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“Discharge”: A New Form of Intervention?The privatisation of the state is a seemingly paradoxical expression which captures the ambivalence of the contemporary situation in Africa : on the one hand, the emergence of private actors and private economic and financial logics and, on the other hand, the continuity of the state. Indeed, contrary to conclusions as to the demise of the state in Africa, the analysis developed herein underscores the redeployment of state power, most notably through processes of “discharge” (M. Weber). This entails transformations in relations between the public and the private, as well as the reconfiguration of ways of being and acting in the economic and political realms.