This article investigates links between ilobolo (bridewealth) practices and marriage outcomes in contemporary Zulu society. It presents quantitative data showing very low marriage rates among Zulu adults, as well as interview evidence suggesting that the majority of Zulu adults identify ilobolo as a constraint to marriage. However, the interview evidence also suggests that ilobolo remains widely valued as a Zulu tradition and continues to be an integral and defining feature of a Zulu marriage. The article concludes that this tension—between the high cost of ilobolo and respect for ilobolo as a custom—contributes to the very low marriage rates observed among Zulu people today.

Although many scholars have noted the salience of mobility throughout the African continent, there has been little systematic investigation into the link between migration and conflict. Most scholarship has tended to see migration as primarily a by-product of conflict and not as a security issue in its own right. In analyzing and contrasting the different migration–conflict trajectories across two similar case studies—Côte d'Ivoire and Ghana—this article attempts to develop an empirically informed theoretical framework for understanding the nexus between migration and conflict in Africa and to shed light on key intervening variables linking migration processes with violent outcomes.

Nigerian educational administrators find themselves engulfed by a tidal wave of swiftly swelling pupil enrollment. The rapid rate of growth poses the challenging question of how much time is left for solutions. Niger State is one example. In April 1976, 244 primary schools offered instruction to 15,796 pupils. Four months later, the state needed 931 primary schools for an additional 63,384 pupils: a growth rate of almost 400 percent. In 1978 there were 1,091 primary schools to serve 179,861 children. This amounted to a real growth of over 1000 percent in two years. This experience was repeated across a number of states. The comparison of enrollment in the first year of primary school between 1975/76 and 1976/77 school years, for example, shows a percentage increase of 557 percent in Niger, 491 percent in Kano, 442 percent in Kaduna, 263 percent in Benue. The smallest increase was 11 percent in Gongola State. Parallel to the pupil enrollment was the percentage increase of the number of primary schools between 1975/76 and 1976/77, 301.3 percent in Niger, 227.1 percent in Kano, 196.4 percent in Kaduno, 142.9 percent in Benue. The smallest increase reported was in Imo State, 1.5 percent.

This recent explosion in Nigerian primary school enrollment was the direct result of the Universal Primary Education (UPE) scheme launched in September 1976. It marked the dawn of an educational revolution with pervasive social and economic implications (Bray, 1981). The political expectations were that universal free primary education would enable the nation to overcome the hurdles caused by unbalanced educational and economic development which resulted in southern dominance and educational imbalances of urban opportunities over the rural, and the preponderance of male over female enrollment in schools.

Electricity demand exceeds supply in many parts of Africa, and this often results in rolling blackouts. This article argues that blackouts tend to concentrate on poorer places within countries, due to both economic and political factors. This argument is tested with an analysis of electricity availability across thirty-two neighborhoods in Accra and survey data from thirty-six African countries. Across these analyses, poorer people with a grid connection experience lower electricity supply than richer people. This article concludes by discussing implications for research on electricity availability, policymakers working on energy, and the distributive politics literature.

This article focuses on the Rwandan peasantry to confirm how “views from below” can contribute to a better understanding of the ”pro-poor” growth challenge. Based on micro-level evidence gathered in 2007, it examines local peasants' perceptions of the characteristics and degree of poverty for different socioeconomic categories (i.e., peasant groups). It looks at the various opportunities and constraints that influence the potential of these categories or groups for social mobility and their capacity to participate in growth strategies. Further, it considers how local peasants perceive specific policy measures in the Rwandan government's “pro-poor” rural strategies. Their insights could inspire Rwandan policymakers and supporting donors to redirect their efforts toward distribution-oriented growth strategies.

This study examines ways that political leaders influence the development of the unofficial economy in Congo. Using aggregate data as well as data from observation and two surveys conducted in 1991–1992, it demonstrates that the unofficial economy develops not only as a reaction against an over-regulated state, but also because of a market segmentation along gender lines, state policy in defining property rights, and networks of relationships that partly shape the behavior of bureaucrats who act to satisfy their own preferences. Although the unofficial economy creates institutions that can challenge state hegemony, it neither allocates resources equally among the participants nor provides an equal access to high-profit activities to all. The findings suggest that women are more likely to be involved in low-value profit sectors of the unofficial economy than men. Because the unofficial economy reinforces mutual trust and reciprocity, it tends to create a new idea of social order and interactions.

In a 1958 constitutional referendum, Guinea was the only French territory to reject continued colonial subordination in favor of immediate independence. Why did Guinea alone reject the constitution that laid the foundations for France's Fifth Republic? What factors stimulated political parties in other territories to accept the prolongation of French tutelage, even as activists elsewhere on the continent were agitating for independence? Focusing on the eight territories of French West Africa, this article argues that the Guinean branch of the Rassemblement Démocratique Africain, which led the campaign for the “no” vote, differed from other dominant parties in French West Africa in several important ways. These differences, along with the relative power of the colonial chieftaincy, contributed to Guinea's unique stance in the 1958 referendum.

Citizen influence on the modern democratic state most often occurs through social organizations demanding government responsiveness to member concerns. These organizations and their interaction with government constitute the core of modern civil society. The presence of organized groups does not in itself mean that a civil society exists. Such groups may engage in other activities such as producing collective goods for their members or controlling their members on behalf of the ruling elite. Civil society grows in a state as more and more groups engage in activities designed to maintain or change government policies.

Outside of Africa, civil society development has often preceded democratization and provided the impetus for establishing elections, as well as the leadership and resources for political parties contesting these elections. With the exception of South Africa and possibly Zimbabwe, the emergence of civil society has thus far been minimal in Africa. Social organizations are too weak to bring down authoritarian regimes, let alone shape their replacements. However, the recent democratizations are providing new opportunities for group influence relative to the state. The result is that civil society is coming into existence at the same time as the holding of elections, the organization of competitive political parties and the reforming of legislative assemblies. In effect, the development of civil society and democracy are occurring in much of Africa as parallel and related processes.

This article examines what urban displacement and resettlement can reveal about the nature of, and co-constitutive relationships among, property, authority, and citizenship. It focuses on an unusual case in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe, where long-term illegal squatters living under constant threat of violent displacement by various local and national authorities were formally resettled by the Bulawayo City Council on peri-urban plots with houses. What surfaces are some of the paradoxes of propertied citizenship and of attaining seemingly “proper” lives in conditions of sustained marginality, a result that is not entirely unexpected when impoverished squatters are resettled far outside the frame of the city and its possibilities.

Sakawa indexes a cyberfraud practice in Ghana allegedly linked with occult rituals. This article examines the phenomenon as an analytically relevant example of a material understanding of religion. It then offers a critical reading of a popular sakawa video series and contrasts its thematic perspectives with the reactions of some Ghanaian political leaders to the possible motivations for the practice. This critical approach is conceived as a response to the persistent myopic view of such popular genres as irrelevant to key debates around problematic Ghanaian issues and also to calls in global media studies to de-Westernize the field.

Most press reports would have us believe that the genocide in Rwanda was the result of a “centuries-old” ethnic/tribal hatred. There is no denying that mass murder and genocide took place in Rwanda. It is estimated that between 500,000 and 1,000,000 people died in the most appalling way. Those killed were from all ethnic groups, Tutsi, Hutu, and Twa; but the vast majority of those killed were Tutsi. However, it is important to understand the process by which this took place: we must stop and ask if this genocide was inevitable, if it was universal, and if it was the result of ancient irreconcilable hatreds.

The reference to tribal warfare, or even ethnic conflict, implies that there are (at least) two sides fighting, and that all members of society are caught up in the killings. But in this case, the great preponderance of deaths resulted not from “conflict” but from murder.

Though children's labor has been critical to African economies historically, Africanist scholars tend to treat child and adolescent workers as invisible. In this essay, the reasons for this neglect are explored, as are the consequences of such neglect for theory and empirical research. Suggestions are made for pursuing research on child and adolescent labor that places young workers within the broader context of economic, social, and political relationships and processes. The essay critically reviews the extant scholarly literature on children and work in the pre-colonial, colonial, and postcolonial periods and concludes that child labor is either underresearched or undertheorized to the detriment of our understanding of gender, patriarchy, agency, the formation of worker and political consciousness, capital accumulation, and the state. The essay argues that children have shaped and continue to shape history in Africa and that childhood is a terrain of struggle in which numerous social and political forces (including children, patriarchy, capital, and the state) seek constructions that suit their particular (and changing) interests. The essay makes a plea to Africanist scholars to take children more seriously in their research.

This article examines processes of economic inclusion in divided societies, with a focus on both religious and formal–informal divides. Drawing on recent fieldwork in the northern Nigerian cities of Kano and Kaduna, the article challenges the assumption that identity-based informal organization intensifies violent social divisions, and that taxation and linkages with the state foster more stable and inclusive governance. A range of informal sector activities provides insights into escalating religious conflict and uneven patterns of formal inclusion in interreligious relations. Attention is focused on the relative role of informal institutions and formal interventions such as taxation in diffusing or exacerbating conflict at the grassroots level.

This article examines two policies targeting the informal open-air market and fishing sectors in Jinja, Uganda. The informal sector has grown to become a significant source of livelihood for people in growing cities such as Jinja. At the same time, development policies have become increasingly concerned with encouraging formalization as well as the participation of local stakeholders in governance and decision-making. While there has been much debate about the potential impacts of formalizing previously informal, unregulated, unpermitted activities, the implications of these policies for informal vendors and fishers have received less attention. Despite their promises of addressing previous marginalization, the patterns of participation and formalization enforced by these two policies in Uganda have reduced the control of these individuals over their own livelihoods, as well as intensifying contestations of local authority and jurisdiction over resources.

The concept of civil society has gained currency in African studies. It is used in a variety of different ways, but usually refers to the emergence of new patterns of political participation outside of formal state structures and one-party systems (Bratton 1989, 407). In the absence of capable state institutions, the literature on Africa has started to shift attention away from the state and governing elites, and towards social actors who are devising various strategies to survive the nested crises of state action, economic development, and political legitimacy (Doornbos 1990). As an alternative conceptualization of possibilities of economic and social development, civil society is becoming an all encompassing term that refers to social phenomena putatively beyond formal state structures—but not necessarily free of all contact with the state.

Virtually no theoretical work, however, has been done on the concept as it relates to an African environment, with the exception of Bayart (1986) and, more recently, Bratton (1989). This essay explores in a more theoretical manner than has hitherto been the case what such a notion means within an African context by asking whether the growing use of the term contributes substantively to our understanding of new forms of participation and associational activity in Africa. The answer is affirmative, provided that this concept is elaborated and specified in ways which take into account the complex interaction between normative, economic, and organizational dimensions of civil society.

Claude Ake (1982: 8, 3), in his Presidential Address to the 1982 Convention of the Nigerian Political Science Association, criticized Nigerian society, politics, and state behavior in damning terms:

A predatory capitalism has bred misery, turned politics into warfare and all but arrested the development of productive forces. The Nigerian ruling class has assaulted the masses with physical and psychological violence and thwarted their aspirations, particularly their escape from underdevelopment and poverty.

Legitimacy has receded to the background, making way for relations of raw power and the perception of right as being coextensive with might.

Ake's views reflect a common perception that the Nigerian state survives by coercion as other means of gaining the compliance of the populace-the capacity to create a legitimating consciousness or utilitarian pay-offs-have proven ineffective, or have been wasted by a rapacious ruling class and its clients. Coercion, of course, means the police and the military.

This paper focuses on the control and autonomy of coercion, concretely examined as the actions of the police, in the political economy of Nigeria. Who controls the police and how autonomous are they as an organization and as individuals? The paper argues that the state and the police are relatively autonomous from class control; that the police have interests of their own which will influence both what they do or refuse to do; and that the police are a very weak reed for the ruling class to relay upon.

Parts of northern Nigeria are becoming enclaves of banditry for gangs of cattle rustlers who maraud largely ungoverned forests. Extant studies of banditry shy away from serious interrogation of cattle rustling and ungoverned forest spaces in northern Nigeria. Onwuzuruigbo investigates the connection between cattle rustling and ungoverned forest spaces, highlighting the role of criminal groups in creating their own governance structures. The upswing in cattle rustling may thus be attributed to poor forest governance, which effectively keeps the government and its agents away from forests. Inclusive forest governance is one path toward addressing cattle rustling in northern Nigeria.

This article seeks to understand why Kenyans have responded so enthusiastically to the recent push, by the government and NGOs, for voluntary labor within health and development projects and interventions. It argues that voluntary labor gains meaning and value in relation to broader economies of work and unemployment, to anxieties about identity, recognition, and belonging, and to aspirations for personal as well as national development. In the context of precarious economies and the contraction of formal employment opportunities, voluntary labor constitutes valued, if unpaid, work; it offers opportunities for those excluded from formal employment to gain a valued identity and a sense of social worth; and it makes volunteers visible to powerful institutions (state and nonstate) that hold the keys to personal growth, social recognition, and developmental futures. Voluntary labor is a site of struggles about identity, social value, and recognition, which the decline of twentieth-century trajectories of progress has made acute.

Of course [after graduation from high school] some things go, whistles, lights-out, uniform, parades, prefects,…and yet all the central ideas go on. There will still be chores to be done, and done well, without grumbles; there will still be the need to discipline, for men who can obey and can therefore—when called upon—rule…(Francis 1957, 2).

What we are practicing at Makere, day in and out,…is the subversion… of the African mind; the breaking down of mental tissues; their reconstruction in the Western mode; the reordering of thoughts, feelings, habits, responses, of every aspect of the mind and personality. This is what we are doing, and cannot avoid doing—this is the core of our activity (Murray Carlin in Stanley 1960, 11).

In 1957 a solemn third-former at Alliance High School wrote in the school magazine: “Superstition used to play an important role in Kikuyu society…It was the chief reason why the older order changed more slowly than many people desired” (Ngugi 1957, 21). Unequivocally rejecting “rigid” traditional society, the writer declares approvingly that with the advance of Christianity—“without doubt the greatest civilising influence”—many Gikuyu have come to regard “superstition and witchcraft…with derision.” After a well told anecdote tinged with humorous self-mockery, the essayist ends with sermonizing gratitude for “a most valuable lesson” (22).

This parrot-like bagatelle in The AHS Magazine—signed “J. T. Ngugi, Form 3A,” and his first published work—echoes the high moral tone of the missionary headmaster of Alliance High School, E. Carey Francis (Greaves 1969; Kipkorir 1980; Sicherman 1990, 389-92). The motto of the school, “Strong to Serve,” implied the kinds of “chores” that boys thus educated would have to do in Kenya when they became—in Ngugi's later caustic paraphrase of his headmaster's goal–“efficient machines for running a colonial system” (Sicherman 1990, 20).