This article argues for the continued merits of research with rural, long-marginalized peoples, including those whose fervent invocations of ethnic difference—such as Maasai—make many scholars and politicians nervous. Their perspectives “from the margins” offer key theoretical and political insights into this complicated place we call “Africa” by challenging grand narratives of modernization, “Africa rising,” and supposedly “universal” ideas of progress and justice. They also defy enduring stereotypes about the passivity and ignorance of rural peoples. I argue, in other words, for the value of both seeing and theorizing Africa from the margins.

This article describes a legal thread running from the commission of massive sexual violence in the eastern provinces of the Congo since 1996 to the enactment of liberal legislation in 2006 to combat sexual violence throughout the country, especially in eastern Congo. In doing so, the article fills a gap in the nascent legal literature on systematic sexual violence. It finds that the new rape law is progressive, liberal, gender-neutral, and in keeping with international law. However, an unfortunate lapse in legislative drafting puts in doubt the authority of the courts to use the new rape law to prosecute systematic sexual violence. Despite this weakness, as well as harsh realities such as resource limitations and institutionalized corruption, the new sexual violence law, “the law of shameful acts,” nonetheless provides a framework on the basis of which the state and rape survivors can prosecute perpetrators. It is a necessary step in upholding accountability and preparing for the more daunting task of healing communities affected by a devastating regional war.

Few scholars have taught us more about African voters, legislators, and legislatures than Joel Barkan. Drawing on Barkan’s analysis, the first part of this article argues that the African one-party state can be usefully viewed as a competitive-authoritarian system underpinned by a form of political linkage that allows for elements of coercion and competition. Building on this framework, the second part demonstrates that the political linkage structures that emerged in single-party systems such as those of Kenya, Senegal, and Tanzania have played an important role in shaping the dynamics of multiparty politics and the prospects for democratic reform.

America’s understanding, or perhaps more appropriately its misunderstanding, of Africa is based on a long history of explorer, traveler, and missionary experience recounted in travelogue and the popular press. For the most part, images of Africa expressed in these accounts portray a world of barbarous, uncivilized peoples living in the unbearable climes of torrid deserts and tropical swelter. Today, there is little evidence to suggest any fundamental change in these earlier perceptions. As Michael McCarthy comments, “[the] ‘dark continent’ image of Africa as a mixture of desert and jungle, savage beasts and beastly savages, has persisted to such an extent that it has become over time the essential way in which most Americans have come to understand African realities.”

In recent years, development theorists, planners, and practitioners have placed much greater stress on the crucial importance of popular participation in promoting rural development. Twenty years ago it was fashionable to talk about national planning; today it is fashionable to talk about participatory development. As in the past, the wealthy, the well-educated, and the professionals define the contents of participatory development and how it should be applied to and by the rural masses. Socialist theorists attack the bourgeois state and pontificate on the transition to socialism; the capitalists denounce state intervention and invoke the magic of the market; the peasants look toward the sky and pray for rain; and the cows amble in search of grass unaware of their crucial role in the participatory development process.

Challenging the scholarship on the relationship between natural resources and civil society, this article advances a framework that differentiates the various types of protests surrounding mineral extraction in sub-Saharan Africa and explains how this extraction encourages contentious activity. On the basis of protest event data from thirty-nine countries in SSA for the 1990–2006 period, as well as available survey data, the article provides confirming evidence that mineral wealth increases protest activity.

Leopold Senghor's poem expresses the paradox of the Sara in their encounter with the French. The French labeled them la belle race—the beautiful people. Yet more than any other ethnic group in West or Equatorial Africa, the Sara, after a protracted struggle to free themselves from Muslim slave raiders in Central Africa during the 1890s, were decimated by European introduced epidemics. They also fell victim to a systematic attempt on the part of the early French administrators of Chad to make them die first target for forced labor, railroad construction, porterage, and induction into the French African army to fight for France as far away as Indochina.

The weak political organization of the Sara, their apparent peacefulness and unusual stout physical appearance (in sharp contrast to that of their neighbors such as the Baguirmi and the Wadaians), made them the best prey for die administration. In the prefectures of Moyen-Chari and Logone such treatment resulted in demographic instability and the depopulation of many Sara districts due to deaths, emigration, and the constant sociopolitical dislocation which the administrators nonetheless chose to ignore. The prefecture of Moyen-Chari, for example, provided die government with an average of six hundred Sara troops every year between 1918 and 1931. Despite open and widespread Sara resistance to recruitment which often resulted in the assassination of several collaborating chiefs and guards, French administrators never abandoned their preference for this southern edinic group.

This article explores the relationship between France and Cameroon under the French administration from 1946 to 1956. Such a relationship has to be seen not as a conventional one, but as a relationship between two unequal entities: a European imperial state and an African society. The period being considered in this study, 1946 to 1956, is significant. Politically, it corresponds to the years during which the political changes that led to the process of decolonization occurred. Economically, it was the period during which the French implemented a long term program for the development and modernization of their overseas territories. This program led to large investments in Cameroon by France and therefore to development of an important financial and economic relationship between the two countries.

Although both political and economic aspects are important, the latter will be our main concern. Economic and financial factors will be emphasized here because in the few existing studies on the relationship between Cameroon and France, the main focus is on the political factor. It has been demonstrated that international relations are also influenced by economic and financial interests, what Pierre Renouvin has called forces profondes (underlying forces). As this French scholar wrote, “to understand the diplomatic action it is necessary to perceive the factors that directed its progress. Geographical conditions, movements of the populations, economic and financial interests, trends of the collective mentality, broad national feelings, are some of the underlying forces which shaped the framework of the relationship between human groups and which determined their character. The statesman, when making his plans and taking his decisions, cannot neglect these factors. He is subject to their influence and has to realize the limits they impose on his action” (Renouvin and Duroselle 1991, 2).

The history of literacy learning in Mozambique proceeds through a number of sharply contrasting phases, and is particularly interesting in the way that it reveals its dependence on the political and economic strategy being practiced by the government. In each phase, the motivations of the providers and the seekers of access to literacy differ, as do the literacy results, in line with the prevailing relations of power, mode of production, and political situation.

Underlying this paper are two basic understandings about the provision and use of access to adult literacy:

—adult participation in literacy teaching-learning programs is first and foremost a question of motivation; and

—large-scale successes in literacy programs are dependent on factors that raise and sustain that motivation, and therefore, principally on the power, legitimacy, and encouragement of the state (Lind and Johnston, 1986).

The effects of literacy on society seem reasonably clear; at least, it is clear that societies with a high level of literacy are materially better off than those with a low level, and that the presence of widespread literacy skills in a society substantially affects its culture, relationships, power structure, and economy. To an extent this has given rise to the idea that education has the value of material capital and that economic development will take place if (and maybe only if) enough effort is invested in education. A careful look soon shows, however, that one is rather faced with a typical chicken and egg issue. Consequently, heavy investment in the promotion of literacy skills in a society does not automatically guarantee economic development. Nor is it necessarily satisfactory to begin by defining development as synonymous with economic growth.

This article looks at the characteristic shirts of the donso, or initiated Mande hunters. Often described in the literature as visual displays of the wearer’s power, in the context of contemporary Burkina Faso these shirts are instead an example of how hunters deal with representations of power through an aesthetics of concealment (Ferme 2001). An excess of display is conversely connected with the politics of state-recognized hunters’ associations. Issues of ecological change, local conceptions of power, and contemporary struggles with state authority intersect in the practices and discourses on hunters’ shirts.

Several recent studies have contributed significantly to our understanding of traditional African medical systems (e.g., Peterson, in press; Ulin and Segali, 1980; Imperato, 1977). Concurrently, medical sociologists (e.g., Conrad and Schneider, 1980; Conrad, 1976) have examined the role of the American medical establishment in the exercise of social control. Their definition of social control as “the means by which society secures adherence to social norms” implies the power to impose a particular definition of the world on its members. This definition is central to the purpose of this paper, which is to describe and analyze in a West African context the use of prayers, amulets, and charms in the distribution of health services, and, at the societal level, their role in social control. In Dyula medicine social control operates primarily as a collection of beliefs, morals, and internalized norms all subsumed under the rubric of self-controls; and relational controls which include such every day interactions as gossip, ridicule, and group support.

The worksite for this study was Bondoukou, a city in eastern Ivory Coast that was, until the colonial reorganization, the largest city in Gyaman. The kingdom of Gyaman was founded toward the end of the seventeenth century by the Abron fleeing the nascent confederation of Asante states. From their settlement some ten kilometers south of the present city of Bondoukou, the Abron gradually extended their hegemony over the autochthonous peoples and the Dyula at Bondoukou who were all Muslims and mostly traders. The Dyula were recent settlers, having emigrated from the collapsing market city of Begho during the preceding half century.

Over the past fifteen years, the practice of Islam in the Gambia has undergone a perceptible change, from a tolerant and accommodating type of Qaddriyya-inspired Islam to a more radical form. This transformation has coincided with the rulership of President Yahya Jammeh, a master of manipulation of Islamic symbols. Breaking with his predecessor Sir Dawda Jawara, Jammeh has frequently blurred the line between mosque and state to reinforce his political advantage. Examples include building a mosque on state grounds and cultivating particular imams. At the same time, Jammeh has not hesitated to break with his local Wahhabi allies when he has judged it expedient to do so. Thus, in the wake of severe economic deterioration and a resulting rapprochement with the United States, the Jammeh regime has challenged the nation's prime Wahhabi leader over girls' wearing of headscarves to school. Gambia's recent experience illustrates the reciprocal relationship between religion and politics, and politicians' use of Islam for personal gain.

“The study of foreign policy is under-developed” (Brecher, 1972: 1). This observation is particularly accurate for Africa, where analysis has concentrated on the role of presidents and on the ideology of states in the international system. As a small contribution toward the development of foreign policy analysis in Africa, this article focuses on the variety of actors in the foreign policy system of Zambia. It is an attempt to present an exhaustive typology of actors in the system as well as an analysis of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs; it is not concerned either with the ideology of Zambia's foreign policy (Shaw, 1976a) or with the structural constraints within which decisionmakers operate in Zambia (Shaw, 1976b). Rather, the limited intent of this essay is to provide a comprehensive list of actors in the Zambian foreign policy system and to begin to analyze the bureaucratic politics which affect the policy output. The focus is on the relevant part of the operational environment which affects foreign policymaking in Zambia, especially on the structures of government and industry, domestic and foreign interests, and on communication between these actors (Brecher, 1972: 3-4; Brecher, Steinberg and Stein, 1969). Because of problems of research access, information on structures is more readily available than information on the processes of decisionmaking.

The literature on the on-going transitions in Africa has largely ignored trade unions and workers, women, even the prodemocracy movements. Of course, they are mentioned in passing or used in examples. But there has been a dearth of detailed case studies of the role of these popular constituencies in Africa's transition and non-transition. There is enthusiastic interest in constitutional engineering, political parties, politicians and of course, elections and election monitoring. The role of workers has been particularly ignored even when the new and traditional political parties, human rights and prodemocracy movements have had to rely on this particular constituency in their contestations for power. Yet, we cannot afford to ignore the popular communities and constituencies which determine the dynamics of politics and shape the overall character of the transition from forms of authoritarianism to multiparty systems. Ironically, in spite of the initial enthusiasm for the “third wave” or “second liberation” the on-going struggle for democracy in Africa is beginning to attract a lot of pessimism leading to more nuanced and cautious evaluations of the nature, processes, institutions, actors, limitations, and prospects for democracy, democratization and the sustenance of plural politics (Lemarchand 1993; Muigai 1993; Zeleza 1994; Ihonvbere 1995a). While Harvey Glickman (1993, 3) notes that “Liberalization of politics may mean pluralization of interest articulation, but not democratic government,” Michael Bratton, Nicolas van de Walle, Samuel Decalo, Stephen Ellis and René Lemarchand have all expressed deep reservations about on-going liberalization in the continent (Glickman 1993; Bratton and van de Walle 1992; Decalo 1992; Lemarchand 1992; Ellis 1993).

This article discusses Africa’s deepening marginalization in the globalization of production, finance, and labor. It underscores critical development issues that result from, and are exacerbated by, globalization in the context of unequal global distribution of economic and political power: illicit financial flows and tax evasion, the brain drain, an increasing incidence of noncommunicable diseases, and the disproportionate burden of environmental degradation that is shouldered by the African continent. It also offers some policy suggestions to address these issues at national and regional levels.

This article explores the characteristics of Nairobi underground hip hop that fit under a common theme of what I term as the music’s “political seriousness,” which is the common notion that the music must be substantive, thought-provoking, socially critical, and never vacuous. This political seriousness is composed of four characteristics: Mau Mau gendered legacies, political love, a reliance on neoliberalism, and a critique of the state. Hip hop’s goal is to make a political space that both proves its worth and remedies Kenya’s flawed polity. This is an imperfect endeavor, as its dependence on late capitalism, normative gender constructions, and conventional understandings of the Mau Mau war contribute to rap’s troubling tendencies. Nonetheless, these artists regard hip hop as authentic or real music because it advocates for the economically disenfranchised, contributes to Kenyan social commentary, and participates in an imagined global hip hop culture.

Elite, top-down models of democratic transition commonly miss key popular challenges and opportunities for institutionalizing stable, representative regimes. Civil society theorists often mistakenly assume that civil society organizations will support the creation and strengthening of a democratic regime. This article argues that in order to understand the process of regime change, we must look at both macro- and micro-level institutions and practices, as well as at the practical and ideological struggles over democracy that will define the regime. In South Africa, this struggle is seen most clearly in the interactions between popular organizations, such as the civics, and the African National Congress (ANC). How popular organizations make demands and how these demands are met will determine not only the form of the new regime, but also the stability of the most basic rights associated with democracy.

This article examines the gendered relationships of authority that are at the heart of the processes of customary marriage in South Africa, as well as the ways in which colonial political intervention worked to effect social change in nineteenth-century colonial Natal. This analysis reinforces the established historiographical understanding that instigating generational shifts in authority was important to Natal Native Policy, unlike customary regulation elsewhere in colonial Africa in which colonial law worked to shore up the authority of senior men. However, it seeks to underline that while negotiations of colonial power began to shift authority from older to younger men by manipulating Native marriage, and in particular the practice of lobola, the effects of such policies produced profound shifts in the experience and articulation of gendered relationships of marriage and colonial authority. The imbrication of changes in gender and generational norms ultimately reveals the contradictions in both colonial claims of liberal gender reform and African claims that colonial policy provoked the usurpation of male traditional authority.