HWS News
2 February 2023 • Faculty Dahouda Discusses Ivory Coast’s Postwar Reconstruction
Associate Professor of French, Francophone and Italian Studies Kanate Dahouda offers a significant political contribution to understanding the Ivory Coast’s road to economic recovery and nation-building under the presidency of Alassane Ouattara.
In an essay in the Ivory Coast’s newspaper Le Patriote, Associate Professor of French, Francophone and Italian Studies Kanate Dahouda provides a critical reflection on ways in which the Ivory Coast (Côte d’Ivoire) emerged from the severe political and military turmoil that followed a disputed presidential runoff election between former President Laurent Gbagbo and former Prime Minister Alassane Ouattara in 2010.
Through his opinion essay “Alassane Ouattara ou l’Honneur de Gouverner” that ran on Jan. 23, Dahouda underscores the key challenges that President Alassane Ouattara had to overcome in the process of achieving the structural transformation of the economy, while working to foster national reconciliation as the foundation to a lasting peace and social cohesion in the nation.
Dahouda is an Associate Professor of French and Francophone Studies and Chair of the Department of French, Francophone and Italian Studies.
He holds a Ph.D. in Francophone comparative literatures and cultures from Laval University in Quebec, Canada. As a scholar, he has co-authored and been a contributor to numerous essays and articles in scholarly journals, academic volumes, anthologies, dictionaries and reviews, including Québec français, Dictionnaire des Oeuvres Littéraires du Québec (VII)(Quebec), Francofonia (Spain), International Journal of Canadian Studies(Ottawa), Tangence (Quebec), Neohelicon (Hungary), Présence Africaine (Paris), L’Année Francophone International (France-Quebec), Présence Francophone, and Nouvelles Etudes Francophones (USA).
His field of teaching extends to Francophone literatures, cultures and societies, which spans the province of Quebec, the French Caribbean and Africa. His research interests focus on the intersection of language, the practice of Diaspora, memory, exile, violence and identity with particular emphasis on literatures and cultures from Francophone Quebec/Canada, the Caribbean, and Africa.
