Les innovations sociales en Afrique subsaharienne: la place des communautés et des territoires locaux

Abstract

This article reviews the state of knowledge on social innovations in Sub-Saharan Africa. Its aim is to explore and highlight the emerging trajectories of this little-discussed subject, for a continent caught between the dynamics of historical realities and the extroversion of development methods in a context characterized by multifaceted crises. To do this, the article re-visits pertinent writings and explores emblematic cases by refocusing the research on a time frame extending from the 1960s to the present, when confrontation between the two movements has produced a hybridization that articulates in-novations. The main finding concerns, on the one hand, a focus of social innovations on humans carried out by organizations linked to the social economy and, on the other hand, the alignment between the issues, challenges and practices whose local benchmarks particularize these innovations. The analyzed cases reveal a set of operational logics marked by the interaction between imported technologies and the pre-existing mechanisms from which innovative technologies originate. The proliferation of such technologies makes it possible to open up research perspectives highlighting socio-territorial structures, the omnipresence of solidarity activities and the predominance of community actors who have to combine social, institutional, economic, technical, and academic traits.