Paper short abstract:

Malian diaspora is one of the most dynamic in the implementation of development projects in sub-Saharan Africa. This study based on empirical case analyzes the real scope and the concrete impact of development projects carried out by migrants originated from Kayes in Mali.

Paper long abstract:

Since the successive publications on the amount of Malian migrants' remittances, and the mobility of economic resources between their host and home countries, many actors began to consider them as "developers/migrants" or "development contractors". These groups of migrants are originated from Kayes, a Malian region where migrants carried out an important number of development projects during about thirty years. The present proposal analyzes the content and the concrete results of the development projects realized by these Malian groups of migrants over this long period. These practices have been oriented towards their origin village and more recently the entire region. The research exploits a field survey of four months on development projects of Malian organizations in France and Mali. The assumptions are based on semi-structured interviews and participant observation conducted within three migrants organizations. The aim is to assess the developpementalist component of these practices by identifying the projects' fields of intervention; its socioeconomic and cultural development effects in the origin village. This study implies to examine the sustainability of Malian diaspora development projects in their origin village and analyze to what extent these migrants' projects can be at the origin of the development in the Malian region of Kayes. In the case of this particular region, the effects of migrants' development projects have been crucial.