This text is part of the special Francophonie booklet
Brahim Boudarbat can boast of being the first after being the last. It is that the Observatory of the Economic Francophonie (OFE), of which he is the director, had held in March 2020 the last face-to-face congress of the French-speaking world in Rabat. Two years later, he organized the first event of its kind in Francophonie, the third international conference of economic Francophonie, which brought together 300 participants in Dakar from March 16 to 18.
The OFE, which has a storefront at the University of Montreal, is just one example among the dozen agencies, associations, institutes, observatories and other Quebec centers whose mission is to develop the Francophonie worldwide. This club includes a giant like the Agence universitaire de la francophonie, which brings together 1007 establishments in 119 countries. There is also a centenarian, Acfas, which has 4,200 scientific members in 32 countries.
But most of these organizations are in fact small structures of 2 to 20 employees who dig their furrow in their specialty, sometimes very specialized. This is the case of the youngest, the Francophone Observatory for Inclusive Development, inaugurated on March 8 in Montreal.
A favorable environment
But the same can be said of the Institut de la Francophonie pour le développement durable (IFDD), created on the initiative of the Prime Minister of Quebec and the President of Côte d’Ivoire in 1988.
This subsidiary organization of the OIF (International Organization of La Francophonie), based on rue Saint-Pierre in Quebec City, carries out around twenty pilot projects a year in the field of water, energy and the environment, either for the introduction of electric transport in Morocco or the management of the mangroves of the Saloum islands in Senegal.
In reality, this is only the most visible part of its action, because the IFDD is hyperactive in the field of training and environmental diplomacy. “I still can’t believe what we can do with 20 employees,” says Cécile Martin Phipps, the new director who took office at the end of October 2021, four days before COP26 in Glasgow, and who had to quickly become familiar with very complex programming. “I had cold sweats. »
“Over the past three years, we have trained more than 350,000 people on technical issues and environmental diplomacy. These are certifying training courses on trades or environmental law, renewable energies, the circular economy or sustainable tourism. These are not simple PowerPoint presentations. Thus, the training on electricity pricing lasted more than a week. And more than 10,000 people have taken the Introduction to the sustainable management of marine and coastal areas course, of which 7,000 have obtained the certificate.
One of the specificities of this institute concerns support in environmental and energy diplomacy. “The job is to improve the capacities of States in the negotiation forums, says Ms.me Martin Phillips. We produce decryption notes, ministerial consultation and training for negotiators with a specialty in desertification and climate. »
Francophonie outside Francophonie
“We, our mandate is la francophonie petit f,” says Chantal Houdet, executive director of the International Association for Quebec Studies (AIEQ), which coordinates the work of thousands of Quebecers in more than 25 countries.
The organization, which celebrates its 25th anniversary this year, has just released an interactive map that represents everything that is being done in Quebec studies around the world. We discover varied activities in countries that do not necessarily belong to the official Francophonie, such as the Italian Interuniversity Center for Quebec Studies (CISQ), which brings together 10 establishments, but also the Japanese, Korean, American or British associations of ‘études québécoises, and other study centers where Québec holds a special place, such as the Gesellschaft für Kanada-Studien in Germany or the Indian Association of French Teachers, which held a symposium in honor of the studies Quebec in 2017.
“Our members are passionate about Quebec who are true ambassadors,” says Chantal Houdet, who is seconded by the Ministry of International Relations and La Francophonie. “It gives Quebecers incredible facilities to find advisers who know them well in all kinds of countries. »
An observatory that wants to act
Most of these organizations have had to change their mission to take account of the realities. This is the case of the Observatory of Economic Francophonie (OFE), created in 2017 at the initiative of the Government of Quebec, the OIF and the AUF (Agence universitaire de la Francophonie). Initially, it was to create a database of economic statistics, but its activity was quickly reoriented towards liaison and the transfer of knowledge.
“Among our missions, we give priority to Africa, and that is why all our events take place on this continent,” says director Brahim Boudarbat, full professor at the School of Industrial Relations at the University of Montreal.
The researcher is particularly proud of his Research Training for Young Francophone Economists (FORJE) program, which has contributed to the training of 53 young researchers, including 28 women. “It is an Africa-Africa program that brings together 12 partner universities and aims to improve research skills, publication and rapid production of the thesis. »
The small observatory wants to do its part to meet the two big challenges of the African Francophonie: the place of women and the lack of difference between the economies of these countries, which all produce the same thing or almost, which prevents them from trading. Brahim Boudarbat nevertheless sees several glimmers of hope.
“Women and young people are very numerous at all our events, their response is fantastic,” he says. In addition, three French-speaking countries, Morocco, Mauritius and Côte d’Ivoire, have greatly diversified their local production and are creating opportunities to create trade. »
The language specialists
This great Quebec and Canadian specialty, linguistic demography, had to arouse some ambitions. And in 2009, in the wake of the Francophonie Summit in Quebec City in 2008, the Government of Quebec, the OIF and the AUF gave birth to the Demographic and Statistical Observatory of the Francophone Area (ODSEF), located at the ‘Laval University.
The demographic arm of the Observatory of the French language in Paris, the ODSEF is above all a network of a few hundred researchers. “In Quebec, there is me, a research professional and 5-6 students, but we have established formal agreements with 15 national statistical institutions in Africa and with Eurostat”, specifies Richard Marcoux, its director and full professor in the Department in Sociology from Laval University.
“It is little known, but our first mission, to which we are very attached, is the safeguarding of the demographic heritage in French-speaking Africa,” he says. With the help of UNESCO, we saved all the censuses in Mali since 1976 and the only census in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in 1984. In Nouakchott and Kinshasa, we digitized complete warehouses of forms. Thanks to optical recognition, researchers will be able to make this data speak. »
In terms of linguistic demography, the ODSEF is interested in the problem of counting and sociolinguistic dynamics. “A big job was to identify the questionnaires of African countries to identify that 90% of them had a question in the census on proficiency in reading and writing in French. It gives us a solid point of reference. »
Richard Marcoux has long been fascinated by linguistic dynamics, essential for understanding complex problems. Like explaining why some parents in the Congo choose to speak French to their children; or how the attitude toward French among immigrants plays into their integration; or why Aboriginal languages survive better in Quebec than elsewhere in Canada; or why the Greeks of Montreal speak more and better Greek than the Greeks of Toronto or Philadelphia. “Elucidating these questions requires a keen understanding of statistics. »