HWS News
4 January 2024 • Faculty Dahouda Collaborates with a Team of Experts to Explore Ivorian Renewal
Associate Professor of French and Francophone Studies Kanate Dahouda directed a book project profiling President of Cote d’Ivoire Alassane Ouattara and the impact of his government’s socio-economic policies.
Last spring, Associate Professor of French and Francophone Studies Kanaté Dahouda was appointed as Scientific Director of the "Prado Book Project" by the think tank "Cellule de Réflexion et d’Ecriture Militante." As project manager, Dahouda led a group of 20 scholars, writers, journalists and educators on a project examining the vision, socio-economic agenda, and politics of development of the current President of Cote d’Ivoire, Alassane Dramane Ouattara.
In December, the result of their work, a collective book titled Alassane Ouattara, artisan du renouveau ivoirien (Alassane Ouattara, Architect of Ivorian Renewal) was published by NEI-CEDA, a leading publishing house in French-speaking sub-Saharan Africa.
The volume explores Ouattara’s political experience as well as the challenges he overcame, and the wide-ranging changes he has implemented in the country, spanning defense and security; diplomacy, justice and human rights; labor, education, infrastructure and urban development; transportation, social housing, agriculture, as well as youth and women’s employment. Dahouda, who wrote the book’s general introduction and conclusion and contributed a chapter, highlights the Ouattara administration’s policies that have further transformed the country into a model of relative prosperity on the African continent, nurturing an economic renaissance in Cote d’Ivoire.
Dahouda 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 Internationale (France-Quebec), Présence Francophone, Nouvelles Etudes Francophones (USA) and Etudes Caribéennes (Université des Antilles, France).
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, and the complex dynamics of violence, alienation and identity formation from colonial period to postcolonial era.
Dr. Kanate Dahouda is the current Chair of the Department of French, Francophone, and Italian Studies.
