UF political science professor Leonardo Villalon will be travelling to an African region south of the Sahara Desert this summer. It’s his third time in the past two years.
In the next three years, Villalon will be taking more trips to Africa, thanks to a $1.25 million grant he was awarded by the U.S. Department of Defense.
The department gave Villalon the grant to lead a team to study political stability in the African Sahel.
The African Sahel includes the countries of Senegal, Mauritania, Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger and Chad.
Villalon said these countries are among the least developed and least studied nations on Earth.
The grant is part of the Department of Defense’s Minerva Research Initiative, which hopes to increase the understanding of regions and topics considered important to national security, according to a UF press release.
“[The team] will study how reforms of political institutions and social change affect the prospect of establishing stable democracy,” Villalon said in an interview.
He said some of the factors affecting these countries are religion, drought and economic resources.
“It is much harder to govern when people’s lives are very difficult,” Villalon said.
Mamadou Bodian, a 31-year-old political science PhD candidate at UF, is a member of Villalon’s team.
Bodian, a native of Senegal, has been working with Villalon since 2007 as a research assistant. He said team members meet every Friday to keep up with the latest news in Africa. He is interested in comparing how Islam plays out in democratic institutions in Senegal, Niger and Mali.
“People find different interests in different areas,” he said. “I’m interested in electoral reform and institutional change.”
Contact Samantha Shavell at sshavell@alligator.org.
