West African social movements ‘against the high cost of living’: from the economic to the political, from the global to the national

The globalisation of the market for basic consumer goods, speculation, and the success of biofuels production all underlie a recent return to the international agenda of the issues of food security, food sovereignty and the right to food. In 2008, the ‘high cost of living’ phenomenon sparked off numerous collective, urban, African protests movements: these challenged and took the governments in power by surprise, impelling them to react in different ways. This article describes and analyses the social movements brought into being by activist organisations (including unions, human rights organisations, and consumer associations) in two countries, Niger and Burkina Faso, and demonstrates how important it is to situate the movements in local temporalities and circumstances. One of the main issues highlighted by the findings of the research is the importance of local governance issues: the measures taken in relation to the price rises were aimed more at the symptoms than at the underlying causes, and had only short-term effects. The different temporalities of world events hence played a very minor role, despite the connection of a number of the actors, especially in Niger, to the international sphere via anti-globalisation movements.