This study focuses on the hegemonic struggles between two ethnic communities, the Mbo and the Bamiléké, in Santchou, West Cameroon. At issue is the sharing of political roles in this locality, which point to issues of political representation. In this district, these roles (mayor, representative, etc.) were under the single party rule of the ethnic minority Mbo, who are a majority in this area but a minority in the rest of the district, where the Bamileke are the majority. In this monolithic context, where all protests were banned, the Bamileke had given up and accepted this arrangement. With the advent of the multiparty system and democracy, in which mayors are now elected and no longer simply nominated, uncertainty has been hovering over this political stronghold of the Mbo. Nevertheless, the Mbo have been able to hold onto the post of mayor and acquire other political posts as well. However, unlike during the single party era, the situation created by the political liberalization has offered to the Bamileke a public space where they can discuss the allocation of local political positions, and manifest their disagreement with the hegemonic trend. In the footsteps of Habermas and many other authors such as Cottereau, this study underlines the need to talk about public spaces in a plural form, instead of a single public space, in order to put in context the internal dynamics of popular cultures engendering subcultural public spheres or places of emerging democracy.

This article analyses continuity and change of the agrarian doctrine in colonial and postcolonial Malawi. It engages in a classic debate about images and polices concerning African farming. The article argues that the agrarian doctrine must be related to the broader notion of agrarian populism, more specifically to Chayanov's notion of the logic of the peasant family farm. Employing this broader approach allows a striking continuity of the agrarian doctrine to be revealed. Calls for changes of local institutions did not signify attempts to promote rural transformation, but contained strategies to increase the economic independence of the precapitalist family farm.

After gaining their independence, African countries followed various industrialization policies. Kenya and Tanzania, up to the Arusha Declaration in February 1967, pursued industrialization via private enterprises. Uganda and Nigeria followed a mixed pattern, that is, investments by both private and public enterprises; Ghana, since 1961 and up to the coup in February 1966 by the National Liberation Council (NLC) that ousted Nkrumah, relied primarily on public-enterprise investment (see also Grayson 1970, 1971ab, 1972).

Ghana started out along the Kenya and pre-Arusha Tanzania pattern, both before independence, with Nkrumah already in power, and after independence (in 1957) up till 1961. During that period Nkrumah set out to create an investment climate favorable to both private foreign and local capital. It was only after 1961 that Nkrumah embarked on large-scale public investments in manufacturing. (For an account of the political climate in the early 1960's, see Genoud 1969.) Aside from ideological leanings and a desire for prestige, the main economic considerations motivating Nkrumah were (1) his judgment that Ghanaian entrepreneurs were unable or unwilling to enter the modern manufacturing sector and (2) to break the economic power of the large foreign firms operating in Ghana.

This paper is designed to explore the theory which relates the one-party state ideology to the class conditions prevalent in African societies. It is not my intention to argue against the one-party state and for the multiparty system because the latter seems inappropriate for Africa at its present stage of development. This article is an attempt to analyze critically one aspect of the African one-party state ideology rather than to evaluate the whole doctrine that only one-party states can lead African states toward rapid development and national unity.

Many African leaders defend the one-party system on the Marxist ground that political parties are part of the political-social super-structure which articulates basic economic class interests. They argue that there are no distinct economic classes in Africa and that, therefore, there is no justification for the existence of more than one party. Multipartyism in Europe, the United States, and even such developing countries as India is regarded as an outgrowth of class struggles which took place in the past and continue today.

African leaders suggest that in Africa there never were classes in the Marxist sense nor do they exist today. The Nigerian priest B. Onuoha states: “The idea of social classes, of a closed group, whose privilege it was to enjoy the best of everything and an underprivileged group for whom anything was good enough is foreign to Africa” (Onuoha 1965, p. 34). Most African leaders agree with him. Even the General Federation of African Trade Unions, which would presumably represent a specific working-class interest, declares that there is no class differentiation in Africa and that there are no large discrepancies between the living standards of Africa's major social groups (Friedland and Rosberg 1964, p. 22).

The major services afforded by local authorities in Kenya are primary education, health, housing, roads and water supplies. Local authorities finance these services from taxes (graduated personal tax, land rates and cesses), school fees, other fees and charges, and government grants. Significant variation in per capita government services in urban and rural areas and the difference in the relative importance of revenue sources of Municipal and County Councils are the dominant features of the expenditure and revenue systems of local authorities in Kenya.

Municipalities spent L8.8 million in 1966 as compared to Lll million spent by County Councils in Kenya. However, more than 90 percent of Kenya's population live in rural areas. The per capita expenditures of Municipalities are more than ten times higher than the per capita expenditures of County Councils. It would be expected that per capita local government expenditures would be higher in Municipalities because per capita government expenditures are directly related to population density and Municipalities have a greater variety of services to provide. The wide variations that exist in per capita expenditures of Municipalities and County Councils in Kenya may reflect also the difference in the fiscal abilities of these major local authorities.

County Councils in Kenya have only one major tax source, the graduated personal tax, and derive only 29 per cent of their revenue from taxes. Municipalities, on the other hand, collect 55 per cent of their revenue from taxes and have two major tax sources, graduated personal tax and land rates (taxes levied on the site value of land).

Barack Obama's election was an extraordinary event in American and world history, but already in his second year as president, the luster and the popularity of the Obama administration has faded, even among many who mobilized to elect him. In addition to righting two wars, Obama is attempting to fix a broken health care system in the context of a nationally contentious electorate and Congress. He also is coping with a mounting debt burden from seeking to recover from an economic collapse and public anger at an environmental disaster of mega proportions, requiring him to rein in the banks and corporations that were unleashed from public regulation during the Reagan, Bush, and Clinton years. In addition, he is commander-in-chief of the U.S. military and its rapidly expanding U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM).

This was an administration elected on “hope for change.” Indeed, Obama's election raised expectations across the U.S. and throughout Africa that a man of African heritage, indeed a global person, could be and had been elected. This quintessentially optimistic, intelligent, and gifted American is the product of a Kenyan father and an internationally engaged mother, a multicultural childhood, and a global education as graduate of a private secondary school and elite American universities, and he has been pinned simultaneously with American, biracial, African American, African, and even global identities (see Zeleza 2009).

In Sub-Saharan Africa there has been a steady rate of urbanization. First, there are the large burgeoning cities which are in most cases industrial, commercial and administrative centers with a population ranging between 500,000 to 3,000,000 or more. Second, there are cities with populations between 100,000 and 500,000. Some have industrial, commercial and administrative activities. Third, there are medium sized towns with a populations between 20,000 and 100,000. Some are district or provincial centers. Fourth, there are small sized towns with populations below 20,000 which are dotted in the countryside.

In terms of urban studies, the first and second categories usually attract the attention of scholars (Mabogunje 1980; 1968; Coquery-Vidrovich 1991; Okafor 1988, 253-63). The third and fourth categories are left out as being insignificant in terms of urbanization, population size, commercial activity and administrative importance. They are lowly rated in terms of importance to urban studies.

Although they vary in size and population, small- and medium-sized towns play similar and crucial roles in the economic, social and political development of the areas in which they are located. They serve as links between the urban centers and the rural countryside. They also act as centers of innovation and diffusion of ideas from the urban areas to the countryside and vice-versa. From the urban point of view, small- and medium-sized towns are seen and treated as forward bases for the domination of the countryside. In the rural view, they are seen and treated as either markets or distribution centers at which the produce of rural areas are collected, marketed and absorbed in the local, regional or export market economy. In short, they are seen as points at which capitalist and peasant economies meet and co-exist.

The Ovambo form the biggest population group in South West Africa: at the 1960 census they numbered 239, 363, or 45 per cent of the total population of all races, and in 1966, 270, 900, or 44 per cent of the total (South Africa 1967, p. 18). By 1971 their numbers had increased to 342,000, or 45 per cent of the population (South Africa 1971, introduction). The Ovambo people have been settled within the area now known as Ovamboland, or Owambo, for about four centuries. The territory is bordered by the Kunene River and Angola in the North, the Kaokoveld in the West, and Kavango in the East (see Map 1). It is isolated from the southern and western parts of South West Africa by vast tracts of uninhabited land. This comparative isolation has protected the Ovambo people from interference and attack by other tribes; on the other hand, it has made communication and trade with the most developed part of South West Africa difficult and expensive and has, therefore, tended to inhibit the economic development of the territory.

There are seven Ovambo tribes: the Ndonga, the Kuanyama (“the meat eaters”), the Ngandjena, the Kuambi (“those who work with clay”), the Kualuthi, the Mbalantu, and the Nkolonkati-Eunda. These tribes are linked by broad ties of kinship and by the fact that their languages are, for the most part, interintelligible. These factors, and the territorial isolation of the Ovambo people, have combined to create in them a strong sense of solidarity.

Water must be rationed in the chronically overcrowded hospital because there is insufficient pressure in the inner-city system. A few blocks away, local elites cavort around an azure swimming pool, its olympian form brimming with thousands of gallons of water. … A key person in a planning ministry reports to his town planning consultants that a decision must be made regarding the site of a major development project. He gives them a few days to make the decision in spite of their protests that it will require several weeks of study to produce a recommendation that will fit with the needs of all who will be affected by the decision. The ministry official is under pressure from others further up in the government hierarchy and insists on a quick decision. After many hours of overtime work, the town planners provide a site, complete with justifications which include such diverse factors as soil conditions and basic principles of the master plan which they were hired to develop for the area in question. Later, the town planners are told that the project has been sited by others superior to the ministry in a way that runs counter to virtually every factor noted by the planners when they justified their decision. … Small change is hoarded for months by people as they seek to accumulate enough money to buy one of the few modern technical necessities the average peasant family can afford-a portable radio.

Stepping ashore upon the ruined site of Kilwa island in 1824, British official W. F. W. Owen sadly reflected upon the history of the East African coast:

Owen's astute observations characterize the East African coast as it appeared in the nineteenth century; as he noted, the situation was far different prior to the European arrival.

Long before Portuguese caravels rounded the Cape, the East African coast played an important part in the Indian Ocean trading complex. The littoral was certainly known by the people of Arabia in the eighth century before Christ. In fact, the ancient Southern Arabian state of Ausan traded extensively there and may have actually held a portion of the coast (Gray 1962, p. 11; Wainwright 1947). In later centuries, adventurers and merchants from far more distant centers began to traverse the Indian Ocean in order to reach the land of Zanj.

The purpose of this investigation is to examine the problem of diffusion of Ikenga art form in geographically contiguous cultures. Although the concept of diffusion of cultural traits among contiguous cultures is well established among certain kinds of anthropologists, fresh theories of interpretation may be observed. First, I will try to develop the framework which would help to identify the strategic factors in the process of diffusion and facilitate the ordering of what is currently known about them. Second, since the establishment of a framework seldom includes anything but a model, Igbo Ikenga is focused upon to illustrate how deduction from art may lead to new factual conclusions.

Current anthropological concern about the diffusion of elements of culture in the Niger/Benue basin has attracted attention to the Ikenga art form because of the apparent widespread occurrence of the Ikenga cults among the Igbo, Benin, and Igala. Jeffreys (1954 pp. 25-40) traces the origin of the word “Ikenga,” and thus its cult, to the Kengawa (Hausa) people of Sokoto Province. Later, William Fagg (1960, “The Ibo Tribes”) explains the “universal cults of Ikenga” partly in terms of adaptability among contiguous ethnic groups, particularly as certain Igbo culture traits show similarity to those of their neighbours at the periphery. More recently, this notion of an “intra-diffusion” has been extended by Bradbury. Comparing diffusion processes between the Igbo and Benin Ikenga cults, Bradbury (1961, p. 138) attributes a greater possibility to one single Ikenga cult which later separated into the Igbo and Benin and mutually coexisted.

Contemporary critics of Portugal's presence in Africa charge that economic exploitation is the basis of Portuguese colonialism. They often emphasize, to the exclusion of other factors, economic reasons for Portugal's past and present stake in the tropics. These arguments contrast the actual and potential mineral wealth, agricultural produce, and abundant sources of hydroelectric power in Angola and Mozambique with the lack of them in Portugal. The Portuguese goal is often characterized as making the African dominions yield a profit on investments, furnish raw materials, and provide protected markets for metropolitan industries (Hance 1967, p. 23). In a recent issue of Africa Today, Jennifer Davis concluded that “the prospects for profit are exciting. Small wonder that the Portuguese want to keep their colonies now” (1970, p. 6). John Gellner, in a special to the Toronto Globe and Mail (1971), wrote: “Thus the strategic aim of the Portuguese is to hold what is worth holding.…Angola is a very rich country.”

African revolutionaries and their sympathizers reiterate these economic explanations of Portuguese behavior in a steady stream of books, pamphlets, and leaflets. Marxist in outlook, the authors couch their analysis of Portugal's colonial motives almost exclusively in economic terms. With the exception of revolutionary leaders such as Amilcar Cabral and Eduardo Mondlane, who identified other reasons for Portugal's retention of African colonies, many of those favorable to African liberation emphasize the economic rationale for Portuguese colonialism. (For representative accounts, see Chaliand 1969, pp. 5-12; Dependency…, pp. 3-6; Davidson 1969, pp. 25-28.)

Obama’s rise to the U.S. presidency in 2008 gave many supporters of Africa the false hope that U.S. policy toward Africa would become more progressive. When such a shift failed to transpire, advocates argued that the major economic crisis in the U.S. monopolized the president’s attention and that his second term would create new opportunities for the continent. These claims failed to take into account the deep-rooted U.S. interests that dominate Africa policy with or without Obama. In addition, most of the Africa advocates have ignored the influence of the new breed of African Americans who staff key positions in the Department of State and whose priority is their own careers rather than a just policy toward the continent. Finally, most African leaders have not advocated for African interests and instead have pursued their particularistic agendas, leaving Africa vulnerable. Given this context, it is unlikely that Obama’s second term will introduce an Africa-friendly policy.

This study examines the historical development of hostility between the Shona-speaking inhabitants of Buhera district in south-central Zimbabwe and Ndebele speakers who settled in the area after being forcibly removed from various parts of Matabeleland and Midlands provinces between the 1920s and 1950s. It shows how competition for productive farmlands, which became visible beginning in the 1940s, produced and sustained the Ndebele–Shona hostility in Buhera. While other scholars view this hostility primarily from an ethnic perspective, this article argues that ethnicity was just one of many factors that shaped relations between these people.

This article examines the cultural ambiguity of Senegalese wrestling. Certain discourses around this sport have constructed it as a nostalgic embodiment of traditional, national, or African values. At the same time, other discourses emphasize the sport’s commercialization, its embeddedness in the economics of precarity, and even its inventedness as a tradition. The case of Senegalese wrestling illustrates how traditionality is summoned and put to question in a context of socioeconomic fragmentation. Repinecz offers readings of Aminata Sow Fall’s novel L’Appel des arènes (1982), Cheikh Ndiaye’s film adaptation of the same name (2005), and Boubacar Boris Diop’s novel Doomi Golo (2003 and 2009) to illustrate this analysis.

Some events and settings stand out as important symbols of a historical period. Versailles, in my opinion, is such a symbol. Constructed at great cost by order of Louis XIV, Versailles symbolizes the isolation of the court of Louis XVI and the insensitivity of Marie Antoinette as expressed in the unforgettable lines: “The poor have no bread? Then let them eat cake.” More recently, in June of 1982, Versailles was the setting for the summit gathering of the heads-of-state of seven major industrialized countries. The response of these “guardians” of the present world order (or disorder) to the cries of the world's poor was an echo of Marie Antoinette: “The poor countries have no foreign exchange? Then let them eat monetarism.”

I could not escape this reflection and this symbolism as I re-read the World Bank Report, Accelerated Development in Sub-Saharan Africa: An Agenda for Action (1981), and its recent follow-up, Sub-Saharan Africa: Progress Report on Development Prospects and Programs (1983, hereafter Progress Report). Scapegoating the victims seems to be a popular pastime in the drawing rooms of the wealthy. These World Bank reports, supported by country and sectoral studies of many African nations, manifest this same tendency of “blaming the victims.” They are classical expositions of “horse and sparrow economics,” patronizingly instructing the sparrows to improve their techniques so that they might more completely pick out the oats in the horses' droppings. But they are deadly serious, as the geography of hunger and hunger-related deaths again expands.

Guinea’s postindependence state (1958-84) discouraged ethnic identification in favor of national solidarity. In the decades since, ethnic groups have increasingly been mobilized as political interest groups in Guinea, a phenomenon that has been especially visible in recent multiparty elections. At the same time as ethnicity resurfaced as an explicit political force, young performing artists in Guinea’s capital city Conakry were inventing genres of dance and urban ceremony that de-emphasize ethnicity as a marker of belonging. Cohen engages with an interdisciplinary literature on publics to describe how the aesthetic practices of non-elite African youth constitute a crucial form of political engagement.