a growing literature has presented mixed evidence on the quality of its outcomes. We...

Background: understanding and improving access to essential services in (post)-conflict settings requires paying particular attention to the actors who occupy the space left ‘empty’ by weak or deficient State institutions. Religious institutions often play a fundamental role among these actors and typically benefit from high trust capital, a rare r...

En septembre 2019, la République démocratique du Congo a mis en place une nouvelle politique abolissant les frais de scolarité dans l'enseignement primaire. Quelques mois plus tard, les écoles fermaient pour 4.5 mois suite à la pandémie de Covid-19. Comment le confinement a-t-il affecté la mise en place de la politique de gratuité ? A-t-il atténué...

In September 2019, the Democratic Republic of the Congo implemented a new policy abolishing tuition fees in primary education. A few months later, schools closed for 4.5 months due to the COVID-19 pandemic. How did the lockdown affect the implementation of the free education policy? Did it reduce or enhance its effects? This article examines the ex...

Data visualisations are intimately connected to the emergence of public health as a discipline and policy area. Besides the mapping of cases and deaths, the COVID-19 pandemic has seen an explosion of attempts to track policy responses. They have come from actors sometimes initially unfamiliar with public and global health. In this paper, we analyse...

La pandémie de Covid-19 constitue un prisme inédit pour l’étude de la production de connaissances face à une maladie globale « inconnue mais connaissable », en particulier dans les contextes d’intervention privilégiés de la « santé globale », les pays dits « des Suds ». Cet article se concentre sur les réponses de quinze pays africains et asiatique...

Mainstream development policies often promote citizens committees to oversee basic social services. Such committees require influence over, and legitimacy among, service providers and citizens to perform their roles, which local elites can help or hinder. Using a mixed-methods approach, we analyse the situation in 251 health facility committees in...

En septembre 2019, les frais d'études, qui servaient (entre autres) à payer les enseignants non rémunérés par l’Etat, ont été officiellement supprimés dans les écoles primaires de la DR Congo. Quelques mois plus tard, le gouvernement fermait les écoles pour 4 mois et demi à cause de la pandémie de Covid-19. À l'aide d'une enquête auprès de 822 ense...

This paper provides evidence that the COVID-19-related mortality rate of national government ministers and heads of state has been substantially higher than that of people with a similar sex and age profile in the general population, a trend that is driven by African cases (17 out of 24 reported deaths worldwide, as of 6 February 2021). Ministers’...

This paper explores the role of savings groups in resilience to urban climate-related disasters. Savings groups are a rapidly growing phenomenon in Africa. They are decentralized, non-institutional groups that provide millions of people excluded from the formal banking sector with a trusted, accessible, and relatively simple source of microfinance....

This paper presents findings from a study into the value of lecture captures for online postgraduate courses. There has been little scrutiny of the role of on-campus lecture capture in online courses. We addressed this gap by exploring online distance learning students’ perceptions of lecture captures through the lens of the community of inquiry fr...

This Report presents the descriptive statistics and preliminary analysis carried out following the first phase of quantitative and qualitative data collection of the Building Resilience in Conflict through Education (BRiCE) research project in the DRCongo and in Niger. Long overlooked, the role of teachers has been the object of renewed attention i...

Ce rapport présente les statistiques descriptives et l’analyse préliminaire réalisées suite à la première phase de collecte de données quantitatives et qualitatives dans le cadre du projet de recherches BRiCE en République démocratique du Congo (RDC) et au Niger. La recherche a été menées par l’Institute of Development Studies en partenariat avec S...

Motivation Higher education is regarded as a key instrument to enhance socioeconomic mobility and reduce inequalities. Recent literature reviews have examined inequalities in the higher education systems of high‐income countries, but less is known about the situation in low‐ and middle‐income countries, where higher education is expanding fast. Pu...

While academic literature has paid careful attention to the technological efforts―drugs, tests, and tools for vector control―deployed to eliminate Gambiense Human African Trypanosomiasis (HAT), the human resources and health systems dimensions of elimination are less documented. This paper analyses the perspectives and experiences of frontline nurs...

Performance-based financing (PBF) schemes have been expanding rapidly across low and middle income countries in the past decade, with considerable external financing from multilateral, bilateral and global health initiatives. Many of these countries have been fragile and conflict-affected (FCAS), but while the influence of context is acknowledged t...

This study contributes to the health policy debate on medical systems integration by describing and analysing the interactions between health-care users, indigenous healers, and the biomedical public health system, in the so far rarely documented case of post-conflict Burundi. We adopt a mixed-methods approach combining (1) data from an existing su...

Human resources for health are self-evidently critical to running a health service and system. There is, however, a wider set of social issues which is more rarely considered. One area which is hinted at in literature, particularly on fragile and conflict-affected states, but rarely examined in detail, is the contribution which health staff may or...

Performance-based financing (PBF) is an increasingly adopted strategy in low- and middle-income countries. PBF pilot projects started in Burundi in 2006, at the same time when a national policy removed user fees for pregnant women and children below 5 years old. PBF was gradually extended to the 17 provinces of the country. This roll-out and data f...

Objective: Community participation is often described as a key for primary health care in low-income countries. Recent performance-based financing (PBF) initiatives have renewed the interest in this strategy by questioning the accountability of those in charge at the health centre (HC) level. We analyse the place of two downward accountability mec...

Established in 1980, the Belgian section of Doctors Without Borders quickly developed into the biggest section of the organization. Because of the professional skills of its volunteers and communication policy, it started serving as a model for a new generation of non-governmental organizations driven by expertise rather than ideological beliefs. A...

Médecins sans frontières Belgium : the genesis of an atypical non-governmental organisation, 1980-1987 From the end of the 1970s onwards, the Médecins sans frontières (MSF) movement established itself as a major actor in the world of humanitarian aid and cooperation in development. Initially French in origin, the organisation expanded, and a Belgi...