The growth and development of an international national parks movement has provided Africa with a powerful impetus for devoting increased attention and funding to the preservation of natural African habitats and the conservation of indigenous floral and faunal stock (Lamprey, 1969; Olindo, 1974; Nelson et al., 1978). The political, social and economic dynamics of independent Africa, however, are providing their own set of counter forces to the establishment and consolidation of integrated national parks systems in a significant number of African countries. Particular threats are posed by the continued intrusion into Africa of western multinational corporation capital and by the failure to wean those national parks which do exist away from their almost exclusive externally directed function (Farvar and Milton, 1972; Dasmann, 1973; De Vos, 1975).

Africa's conservation inheritance from the colonial period was a largely uncoordinated set of game reserves and parks designed to serve the recreational needs and economic interests of expatriate whites, settler communities, and foreign tourists. The mass of Africans invariably had little access either to the reserves and parks themselves or to the private and public decision-making bodies which created and maintained them. Political independence brought a measure of access and potential control, but for the masses the inevitable temptation to regard the reserves as white and foreign playthings of only marginal relevance in the independence milieu has persisted.

The widespread commitment to westernized development paths by African states has, in addition, posed long term threats to environmental conservation and the creation and sustenance of national parks systems. Wildlife preservation is often viewed purely in economic terms, as an important, but ultimately dispensable, adjunct to the foreign tourist industry (Pollock, 1974; Myers, 1975). This attitude is expressed in a number of ways.

The persistent, if not chronic crisis in the Nigerian education sector in general, and in the tertiary institutions in particular, has created the impression that unions are largely responsible for creating, rather than managing or regulating conflicts. Unions and their leaders are perceived as the incorrigible trouble makers, hell-bent on causing mischief and in giving perpetual headaches to the administrators of their respective institutions as well as the government, the funder of these institutions. This negative perception has been nurtured and sustained by the Nigerian State, especially under military rule, and then reinforced by intolerant and insecure administrators who see enmity and confrontation in any voice of dissent or critical appraisal. The most cogent and somewhat recent articulation of this perspective, for example, has been advanced by Mr. Ben Nwabueze, then Secretary for Education who, while addressing a gathering of Vice Chancellors and Pro-Chancellors of Nigerian universities, averred that unionism has done nothing but cause senseless distress in, and destruction of, our tertiary institutions.

In the cacophony of what has been referred to in broad terms as “The Congo Crisis,” some misrepresentations have been repeated again and again. This commentary therefore will not attempt a comprehensive analysis of the Congo's struggle and achievement of independence; instead it will focus on aspects that can be given a new or revised interpretation. Itwill consider five themes where misrepresentation has had significant effects: (1) Belgian policy on the education of elites; (2) the supposed “violence” associated with the nationalist drive to independence; (3) Belgium's decision to accept a dramatically condensed decolonization process; (4) Belgian miscalculations in this process; and (5) the price of haste.

From 2011 onward, a European agribusiness progressively purchased about 38,000 hectares of land in Zambia. Although operations have commenced on the ground, only part of the land has been developed. Salverda and Nkonde look at the reasons for and implications of this partial development, focusing particularly on how, in such a context, Zambia’s slow-moving land administration, lack of financing, and the presence of rural residents on the purchased land have become self-reinforcing challenges. Their aim is to provide insights about why (very large) land deals often fail to achieve their projected capacity, leaving both investors and local residents in limbo.

In Médina, a crowded, working-class neighborhood in Dakar, disciples’ associations (dahiras) from the Murid Islamic Brotherhood turn city streets into spaces of participatory musical performance on a nightly basis. While the Brotherhood is frequently cited for its industriousness, scholars have generally focused on the agricultural and commercial aspects of Murid labor, rather than the creative aspect. This article examines how the Brotherhood’s valuing of creative activities as labor mitigates against the stigma that many young men in Médina face when they are expected to be productive members of society while largely being excluded from the prevailing global economic order.

The global geography of art has changed greatly in recent years. Whereas global art hubs were formerly found only in the West, they now exist in locations all over the world, including Africa. Though some art worlds in Asia and Latin America have been studied in recent times, there is insufficient empirical data on art worlds in Africa. This is a study of the Lagos art world, which shows how an “art system,” with all of its attendant structures and agents, has emerged in the city of Lagos, Nigeria, in the last few years. Lagos reflects the dynamics of globalization and is building up the art infrastructure and the critical mass needed for a sustainable art world: an ambitious and fast-growing group of young local collectors, an art fair, an international photography festival, regular art auctions, new art galleries, historical and critical publications, a university art museum, symposiums, art foundations, residencies, and competitions. Lagos is becoming not only a “global city,” but also a “global art hub.”

A critique of multi-sectoral responses to the customary practice of ukuthwala (the isiXhosa term for abduction for purposes of marriage) in South Africa highlights attention to gendered tropes pertaining to marriage, custom, and sexual assault. Karimakwenda deconstructs how, in its inflexible framing of customary practice, the multi-sectoral campaign against violent forms of ukuthwala lacks historicization and silences women’s narratives. By obscuring historical and locally-embedded linkages between marriage practices and rape, the myopic campaign energizes collective anxieties around representations of violence within Black communities, and fuels misconceptions surrounding marital rape. This critique contributes to debates about gender, violence, and state power by offering a counter-narrative to simplified characterizations of sexual violence and custom.

Having recently returned from a short research trip to Rwanda (from October 15 to October 22), I want to comment on certain serious problems which threaten to weigh heavily on the immediate future of the country. I do not intend to judge the performance of the regime in power after only three months in power; it would be premature to do so, and in any case the administration lacks virtually all financial resources. Instead, I seek here only to share a few observations on the current situation.

Before this trip I believed that the essential problem faced by the country was the threat of renewed warfare by the armed forces of the former government, and their associated militias, now in exile in the neighboring countries. That is still a threat.

“Yes, of course we are neo-colonialists. The proof lies in the fact that we are trying to help this country: we are granting her financial aid. If that is neo-colonialism, then long live neo-colonialism.”

This outburst of French indignation occurred in January 1972 at a press conference in Fort Lamy. Georges Pompidou had just been asked by a journalist to comment on the slogans which appeared throughout the Chadian capital accusing the French of being neo-colonialists. President Pompidou’s first trip to Chad was drawing to a close, and French troops continued to work with government forces under President Tombalbaye in combatting guerrilla action led by Moslems in the north. The press conference also afforded the opportunity to protest earlier broadcasts from Radio Libya which had urged the people of Chad to boycott Pompidou’s visit. “Those broadcasts bordered on insults,” the President declared. (Le Monde, January 30-31, 1972)

“They call it a country. In fact it is just a Zaire-shaped hole in the middle of Africa,” wrote The Economist in 1995. Well before then, Erwin Blumenthal, who visited Zaire on behalf of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to assess prospects for reform, warned that, despite promises from President Mobutu (1965-97) that loans would be repaid, “there is no—I repeat no—chance on the horizon that Zaire’s many creditors will recover their money.’ Meanwhile, Mobutu did not use loans to build state bureaucracies or provide services; he actively discouraged them. Even by official accounts, the modest spending of 10 percent of Zaire’s budget on education and health services in 1982 fell to zero a decade later.

Virtually all of the literature concerning the politics of South Africa analyzes the dynamics of that system within the frameworks of racism, authoritarianism, and repression. Yet, strangely, the political institution which is necessarily the bulwark of such a system—the military—has attracted scant attention except in terms of strategy and armaments.

Every projection indicates that minorities will represent a significant portion of the American labor force in the nearest future. Yet minority groups have historically represented segments of the population least capable of competing in the national and international marketplace. This is precisely why historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) need to rise to the challenge through an implicit mandate to internationalize their member institutions and the surrounding communities. This paper takes a critical look at how HBCUs ran the two most predominant components of international education, namely, the overseas and area studies programs. The main focus of the paper is Africa. It is indeed an attempt to assess the status of international education at HBCUs, particularly the problems they encounter as they struggle to internationalize. Although in the last few years, study abroad in Africa has become increasingly popular among HBCUs, the road ahead is still very long and sometimes tortuous. In the area of African studies, most of these institutions have a much bigger challenge to meet. The basic premise of my assumption is that despite all the good intentions of the government and private donor organizations, the fact remains that sustainable and qualitative international education in the area of African studies is in large part unaffordable and thus inaccessible to most HBCUs. Numerous factors are responsible for this phenomenon.

Refugees in Africa number about four million. Some of them, uprooted during the struggles for independence, have been in refuge for over 30 years. Others were uprooted during the post-independence period, when their views were considered revolutionary and dangerous to the regimes in power. As an attempt to solve the refugee problem, some countries, like Tanzania, have granted refugees the status of naturalized citizens. Other countries, like Zimbabwe and Uganda, have encouraged immediate return and repatriation. Others have a wait-and-see attitude. In all cases, refugees are placed in a very awkward postion. They have little say and their material possessions are meager. Uprooted from their motherland, they view educational attainment as, in most cases, their only hope for survival and for earning a respectable livelihood, either in the country of asylum or after they are repatriated. This desire is strengthened by their awareness that the educated in the young independent African states hold the reins of power. Refugees and returnees, therefore, look at education with great hope and expectations (Kabera, forthcoming).

Most of the refugees in Africa come from rural areas where educational facilities are, on the whole, deficient or non-existent. The situation does not improve when they leave home. The hope of making up for an insufficient education while in asylum is curtailed when the refugees are placed in remote reception areas devoid of educational facilities. Other places simply offer few chances for educational attainment (CIMADE et al., 1986: 110). Arrangements to organize and run schools take more time and resources than are available.

In light of the bitterness engendered over the past 150 years between the North and South Sudan—especially during the past two decades—the Addis Ababa Agreement signed in February 1972 is indeed a singular event. (For a text of the agreement, see “Agreement Issue” 1972, pp. 18 and 22; full text on pp. 17-26.) Not only did this mark the end of the seventeen-year-old insurgency in the South, but it may well mark the beginning of a new phase in the relationships between the two regions. This is particularly important when it is noted that apparently neither side achieved their declared objectives. There is a need for caution, however. The basis for future relationships, as well as the effectiveness of the post-insurgency reconstruction, rest on the outcome of the eighteen-month interim arrangement, which is a basic part of the Addis Ababa Agreement.

The interim arrangement (February 1972-June 1973) privides interalia for an Interim High Executive Council, whose President and members are appointed by the President of the Democratic Republic of the Sudan. In effect, the Council is the “Executive and Cabinet” for the Southern Sudan during this interim period. Additionally, a number of other provisions provide for the establishment of institutions and initiate steps for integrating them into a wider national system. Implicitly, the arrangement assumes an effective relationship between the North and South from which a permanent settlement can evolve.

The art of filmmaking in the last two decades has been enriched by the works of various African filmmakers. This relatively modern form of visual representation seems more amenable to understanding at all levels of the social and cultural strata of the African populace than one would expect from even the earliest forms of the visual arts. Although many remarkable works have been produced by African filmmakers, few of these works have focused on the largely illiterate African majority as the target audience: this is not without reason. Filmmaking is arguably the most expensive form of art in any medium. It is difficult not to approach the profession primarily as a potentially viable business venture, or to continue in the pursuit of artistic excellence without healthy financial support. The governments of French speaking African countries, however, readily fund film projects, thereby mitigating the problem of finance for their filmmakers. As a result, for Ousmane Sembène of Senegal, filmmaking has become a very prolific enterprise. Despite the financial assistance received from the government of Senegal, Sembène does not compromise his artistic inclinations for this patronage. He has even had a serious disagreement with the government over the title of one of his films, Ceddo, 1977 (Gabriel, 1982).

A number of international agencies (as well as other prominent institutions and individuals) have issued reports assessing the “crises” now perceived to afflict “development” in Africa. The Organization of African Unity's Lagos Plan of Action (OAU, 1980) emphasized historical legacies, deteriorating terms of trade, and Africa's dependence on foreign markets, and set out elements for a general strategy to escape these constraints by building self-reliant, local, and regional economies. Various Food and Agriculture Organization documents (e.g., FAO, 1983) and UNICEF's State of the Children Report (UNICEF, 1983) provide particularly grim pictures of food and nutritional deficiencies. The Economic Commission for Africa, in its “silver jubilee report,” analyzing recent history, emphasized that, if present trends continue, the “scenario” after the next twenty-five years will be a “nightmare” of “poverty” and “degradation” of life (UN ECA 1983).

The World Bank's 1981 report, Accelerated Development in Sub-Saharan Africa: An Agenda for Action (hereafter Accelerated Development) also portrayed a “crisis” situation in food and agricultural production and called for some major policy changes in response. This document has probably attracted the lion's share of attention, certainly controversy. There are several reasons why the report deserves careful study and concerned discussion: it is readable, provocative, and comprehensive; it focuses on what are perceived to be “immediate problems” which “must be addressed if the widespread decline in per capita output” is to be “reverse”; it sets out an “agenda” of new “policies and programs to bring about this essential improvement” in the “production base” (World Bank, 1983: 1).

Surviving the Slaughter is a powerful narrative that takes us into one of the many tragedies of the African Great Lakes region that affected tens of thousands of helpless Rwandan civilians in the aftermath of the 1994 genocide inside Rwanda. Through the eyes of an ordinary, but also remarkable, woman, we learn the horrifying details of the ordeals that Rwandan refugees in the eastern part of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) went through after their camps were destroyed manu militari. The value of this book goes beyond that of a simple narrative. As we read it, we are absorbed by an account of a breathtaking and excruciating journey of tens of thousands of people as they are hunted down in the dense rainforests of the Congo. At the core of this account is one woman's protest against the absurdity of mass violence and the inhuman brutality of military regimes.

At first glance, the book stands out as a strong stand against the corrosive tradition of silence that often accompanies gross violations of human rights, especially those unfolding beyond the scrutiny of the major world media. In a simple but engaging style, Umutesi strips off the usual veneer of reserve that characterizes Rwandans in general and Rwandan women in particular. Rwandans don't usually talk about their experiences, let alone write about them. And writing about the plight of people whom the world has often considered pariahs since the 1994 genocide requires a strong personality.

In recent years, anthropologists and sociologists have been concerned with the problem of the definition of ethnic groups within various societies. This paperl suggests that the purpose of the researcher's definition largely determines the composition of the group and that research on ethnicity may be seen as analogous, in that respect, to approaches to research on language.

For some types of research, it is sufficient to equate ethnic identity with tribal affiliation. This is true in areas of the world where it makes sense to record answers from informants to the question “What is your tribe?”. However, it is necessary in such areas for the researcher to ask the question directly, rather than ask one person to label another.

In a recent article, A.N. Tucker (1973) discusses this same problem with regard to placenames. He cites, for Africa, cases where it was discovered that the official name of a particular place was not the place's name at all but had been supplied to researchers (linguists, anthropologists, geographers, or whatever) by a guide from another culture or linguistic group. Tucker (1973: 163) states that:

As research in social anthropology has turned from studying tribal units in more or less isolated areas toward urban-centered research, it has become apparent that one feature of urban social organization seems to be emergent ethnic or tribal groupings (Arens, 1973: 441). The criteria underlying such groupings, as opposed to those underlying traditional tribal affiliation, are often of a complex nature. Where, in rural areas, it has been possible to ask informants “What is your tribe?” and receive an unambiguous answer (usually related to parentage and/or land inheritance), in urban poly-ethnic communities today as well as in rural yet urban-linked areas, criteria for determining ethnicity are changing. In fact, as Arens has pointed out, in today's Africa common tribal identity in the sense of ethnic consciousness seems to be of particular importance in the cities, where ethnicity—in the absence of kinship—underlies social organization. The common assumption that rural areas are static and urban areas dynamic is being challenged.

This study investigates household expenditures on magico-religious powers in Southern Benin, with a novel focus on malevolent powers. Of 126 households, 18 percent reported expenditures on malevolent powers within the previous thirteen years. Investment in such powers for malevolent purposes was found to be significantly less frequent than for cure or protection. In line with existing literature, the following factors were found to be positively correlated with investment in malevolent powers: (1) living with a partner; (2) jealousy of economic success; (3) conflict within a social circle. Expenditures on powers for cure and protection are positively correlated with expenditures on malevolent uses.

The purpose of this paper is to indicate how one area of social science research may contribute to social and economic development in the Third World. International aid and technical assistance programs for less developed nations began in the late 40s shortly after World War II. The interest of scholars in the study of such programs also dates from this time (Opler, 1954). Ever since the early days, we, the social scientists, have been called upon to explain the failure of many assistance efforts or to discern why new ideas and practices caused chaos in the societies into which they were introduced. An example of an early program failure was documented in Peru when village women failed to use the “good” public health practice of boiling contaminated water before drinking it after the method had been advocated in an extensive education campaign by public health personnel (Wellin, 1955: 71-103). The disorganization of a society in the face of what appeared to be a relatively minor technological improvement of an existing tool, was reported in 1952 after missionaries gave steel axes to Australian aborigines (Sharp, 1952: 66-92). The determination of the adverse social consequences of innovation was an important aspect of the early studies done by social scientists, especially anthropologists (Rogers, 1962: 27). Though there were reports of cross-cultural diffusion which did not affect societies adversely, for example, the adoption of potato growing by a Pacific Northwest Indian tribe (Suttles, 1951: 272-88), many reports appear to concentrate upon the damage done by technical assistance programs (Dobyns, 1951;Bliss, 1952;Mead, 1955; Erasmus, 1961).