In a review published almost two decades ago, Hopkins (1976, 29) observed that business history had “no following in African Studies.” A decade later, however, the situation had changed remarkably, though the important subject of the relationship between the State and the business community in colonial Africa still required further in-depth analysis based on case studies. Hence, Hopkins (1987, 131) stressed the “need to evaluate the precise balance of…[the] forces (which underpin this relationship) by placing them in the context of a particular colony at a specific historical moment.” He called for “additional research” in the form of case studies, such as is presented below, to shed light on the dimensions of business-government relations under colonial rule.

Although scholars acknowledge the centrality of the State in the colonies (Smith 1979; Cooper 1981), they differ on the characterization of its role in the contest between indigenous and expatriate economic interests in the colonies. The conventional view (Crowder 1968, 305; Hopkins 1975, 189) depicts the colonial state as the “Great White Empire” which limited itself to mediating between these competing interests. The opposing school of thought (Rodney 1972; Smith 1979; Lonsdale and Berman 1979; 1980) posits that the colonial state was interventionist; it collaborated with expatriate business groups to exploit the colonies in the imperial interest. The weight of empirical evidence clearly tips the scales in favor of the latter position but the relationship between these dominant actors in the colonial economies was much more complex than this. As Berman (1990) has shown in a Kenyan case study, it was characterized by crisis and contradictions.

For centuries nearly every European who visited Sierra Leone was struck by the great potential for trade to which the area seemed geographically suited. Caravans from Kankan and Segu, and even from as far away as Bamako and Timbuctu, came down through Siguri and Faranah, passed through the dispersal points inland of the forest at Timbo, Bunban, and Samaia, and carried the gold, ivory, hides, and produce of the interior down to the tidewater towns, of Temneland (Canot 1854, p. 89). From Kambia, Mange, Port Loko, and Magbeli the trade accumulated with local produce, and the caravans ferried their goods by canoe and “Bullom Boat” to the European ships waiting off the mountainous peninsula in West Africa's deepest and largest natural harbor.

Anyone familiar with the map will note that much of Temneland is well situated to command this inland trade from the Futa Jallon and the upper Niger. The northwestern Temne control the navigable reaches of the Scarcies and of Port Loko Creek. Likewise, the southeastern chiefdoms are astride the Rokel and command the approaches to Freetown. Ijagbemi has noted how the major trade routes going inland from the coast “took a north-easterly direction, which, though hilly, was only partially forested and so afforded a relatively easy access to the interior (1970, p. 45).

Slave traders recognized the strategic value of controlling the estuaries, and some of the earliest “slave factories” were built right in the Sierra Leone River.

The countries of West Africa are currently undergoing massive urbanward migration. The process of growth and development which these countries have experienced in the colonial and post-colonial periods has been characterized by what geographers term the process of areal differentiation. In a spatial sense, employment opportunities and developmental changes have been extremely concentrated in a few areas, especially the cities; the rural areas, which dominate both in terms of population numbers and areal extent, have either undergone little growth or have felt the backwash effects of development elsewhere (Hirshman, 1958; Myrdal, 1957). This pattern has been variously described by geographers in terms of a “core and dependent periphery” (Friedman, 1966), “islands of development” (Hance et al., 1961), and “modernization surfaces” (Gould, 1970; Riddell, 1970; Soja, 1968). The essential geographic characteristic has been a spatial imbalance in both economic and welfare opportunities within these countries; employment and income opportunities, schools, health facilities, and clean piped water all tend to be concentrated in urban places, especially in the dominant primate cities. In this context, people, by moving to urban centers are making very rational decisions in the face of sharp and mounting urban-rural differentials and strongly limited rural opportunities.

The result of this process may be seen in the major cities of the region; everywhere the primate cities are increasing in size at incredible rates, so incredible that employment growth has been far outstripped by the expansion in urban population numbers. The outcome is what a recent issue of New African (October, 1978: 77) has termed “the inexorable rise of the unemployed.”

After winning a war of national liberation, FRELIMO faces the vexing question of whether socialism now can be established. With respect to Guinea-Bissau, Amilcar Cabral emphasized: ‘This depends on the instruments used to effect the transition to socialism; the essential factor is the nature of the state....“ No doubt his statement was premised on the belief that socialism begins with the conquest of the state by the producing classes. They must seize the state apparatus to defeat the ruling class whose power is concentrated there. Both the means of coercion and the forces that reproduce the system itself are part of this domain. It is only by gaining control of state power, which is a political act, that the working classes can subsequently organize a socialist economy.

It is an article of faith in many African countries that education is not only a principle motor for development, but also an important instrument in assuring a more equitable distribution of wealth. In the eyes of policy-makers and the public at large, education and training permit a new generation to develop its talents and acquire the characteristics with which to find a well-deserved niche in the employment structure and thus contribute to the country's development. A central focus is on technical and vocational skills which are considered crucial in making people employable or otherwise enabling them to create their own work. Differences in jobs, along with differences in material and social rewards, are attributed to variations in skill levels. Ultimately these differences are associated with variation in ability and effort.

A more critical analysis of actual linkages between education, the labor market, and the employment structure reveals that often skill characteristics are rewarded differently, less because of variations in quality than because of structural conditions in the labor market. On the one hand important differences exist between enterprises which, depending on their mode of production, have a preference for specific worker characteristics and associate these with particular training arrangements. Different occupational or work-positions thus arise which carry diverging rewards and career prospects, even though the actual work done is similar. On the other hand there is ample evidence that factors like race, gender, and class strongly influence access to jobs, so that different social groups find their effective choices in the labor market severely restricted.

The scholarly studies on political corruption in Africa are not conclusive, given the lack of knowledge of how neopatrimonialism contributes to state corruption. This is an important omission. There are obvious relationships between regime types and the likelihood, nature, and extent of political corruption. The analysis of political corruption in Sierra Leone has important implications for our understanding of the relationship between neopatrimonialism and state corruption.

Both continuity and change capture the evolving role of the Clinton White House in the formulation and implementation of U.S. foreign policy toward Africa. Elements of continuity are reflected in a familiar pattern of relationships between the White House and the principal foreign policy bureaucracies, most notably the U.S. State Department, the U.S. Department of Defense (Pentagon), the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and more recently the U.S. Department of Commerce. As cogently argued in Peter J. Schraeder’s analysis of U.S. foreign policy toward Africa during the Cold War era, the White House has tended to take charge of U.S. African policies only in those relatively rare situations perceived as crises by the president and his closest advisors. In other, more routine situations—the hallmark of the myriad of U.S. African relations—the main foreign policy bureaucracies have been at the forefront of policy formulation, and “bureaucratic dominance” of the policymaking process has prevailed. Much the same pattern is visible in the Clinton administration, with the exception of President Clinton’s trip to Africa in 1998. Until that time, events in Somalia in 1993 served as the only true African crisis of the administration that was capable of focusing the ongoing attention of President Clinton and his closest advisors. Given that the United States is now disengaged from most African crises, Africa has remained a “backwater” for the White House and the wider foreign policymaking establishment.

The absurd, both as an element of satire and as a style in its own right, has always been manifest in African literature both oral and written. However, in an effort to redirect the focus of African literature and criticism from eurocentricism to a literature and criticism informed by African aesthetics, vocal African critics like Chinweizu, Jemie, and Madubuike have persistently condemned the encouragement of modernist tendencies in African writing (1980: 239): “If African literature is not to become a transplanted fossil of European literature, it needs to burst out of the straightjacket of anglomodernist poetry and of the ‘well made novel’.” Their advice to African critics is that the latter must “liberate themselves from their mesmerization with Europe and its critical canons” (p. 302) and must stop encouraging “the manufacture of a still, pale, anemic, academic poetry, slavishly imitative of 20th-century European modernism, with its weak preciosity, ostentatious erudition, and dunghill piles of esoterica and obscure allusions, all totally cut off from the vital nourishment of our African traditions ” (p. 3).

The antagonism of these critics toward modernism appears to be based on a seemingly incontrovertible evidence (Chinweizu, 1973: 8):

There was a specific burden of tradition that Western modernism reacted against in its revolt. But however familiar we may be with all that; however familiar we may be with that tradition or with the various modernist against it (Symbolism, Dadaism, Surrealism, Futurism, etc.) they are not part of our history. They do not belong to our past….

One of the most attractive and stimulating features about research in African history has been its eclecticism. Grounded particularly in the extensive and fertile field of social anthropology, Africanists have explored the implications of cultural relativism and the techniques of structural-functional analysis. Now, when some of the basic assumptions which have undergirded social sciences are being questioned, historians might re-examine their own orientations toward the men and societies about which they write.

Claude Lévi-Strauss has suggested that Westerners have been taught to identify subjectively with the “we” of the West, in subconscious opposition to the “other” of the rest of the world. European historians have often encompassed basic contradictions within the Western heritage by opposing that heritage, as a package, to historical experience elsewhere (Lévi-Strauss 1967, p. 258 f.n.). Intensive studies in local history throughout the world, on the other hand, can contribute immensely to reaching a fuller understanding of various ways in which men have related to one another. According to Lévi-Strauss,

Psychological explanations of social behavior are currently unfashionable in the “institutional” social sciences of economics, history, sociology and social anthropology--though political science is something of an exception--and it is these disciplines that dominate African and other area studies. Received opinion has it that psycho-social studies of the “culture and personality” or “national character” type were discredited during the 1940's and early 1950's when a number of undisciplined studies claiming to account for the cultural and political patterns of modern nations and nonliterate peoples alike on the basis of child-rearing determinants were published and revealed the fallacious nature of their theory and methods.

On close examination this view may be seen to have several flaws. First, a logically sound theoretical position is not discredited by inadequate empirical studies carried out in its name; insofar as the studies are badly done they do not provide evidence for or against the position. In the case of culture and personality, the pioneering theoretical formulations of W.I. Thomas, Sapir, Linton, and Hallowell have never been refuted on logical or empirical grounds, and in fact their ideas have been extensively used by recent social theorists of the structural-functional school (Parsons and Shils 1951, Parsons 1964, Inkeles and Levinson 1954, Inkeles 1963, Spiro 1961), indicating at least an enduring plausibility in some quarters. Furthermore, it is quite common in intellectual history for the early adherents of a position to make excessive claims for it and to exaggerate the evidence in its favor, but this hardly justifies rejection of the position itself.

A recurrent theme in most recent studies of the military regimes in developing countries has been that similarities rather than differences in performance constitute the main feature of comparison between civilian and military regimes (McKinlay and Cohan, 1975, 1976; Jackman, 1976). This paper will examine this theme in the Ghanaian context where civilian and military regimes have frequently alternated. Contrary to many current theories, it suggests that differences do occur between civilian and military regimes in the same country. Differences between civilian and military regimes become more apparent if one looks at the policy goals articulated by the different Ghanaian regimes instead of comparing the performance results of these same regimes.

Simply stated, the major hypothesis of this paper is that the articulated policies and goals of a civilian government in a developing nation will differ economically, socially, politically and in terms of leadership style from the articulated goals of a military government in the same country. Furthermore, clarification of these articulated differences is important for the understanding of how different regimes perceive diemselves and approach the process of governing.

Recent literature has overlooked regime differences because of the similarity in the performance results of both civilian and military regimes. This paper suggests that regime differences do affect policy decisions and that as regimes get stronger they may again begin to affect performance results as well. Ghana appeared to be a good testing ground for showing differences between military and civilian regimes because it had experienced two civilian and two military regimes between 1957 and 1975. At the same time, many conditions and variables remained constant.

To a large extent the independence movement in Africa was a movement toward westernization. If political independence had any purpose beyond its own self, African political leaders stated that it was meant to bring the fruits of economic growth and modernization, long stinted under colonial controls. All this seemed appropriate enough. Had not the West made gigantic strides, particularly in science and technology, advances that had brought steadily rising living standards, better health, housing and schools, and greater leisure with which to enjoy the many new material advantages of life? During the colonial era and before, Europeans had unceasingly assured Africans that their own culture was barbaric and dated, that was best to emulate the European as quickly as possible, to get on with the business of joining the modern world. Africans seemed to agree. At independence governments moved forward at full pace to mechanize their agriculture, to establish modern industries, to introduce all the manifestations of high technology. Among the planners and the politicians there seemed to be little hesitation. All eyes were on the future and the model was the West.

Africa is no monolith, however. Africans may have glimpsed a new and better life in the image of a modernized, western-oriented society, but an age-old civilization still survived, still offered its people much that was satisfying and much that worked. There were Africans who recognized this fact, who were concerned that too rapid and unreflective an adoption of foreign ways might lead to complications, unforeseen and dangerous. They did not wish to turn their backs on the West but they did warn that African needs and conditions should always be given first priority.

In Kenya today there are a variety of conflicting views concerning the present performance and the proper societal role of the public bureaucracy--the civil service. Consider the following statements. On March 17, 1971, in the Parliament of Kenya, the Assistant Minister in the Office of the Vice-President, Mr. M. Shikuku, stated that “the foremost enemies of the wananchi (citizens) were the country's senior civil servants” (East African Standard, March 18, 1971, p. 1). Another M. P., Mr. M. J. Seroney, stated that a type of “silent coup” had taken place and that Government (meaning the Cabinet and the very top political leaders) had “silently taken the powers of the National Assembly and given them to the civil service.” Mr. Seroney termed the National Assembly “a rubber stamp of some unseen authority” (p. k).

On March 18 the National Executive Officer for Kanu (the Kenya African National Union, at present the sole legal political party in Kenya) announced:

The National Executive Officer called for a restructuring of the system so that administrators would receive directives from the party.

In Mozambique and Cape Verde, writing in Portuguese by African women has directly engaged political reconstruction by denouncing colonial oppression and embracing national freedom. This article addresses the recent history of Lusophone African women's fiction, which has been pivotal in inscribing the intimate arena of sexuality and motherhood into power relations and has also revealed ways in which the domain of violence intersects with private lives. By focusing on two novels that exemplify this trend, this article demonstrates links between the political and the intimate. It also shows how Lusophone African authors contribute to healing social conflict through their narratives, and draws some conclusions about gender relations in the Lusophone African experience and across the continent.

The purpose of this paper is to put on the scale of history the recommendations of what is commonly, though unofficially, referred to as the Ashby Commission and to weigh the importance of the Commission in the light of educational developments in Nigeria since September 1960 when the Commission submitted its report to the Nigerian Government. The end of 1971 made proposals in the report more than ten years old; and it is perhaps time for the historian to hazard an evaluation.

An initial problem is how to ascertain the specific role which the Commission's recommendations have played or failed to play in the developments which have taken place in Nigeria's educational scene within the last decade. Obviously it cannot be argued that the Commission's recommendations were the only determinants for the features of Nigeria's educational growth since the past ten years even when such features bear resemblances to the recommendations. The very fact that the report of the Commission was accepted and acted upon by the Nigerian Government is evidence enough that ideas contained in it were shared in Nigeria at that time by a larger number of people than the nine members on the Commission. That a considerable number of the proposals in the report have been adopted as part of the basis for educational planning in the country, in my thinking, owes more to this popularity than to any assumption of extraordinary wisdom on the part of the Ashby Commissioners, whose recommendations have in certain respects been anticipated by actual developments.

In Sudan the postindependence era witnessed a succession of attempts by the state to intervene in the country's agricultural markets with the purpose of achieving an effective control over both the physical and financial forms of the agricultural output. The impetus underlying the state's efforts at control originates in an increasing incapacity to finance annual and long-term public expenditure and investment. Given the fact that the Sudan economy is predominantly agriculture-based, effective control over the bulk of the country's agricultural resources was considered instrumental for the resolution of the persistent fiscal problems. However, the state's efforts at controlling the agricultural economy were systematically undermined by a powerful commercial bourgeoisie. Over the three decades following political independence in 1956, the Sudanese peasants, who constitute three-quarters of the total population and produce a considerable portion of the aggregate agricultural output, seem to have been the only losers in a long-drawn scenario involving the state and the commercial bourgeoisie.

Those who follow the debate on the conditions of the Sudanese economy and society are aware of the powerful influence the country's merchant bourgeoisie exerted over the workings of the agricultural economy and the extent of the documentation of this influence. When compared to the recent contributions to the study of the economic crisis in Sudan and the role of the commercial bourgeoisie in the dictation of national policies (Barnett 1988; Elhassan 1985; Mahmoud 1984), the following analysis could be differentiated in terms of its emphasis on the link between merchant control over the state and the economic crisis, and the overall effect of the crisis on the state's attitude towards the agricultural economy.