Compared to political developments in Eastern Europe and Latin America, democratization in sub-Saharan Africa has been more problematic and uneven. Looking at the performance in four subregions—central Africa, East Africa, southern Africa, and West Africa—yields no convincing evidence of a “wave” of democratization; countries next to each other differ considerably with regard to their Freedom House scores. This does not mean that democratization has necessarily stalled, but it does demonstrate that the prevailing vertical cleavages along ethnic, racial, or religious lines can make such a transition volatile, as suggested by the cases of Burundi, Mali, and even Kenya. While political competition in mature democracies, typically divided along horizontal group or class lines, tends to generate positive-sum outcomes, such competition in Africa easily turns into “prisoner’s dilemma” games. The uncertainty about the value of cooperation in such situations usually produces political “truces” that are easily abandoned if the costs of adherence exceed the benefits. Against the background of this prevailing political logic, this article calls for a new approach to conceptualizing notions of “institution” and “power” in the analysis of politics in the region.

For decades in many African countries, pragmatism and politics have dictated that the choice of language for literacy and primary education should be the colonial languages—French, English or Portuguese. In some settings, certain African languages of wider communication have been selected, including Swahili in Kenya and Tanzania, and Hausa in Nigeria. However, for the vast majority of African languages, educational materials have never been developed. Millions of African children find their first days at school bewildering as they adjust to not only the strange environment of school but also to a teacher who cannot speak their language.

In August 1989, a UNESCO seminar was convened in Lagos, Nigeria, focusing on the role of languages of minority groups as languages of instruction. This was followed by a consultation on the related challenge to provide grassroots teacher training for mothertongue education. Representatives came from approximately fifteen countries and five continents, with the majority being from within Africa. The stated purpose of the seminar, according to the prospectus, was:

As demands for democracy have swept across the continent since 1989, dramatic change has affected states in sub-Saharan Africa. Frustrated by declining economies and the failures of incumbent governments, people from many different social strata have called for an end to authoritarian rule. Events in Eastern Europe have served as a catalyst, and donor pressures have sometimes acted to facilitate such movements; but the real impetus for change arises from internal struggles which have been incubating for several decades. In response, authoritarian states have moved to liberalize repressive structures, allow multiparty competition and move towards competitive elections. To many analysts such trends represent an important new departure that holds out promise for a more hopeful future. But others are less optimistic, noting the legacies of authoritarian systems and other structural obstacles to sustainable democratic rule. Whatever the outcome, the struggle for the future is now hotly contested.

Meanwhile, these processes present a potent challenge for political and social analysis. Why are these demands for change occurring now? What is the role of institutional arrangements and groups in “civil society” in transitions from single-party authoritarian regimes towards multiparty systems? Who are the key actors and which groups are excluded? Do multiparty elections lead to greater tolerance, expanded participation, respect for the rule of law and more accountability? What is required to sustain democratic rule? These and other questions have spawned a lively debate among Africanists, a debate with important theoretical and practical implications.

In his novels and essays and most recently in the pages of The New York Times, Nigerian author Chinua Achebe has repeatedly claimed that the “trouble with Nigeria” lies with its leaders (1982, 1993)—and few of those who followed the pronouncements of General Babangida would say that the actions of the Nigerian head of state were without import for the political future of the country. Achebe finds an intellectual ally in social scientist Giuseppe de Palma (1992), who argues that the actions of decision makers at critical junctures in the process of political opening shape the range of choices and the kinds of risks they and their successors face subsequently. Although the conditions that make democratic consolidation more or less difficult may be a function of levels of socioeconomic development, the presence or absence of a civic culture, or the existence of a middle class, the decisions of leaders matter. Democracies are crafted, not born whole.

This essay tries to identify the sources of difference in leadership style during a period of political reform. It proceeds from two observations. First, tactical and strategic choices of leaders are partly a function of the incentive structures political and economic institutions offer. Electoral rules, the amount of central control over important electoral resources such as the media, participation in regional monetary agreements—all of these institutions shape the options available for building coalitions.

The election of Barack Obama as the first African-descended president of the United States in 2008 was greeted with euphoria in the U.S. and around the world, including Africa. Little, however, changed in the substance of U.S.–Africa relations. This underscores the limits of the symbolic politics of race and presidential personalities in the face of the structural imperatives of U.S. power and foreign policy in which African interests remain marginal and subordinate to U.S. interests. The article explores the structural contexts of foreign policy-making in the United States and what might be expected from the second Obama administration.

This article posits that a new and important transformation is occurring in Sahelian society. Westerners have tended to see the rise of “Islamism” as just another rejection of globalization and modernization. This article argues that another interpretation is possible, one that looks at the rise of movements like Izala as an attempt of embryonic Hausa capitalists to become part of globalization by substituting a much more individualized set of beliefs and behaviors for the older social and normative constructs of “traditional” Hausa society that obliged them to limit their accumulation of capital.

Areas of the world classified as less than developed tend to have a relatively inflexible economic system dominated by an agricultural sector with low levels of productivity, a rudimentary industrial sector plagued by inefficient methods of production utilizing antiquated technologies, a semi-literate population with little chance of bettering itself because of sheer numbers and a rigid social system, a high level of unemployment or underemployment, and a limited infrastructure. All of these characteristics contribute to low real per capita income, difficulties in finding export markets, and an environment of economic stagnation. Modernization, which includes both economic development and social mobilization, is difficult to achieve.

Popular arts are an effervescent and protean aspect of contemporary culture in Africa. Karin Barber's overview captures the styles, flavor, and general sociological significance of these art forms for both artists and consumers. Noting a lack of theoretical synthesis in the field, the author begins with a critique of the tripartite “European model” of folk, popular, and elite art. She aptly remarks that this model obscures analysis by relegating popular art in Africa to an “undefined and shapeless space” between folk and elite art. Moreover, Barber is concerned with the role that the popular arts play as expressive acts that reflect particular social, political, and economic relationships.

A virtual crisis in Algerian agriculture has been experienced since the early 1950s. This crisis, which has its roots in the dislocations created by the seizure of the best lands by the French and the implantation of the colon regime of agriculture since the conquest of 1832, has been primarily a crisis of underproduction. The war of national liberation, which was fought primarily in the rural areas of the nation, the forced “regroupment” by the French army of approximately two million people during the war, and the massive destruction of livestock and of farm and forest lands resulting from the eight year war exacerbated the problem of underproduction. The relative contribution of agriculture to the GNP in 1954 was 34 percent, for example; whereas in 1968 it dropped to 15 percent, declining to less than 10 percent in the early 1970s (Viratelle, 1974: 196). The failure after 1962 of the post-revolutionary governments to stimulate agricultural production adequately or to create new or additional rural jobs helps to explain the constant decline in the peasant contribution to the Algerian GNP and to the development of the country after independence.

A massive rural-urban exodus also continues unabated. Approximately one hundred thousand farmers leave the lands, the villages, and small towns of the Algerian countryside each year swelling the already overcrowded cities of the north. This exodus, though not a recent development, has not been arrested in a sector where unemployment in the early 1970s reached one out of two persons (Ammour et al., 1974: 78).

This study argues that in technical terms the usual economic models of international trade and development are misspecified because they deal only with market relations and omit important social and political equations (i.e., the social relations of production) which are important variables in the development matrix. This omission has led to development strategies which favor the “modern sector” at the expense of the traditional sector; the agricultural communities are undermined and impoverished. The traditional sector is maintained as a reservoir for cheap labor and as security for the old and the indigent to cushion off crisis in the capitalist modern sector. The traditional sector is undergoing a prolonged crisis without a smooth transition to capitalism or socialism. A more humane and viable process of development of the African economies is suggested: it is argued that Third World policymakers shift from the “dualistic” paradigm of economic development—a post World War II neoclassical paradigm associated with the work of Lewis (1954), Fei and Ranis (1964) and Jorgenson (1970)—to a version of the populist strategies of the Narodniki (Russian) and Maoism in transforming the backward agrarian economies of the Third World (Walicki, 1969; Gurley, 1975).

Most Third World economies may be classified as subsistence economies with industrial enclave sectors. The majority of the world's population live in an agrarian environment. Yet neoclassical and Marxist economists, having preoccupied themselves with the study of the capitalist system, have ignored agrarian economics (Georgescu-Roegen, 1970). Noncapitalist economies have simply not captured the interest of most economists.

In this remarkable book, Marie Béatrice Umutesi recounts what she saw and experienced in Rwanda before and during the 1994 genocide, and as a refugee in Zaire after the genocide. With its intense local level perspective, her study provides fresh insights into the Rwanda genocide and its antecedents, the massacre of Rwandan refugees during the war in Zaire of the mid-1990s, and the utter failure of the international media to understand what was happening there on the ground. Eschewing extremism of all sides, Umutesi records the experiences of ordinary people buffeted by violent events and broader political dynamics they could not control. She is a perspicacious observer—astute, courageous, engaged, and compassionate. One of the remarkable features of this narrative, however, is how little Umutesi appears in this text; it is about her experiences, to be sure, but not about “her.” It is as a testimonial to the times and the human experiences of those times that this tale has such force.

The initial chapters of Surviving the Slaughter recount Umutesi's experiences as a student in the 1970s and mid-1980s and (having completed her university education) as a young adult managing rural development programs. Ethnic distinctions between Hutu and Tutsi held litde importance for Umutesi and her friends while she was growing up. Instead, as a Hutu from the north, she found that regional tensions among Hutu were important during the 1980s, under the Second Republic of Juvenal Habyarimana, when she witnessed regionalism in high school and college in Rwanda. Only later, when studying in Belgium, did ethnic distinctions and discrimination between Hutu and Tutsi come into play. The examples she describes show both the contingent nature of ethnic categorization and identities in Rwanda, and the importance of politics in shaping their salience.

The status of the guerrilla wars in Angola, Mozambique and Guinea-Bissau has long been a topic of debate. While the coup d'etat in Portugal has affected the struggle for liberation in all three territories, the complexion of the debate appears to have changed most significantly with respect to the hostilities in Mozambique. This article presents an assessment of the balance of military force in Mozambique from the inception of the guerrilla war in 1964 through April 1974. Such an assessment provides an interesting perspective to recent military and political developments in that territory.

Five phases can be discerned in the fighting in Mozambique since the beginning of the war in 1964. The first phase began in September of that year and ran roughly to the end of 1965. This phase was marked by the initial military successes of the nationalists, the Frente de Libertaca'o de Mozambique (FRELIMO), and the loss of some territory and population by the Portuguese in the districts of Cabo Delgado and Niassa. The second phase, which began in 1966 and ended at the close of 1969, was characterized by an increase in the ability of FRELIMO to concentrate military force on more heavily defended Portuguese positions but with a decrease in the limits of the zones of fighting in Cabo Delgado and Niassa. Phase three ran roughly through the twelve months of 1970 and was marked by a change in Portuguese counterinsurgency strategy which began with the launching of a number of highly successful counteroffensives against FRELIMO bases and sanctuaries. The fourth phase, which began in 1971 and ended in the first months of 1973, was characterized by a diminishing of the level of fighting in Cabo Delgado and Niassa and a concomitant shifting of the focus of military activities to the district of Tete. The fifth phase, which began in the summer of 1973, has been characterized by the spread of military activities from Tete to the northern sectors of Vila Pery and Beira districts. Each phase is discussed in detail below.

To those who peer into the shadows beneath the dazzling peaks of media-lit summitry, the shape of America's projected post (Vietnam) war foreign policy is becoming discernible. Thoroughly nationalist and pragmatic, it stresses advantage and comity in relations with other major powers — whether politico-military (China and the Soviet Union) or economic (Western Europe and Japan). Coonskin zealotry having given way to cost-benefit real-politik, military withdrawal from Southeast Asia is being accompanied by strategic retrenchment. From Guam and Micronesia in the Pacific, to Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean, to Bahrain in the Persian Gulf, to the Azores in the Atlantic, American air and sea power is taking on an insular “low profile” — while maintaining a long reach. At the same time, domestic postwar introversion threatens a further decline in already minimal American concern for the fate of the world's relatively powerless and economically disadvantaged.

In early 1976 the Ethiopian Amharic language daily, Addis Zemen, opened its columns to a surprisingly free political debate. Through a series of so-called letters to the editor, two political factions, one violently opposed to the military government, the other reluctantly in favor of it, exchanged daily barbs. Both groups considered themselves Marxists-Leninists, both wanted people's government and a socialist revolution. Both, it should be added, used a complex, abstract, highly intellectual and, in addition, not too clear language which rather belied their claims to represent the broad masses. Here, however, the similarity between the two groups stopped. The anti-government faction, initially known as the “Democracia” group, accused the military council and its supporters of fascism. The pro-government group, known as “The Voice of the Masses”, called its rivals anarchists.

This debate was the first and most visible step in an attempt to heal the rift between the military and civilian left in Ethiopia, the major unresolved internal issue of the Ethiopian revolution. From the time of the overthrow of Emperor Haile Selassie in September 1974, the military council, or Derg, was faced with the opposition of one or another faction of the radical intelligentsia, a large section of the student body, the old labor confederation, and, in general, most civilian organized groups. Such opposition was not directed against the policies enacted by the Derg–a sweeping land reform, the nationalization of major industrial concerns, and the organization of the population into peasant associations and urban neighborhood associations whose powers have become quite considerable. Rather, the opposition was directed against the military government per se, dubbed as fascist irrespective of the radical policies it enacted.

One of the main purposes of much recent work in subnational politics in Africa has teen to find levels and categories of action that are both meaningful and persistent. The study of politics at the local level may avoid some analytical difficulties associated with earlier macro-level studies (for a critique of earlier work, see Zolberg 1966), hut the problem of nonreproducibility begins where macro-analysis leaves off. One result of this dilemma is that few of the increasing number of local studies in African politics either build on previous research or relate theoretically to other work. While this random quality in the literature may be partially overcome as more local research is undertaken, for the moment one of the safest generalizations we can make about local politics in Africa is that there is great variety in social formation and political process in local political arenas.

This suggests that the problem of focus in the study of contemporary African politics cannot easily be resolved merely by shifting the research effort from the national to the subnational level. Both macro- and micro-level studies present their own challenges of validity and interpretation. What both approaches have tended to share, however, is an almost exclusive orientation to politics as the influences on, and the processes of authoritative decision-making. In fact, this orientation largely characterizes political science as a discipline; it is not confined to the study of African politics. But it is equally as important for political scientists to develop categories to analyze the substantive performance of African political systems as it is for them to analyze how the systems operate. Such categories will certainly involve the notion of public policy, to which we now turn our attention.

This essay examines the history of the African Studies Association's engagement with the debates, concerns, and issues that have generated both tensions and creative energy within the association since its founding in 1948. The author argues that in the future, the association must maintain its preeminent role in fostering scholarly exchange, but that the association must also seek to engage in a much more active dialogue with the policy world; it must address issues of concern to academics in Africa, and it must work to encourage greater interest in Africa within and outside the academy.

This study explores social media platforms, Facebook and Twitter in particular, as emergent sites of youth citizenship in Guinea. These need to be understood within a longer history of youth citizenship, one that includes street corners and other informal mediations of youth politics. This counters dominant discourses both within the Guinean public sphere and in academic research that decry Guinean social media practices as lacking, or Guinean youth as frivolous or inconsequential in their online political engagements. Instead, young Guineans’ emergent digital practices need to be approached as productive political engagements. This contributes to debates about African youths by examining the role of digital technologies in shaping young Africans’ political horizons.

Attempts to increase food productivity, make the agricultural sector more cost efficient, improve diets of lower income people, and increase net incomes of farmers and livestock owners are receiving considerable interest on a worldwide basis. In many areas, however, these goals are not being met. In particular, livestock development programs in arid and semi-arid pastoral and sedentary regions in Africa have been especially discouraging. The general problem confronted in this article is to determine why the livestock industry is not developing, and to analyze alternatives related to one major source of concern: communally grazed areas.

Africa warrants a special place in development planning due to a multitude of non-economic factors. Political instability, language differences, and tribal and racial tensions have often tended to overshadow economic considerations (Bates, 1981). Perhaps most striking has been the heavy emphasis on equity considerations, possibly because many nations have recently emerged from colonial rule. The relatively short post emergence period (two to three decades in most cases) combined with the continent's economic and natural resource diversity, and a host of other factors such as trade policies, make analysis of economic development potential very difficult (World Bank, 1981).

It is evident that there is no one problem and no unique solution in denning policies related to Sub-Saharan Africa's livestock sector. Perhaps most important is to recognize that the various kinds of livestock systems themselves, as well as associated social institutions, are dynamic forces.