The papers that follow were based on presentations to two roundtables on Rwanda organized at the African Studies Association Annual Meeting held in Toronto, on November 6,1994.

At the outset, it is important to note three aspects of those roundtables. First, they were not organized as a comprehensive set of papers; instead, with one or two exceptions, the roundtables were formed of those papers which were submitted independently of each other by individual members of the ASA. I was asked simply to coordinate their presentation and prepare the papers for publication afterward. The result of this was regrettable in one major aspect: there was very little representation of Rwandans on the panels, and therefore also in this collection, although a large number of Rwandans attended the roundtables and participated energetically in the discussions, which together with the paper presentations lasted formally for nearly 6 hours, and informally far into the night.

This bibliography is the first attempt to establish a comprehensive listing of the various types of documents which the Liberian government has published. That it is not complete, goes without saying. Only time and further discoveries will make it so. In addition, certain of the gaps which occur are due to the nature of some of the material. Some parts of the series were never duplicated for mass distribution; rather, they remain in manuscript form in the Liberian government archives.

In this bibliography I have limited listings to printed and duplicated materials. I have attempted to follow the Library of Congress form of cataloging where applicable. Where government agencies, although maintaining the same functions, have changed names, the cross references are given. Finally, a notation is given when a specific document is available at a public library.

Crystal ball gazing is hardly the province of social scientists. The best one can do, in attempting to assess the prospects for real economic growth by the year 2000, is to examine the contradictory trends and struggles shaping the political economy of Africa and the world today, and suggest potential alternative outcomes. Even the possibilities are obscure.

What is clear is that, despite over ten years of independence for over 40 African countries, the majority of African peoples still confront the overriding problem of poverty. Living on a continent endowed with extensive mineral agricultural resources, they still suffer from among the lowest per capita incomes and the highest mortality rates in the world.

Over ten years have now elapsed since the then Government of Northern Nigeria, in what has since been represented as a major attack on the institution of Chieftancy per se (Dudley, 1968, and Whittaker, 1970), set in motion the procedure for a Commission of Enquiry into the financial affairs of the Kano Native Authority which resulted in the Emir of Kano, Alhaji Sir Muhammadu Sanusi, K.B.E., abdicating and going into voluntary exile at Azare, leaving his Emirate entirely and withdrawing to a life of religious seclusion.

Nothing has been published heretofore concerning the motives or the origins of this enquiry, other than the speculation of some scholars which have been based on only the most scanty corpus of material, but it would seem that, ten years after the event, and after so much water has flowed under the bridge, there would now be no impropriety in disclosing at least some of the broader aspects of the Enquiry as the Commissioner became aware of them. In particular, what has not been appreciated to date is that the fundamental element of the crisis when it occurred was really one of legitimacy.

When Felix Eboue made the observation quoted, it was already too late for France to effect any meaningful shift in colonial policy. When Charles Temple made his, British administration theory had already crystallized along the rigid lines for which Lugard had opted, and, in fact, it was against this very rigidity that Temple was inveighing when he wrote the book from which the quotation has been taken. The problem which each of these authorities was addressing, however, is not one that is applicable to the colonial context alone, or even, necessarily, at all. It is much more generally concerned with modernization and modernism, and especially with the dislocation of the traditional process which the unthinking application of modernistic norms invariably entails.

Studies on African sculpture serve as point of reference in this paper. Since a full analysis of African sculpture cannot easily be separated from its sociological, technological, and ideational contexts, and since sculpture itself presents only one aspect of wide-ranging but ill-defined artistic activities and aesthetic concepts, however, these other features obviously also need mention.

There is no attempt to review the recent work of individual scholars or to characterize particular models of approach or schools of thought; this would require a badly needed but much longer and circumstantial study. Rather the paper is limited to some general observations about the kinds of works students of African art have produced and some of the needs that seem to emerge from this inventory.

In the last twenty-five years a large quantity of studies on African art, written in English and several other European languages, have been published by ever-increasing numbers of anthropologists, art historians, critics, artists, musicologists, connoisseurs, collectors, and dealers. There are many reasons to be satisfied with the achievements. Students of African art now have specialized associations and exclusive journals besides the many journals that have always been receptive to articles on African art. There is now a book series specifically on African art (Indiana University Press, Traditional Arts of Africa) in addition to many other serials and museum publications that regularly include relevant inventories, surveys, and stylistic and cultural analyses. Specialists on African art have achieved tenured positions not only in museums but also in anthropology, art, and history of art departments. There is an endless succession of exhibitions, and major art museums have deigned to organize some of them. In brief, there is an international boom of African art studies. After decades of relative obscurity and neglect, the new importance of the field has now led to a kind of euphoria and complacency among many specialists. This is evidenced, for example, in book reviews, which are either excessively eulogistic or severe and overcritical, and also in the proliferation of generalizations and in the widespread acceptance of assumptions and working hypotheses as proven facts.

The Healers, Ayi Kwei Armah's most recent novel (1978), has received less critical attention than it deserves given the importance of its theme—the sociopolitical liberation of Africa—and the compelling textual strategies it deploys towards that end. What scanty criticism it has attracted has concentrated only on the novelist's social vision, with the debates centering on the degree of faithfulness to the historical materials on which he bases his novel. Nevertheless, without due attention paid to the rhetoric, the peculiar idea of revolution that Armah advocates cannot be grasped fully. By rhetoric is meant the linguistic strategies employed by the writer to put his ideas forward-his style, the use of aesthetic means for achieving desired effects on the reader. This essay attempts to redress the picture and demonstrate the aesthetic elements that give Armah's novel its special stridency.

While it is true, as many critics have pointed out (Lindfors 1980, 91; Fraser 1980, 83-86; Wright 1989, 244-47), that The Healers uses the fall of the Ashanti empire in the 19th century as a paradigm of how other African societies were undermined during the period of Western imperialist incursions into the continent, fidelity to that history itself should never be at issue. Rather, since Armah is a novelist (and not a historian), of greater significance should be the quality of his imaginative use of the past for the purpose of furthering present sociopolitical objectives. If, as he has stated, “the human value of literature, after all, lies primarily in the interactions it makes possible between the way we live and the way we think-between our existence and the reflections we make of and on that existence,” it would not be inapposite to demand of the critics that they use “a high level of knowledge about technique, a craft, an art” (Armah 1985,356) to bring out the writer's total vision, his textual strategies, through aesthetic evaluations.

African socialism is the ideology of Africa. The purposes of this paper are to examine the meanings attached to this ideology by Africans and Africanists alike, to analyze and compare any perceptual differences which may exist among competing viewpoints, and, finally, to indicate areas of consensus or agreement emerging from such an analysis. The ideology of African socialism is investigated here under experimental circumstances. Employing Q technique, 53 Africans and Africanists were asked to sort 75 statements pertinent to African socialism made by African leaders along an opinion continuum. Data were inter-correlated and factor-analyzed, producing three factors or patterns of perceptions toward African socialism, respectively described as pragmatic, scientific, and internationalist. Respondents aligned with all three viewpoints mention Julius Nyerere of Tanzania as their ideal type of African socialist leader. The inference is that Nyerere serves as a condensation symbol for persons of differing ideological persuasions.

Ideology is an important aspect of any political culture. Political culture is part of the general cultural system, and according to Parsons (1964: 57-58), the individual is involved in three possible ways: by his interest in it, by his participation in it, and by his individual value orientation or political beliefs. Verba (1966: 513) observes that the political culture

consists of the system of empirical beliefs, expressive symbols, and values which defines the situation in which political action takes place. It provides the subjective orientation to politics.

At a general level of analysis, ideologies embody issues of importance to individuals or groups. As a working definition of political ideology, Dion (1959: 49) has suggested that it may be regarded as a “more or less integrated system of values and norms noted in society, which individuals and groups project on the political plane in order to promote the aspirations they have come to value in social life.”

The written words of African Muslims have recently received renewed attention. This stems from a push to go beyond colonial archives as well as concerns with terrorism and Islamic radicalization. While Ajami—that is, African languages written in Arabic script—has been a part of this trend, Manding-language publications in the N’ko script have been overlooked. And yet, this literary industry is distinctly Islamic. Putting the writings of Sulemaana Kantè into conversation with historical authors and his contemporaries, Donaldson demonstrates that N’ko represents an iteration of Afro-Muslim vernacular thought, thereby illuminating Kantè and a body of N’ko and Ajami publications.

In their study of the process of individual modernity in six less developed countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, Inkeles and Smith (1974) reported that urbanization was of little or no consequence as a predictor variable. McClelland (1976: 161) has described this finding as “a shock to some sociologists … who have argued that it is the city above all which makes men modern.” Lerner (1965) and Hoselitz (1962) were among such sociologists who assigned a preeminent position to urbanization among factors accounting for modernization in the less developed countries. Lerner (1965), in particular, argued that in a system of causal indicators, the developmental sequence was from urbanization to literacy to communication and thence to political participation. Support for this conception of the national development process has been reported by McCrone and Cnudde (1967), Akler (1966), Smith (1969), and Sigelman (1971), among others.

Several other researchers have, however, reported, as did Inkeles and Smith (1974), that urbanization no longer holds such an important position in the national development process, if in fact it ever did hold such a position in the past (Schramm and Ruggels, 1967; Golding, 1974; Edeani, 1977) and Lerner (1976) himself has conceded that these empirical challenges to his once influential findings may well be valid. Schramm and Ruggels (1967) argue that the spread of transistor radios, roads, and rapid transportation have eroded any influences which urbanization might have had on the growth of literacy and the mass media as Lerner contended, since the data which formed the basis of Lerner's conclusions were collected as far back as September 1950 when these media and transportation developments in the Third World had not become so important. Golding (1974) states that Lerner's research and others like it disregarded the influences of colonialism, international news and media organizations, and the relationship between traditional communication channels and the new media on the development of the Third World. Also, Edeani (1977) reports that, contrary to Lerner's stand, urbanization is a function of economic development and mass communication development.

It has been said that, given the proper incentives, farmers in the developing world would “turn sand into gold” (Schultz, 1976: 5). This paper describes and discusses an instance which approximates just such a transformation. It examines the relationships between a shift in the economic base and concomitant social and institutional changes among the Anlo Ewe people of southeastern Ghana. Specifically, it examines changes in the organization of labor and access to resources that developed in response to agricultural intensification.

The data for this paper were gathered between 1970 and 1979 in the vicinity of Anloga (see map), a town of approximately 15,000 people in coastal southeastern Ghana. Anlo Ewe people have been settled in this area since about the mid-1600s. It is an area of sandy soil and sparse rainfall located on a narrow strip of coastal land between the ocean and a large saltwater lagoon. In their season, drought and flood have created difficulties for the Anlo for as long as they have been settled here.

Oral tradition indicates that the first representatives of what were ultimately to become patrilineal clans moved into the area from the east bringing with them an economy based on horticulture and hunting. Cattle, pigs and fowl were kept. Once settled, people began to fish in both the lagoon and the sea. Extensive trade with areas north of the lagoon has apparently always been a significant factor in the economy, with the Anlos trading fish, salt collected from the lagoon, and woven fabrics and mats for vegetable foods.

The war that brought Laurent-Désiré Kabila and the AFDL (Alliance of the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Congo/Zaire) into power in Kinshasa must be placed in the broader context of three conflicts—that of the Great Lakes, of course, which is the most immediately obvious, but also those of Sudan and Angola. The proximity of these unstable locations and the game of alliances (every actor uses the “my enemy’s enemy is my friend” logic) brought these conflicts together, creating a potential war zone from Asmara to Luanda. Zaire is the connection among these three wars: Mobutu’s government supported Khartoum’s regime against the South Sudanese guerrillas, in particular the SPLA, who are supported in turn by Asmara, Addis Ababa, and Kampala. Zaire’s territory served as a rear base for attacks by the diverse armed movements against Uganda, Rwanda, and Burundi.

Like any respectable modern organization, the Ford Foundation has computer printouts showing in fat volumes of lists and tables what it has done. Some of these compilations trace the record from the beginning of the Foundation’s national and international programs in 1950. An international interest was there from the start, because the study group that in the late forties advised the Foundation’s trustees on what they ought to do successfully urged that they should devote major attention to world problems of peace and international understanding. The first specific attention to Africa south of the Sahara came in 1954 with a half-dozen grants and a series of what were then called “foreign study and research fellowships.” Fellowships for Asian and Near Eastern studies had started earlier, in 1952, and some of them went to young scholars working on the Maghreb, Egypt, and places down as far as Sudan and Ethiopia.

After the victories of the Front for the Liberation of Mozambique (FRELIMO) and the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) against Portuguese colonialism, the liberation struggle in Southern Africa today consists of the heroic efforts being made by the black and brown peoples of South Africa, Namibia, and Zimbabwe to destroy the system of racial oppression established in these countries by white settlers. This system, known in its extreme form of economic explotation and political and cultural oppression as apartheid in South Africa and Namibia, is closely tied to the survival of imperialist interests in Southern Africa. This is why any analysis of the difficulties being faced by the liberation movements of Southern Africa must include a discussion of the specific articulation of imperialism and settler colonialism in this area. For it provides the context in which the African liberation struggle must be understood.

In the late 1970s, the Ethiopia-Eritrea conflict and the Ethiopia-Somalia border war over the Ogaden region has centered world attention on Soviet-Cuban activities in the Horn of Africa. Although the Somali army was defeated by the combined powers of the Ethiopians and the Soviet-Cuban forces in mid-March 1978, the tension between the two countries was still high. Among the other problems facing the region is that of the Eritrean struggle for self-determination.

The transformation of peasant agriculture is a central concern of many African leaders. Since the population of most African countries is predominantly peasant, rural change is considered a requisite of national development. Several leaders have turned to the socialistic experiences of the Soviet Union and China for models of rural transformation. Some have seen in the idea of establishing rural socialist communities, a notion similar to that of the nineteenth century Russian Narodniki, an appropriate strategy for such transformation. They believe that such communities will involve the peasantry in new political and economic relationships of a sort which will improve the way of life of both rural and urban inhabitants. Among African adaptations are such entities as the Algerian socialist villages and the Tanzanian Ujamaa villages.

Tanzania's efforts to establish Ujamaa villages, in turn, have attracted attention throughout Africa and the Third World. The country formally committed itself to building a socialist state in the Arusha Declaration of early 1967. Major private industries were immediately taken over by the government. Leaders, however, realized that the key to their efforts would be the establishment of socialism in rural areas. In September of 1967 President Nyerere issued a policy paper titled “Socialism and Rural Development,” which proposed the creation of Ujamaa villages where people “lived and worked together for the good of all” (Nyerere, 1967b: 337-66). Since the majority of the peasants lived scattered on individual plots of land outside villages, people had to be moved together.

This article examines the transformations to urban social stratification in Angola during the last decades. The analysis is centered on the indicators of social difference throughout these years: the racial criteria of the colonial times; the political precedence in the first years after independence; and the multi-criteria of the postwar period. Based on research conducted before and after the end of the civil war in 2002, the article explores the construction and reconfiguration of urban society today, providing evidence of increased social mobility—despite the poverty and deeper inequalities—and of the importance of economic and residential criteria.

This is an essay offering some random thoughts on the progress that has been made on research in African history since the early 1960s and what the writer sees as the research tasks that must still be addressed in future. In this introductory portion, a number of general issues are raised about the current state of the craft. It is a section in which the ground is cleared, as it were, for the main task of the paper which is dealt with in the subsequent three sections. There, an attempt will be made to come to grips with the most topical findings of the research that has gone on, and to point out the gaps that have yet to be filled, in the main sub-disciplines of political, economic, and social history. The examples used to illustrate the argument have been largely drawn from east, central, and southern Africa, this being the part of the continent with whose history the writer is most familiar. Furthermore, being neither original nor empirically based, this essay is essentially a review of work others have done on various facets of African history. While assessing that work, it should nonetheless also serve as a pointer to areas of investigation that seem not to have received adequate attention, areas to which effort might well be directed in future.

It should be noted, to begin with, that historians of Africa have been extremely good at asking new questions of their discipline and its sources. The result is that African historiography has been characterized by different traditions of historical inquiry and knowledge (Zeleza, 1983:9-42). In other words, in a bid to enhance our conceptual understanding of past African experience, historians have had recourse to one paradigm or framework of analysis or another, to the extent of making possibilities seem endless. All this has been generally viewed as a healthy development, but it is one which poses a serious challenge to one called upon to identify and offer informed opinion on the research tasks to which future attention should be directed.

This article considers the choices made during the apartheid era by Catholic sisters who were members of one of the largest orders for African women, the Montebello Dominicans, based in KwaZulu-Natal, and one of the smallest orders, the Companions of Saint Angela, based in Soweto, the sprawling African township to the southwest of Johannesburg. The Montebellos took an apolitical stance and embraced “silence,” but they could not avoid the political tensions that defined KwaZulu-Natal. The Companions became activists, whose “disobedience” brought them into direct confrontation with the state. History, region, ethnicity, and timing help explain what it meant for African women religious to be apolitical, and what it meant to be politicized, in the context of state repression so effective that every action could be interpreted as a political act.