This is an important time for Sub-Saharan Africa. First and foremost, because over half the region is actively engaged in wide-ranging programs of economic reform or structural adjustment. Second, because the donor community is in the process of deciding how these African efforts will be supported over the next several years. Lomé IV, (Europe’s major funding mechanism for Africa), its volume and how it is allocated, is a critical part of that process. So too are the current negotiations on the Ninth Replenishment of the International Development Association (IDA).

The current era of man's history is characterized by the struggle of peoples for their full emancipation from colonialism, imperialism, racism and all other forms of domination and oppression hampering human development and dignity, peace and progress.

The Comoro Archipelago is situated at the head of the Mozambique Channel, midway between Cape Amber and Cape Delgado. The largest of the four islands, Great Comoro (or Grande Comore), 175 miles from Mozambique, is the northernmost island in the group. Mayotte (or Mayotta), the first of the islands to become a French colony, and the southernmost in the group, is the closest to Madagascar. To the northwest of Mayotte is Anjouan (or Johanna), referred to by authors, both ancient and modern, because of its fertility, as the “Pearl of the Comoro Islands”; immediately to the south of Great Comoro, and almost parallel with Anjouan, is Mohilla (or Moheli), the smallest island in the group.

The population of the islands is a mixture of African, Arab, and Malagasy, numbering over 170,000 people, with the heaviest concentration on Anjouan. The exportation of agricultural products has always been the chief industry of the archipelago. Its location at the head of the Mozambique Channel, and the wide range of food products available, made the Comoro Islands a popular supply stop for ships bound for India and the Far East via the Mozambique Channel; for the ships of the British antislavery squadron; and for whalers fishing in the southern Indian Ocean. European technological progress and the opening of the Suez Canal combined to render this function obsolete. During the last half of the nineteenth century, Mayotte, which became a French colony in 1841, was a moderately successful sugar colony. Plantations were also opened on Anjouan and Mohilla, but it was not until after the establishment of a French protectorate over the other two islands in 1886 that plantation economies and new crops were introduced to the rest of the archipelago. Ylang-Ylang, a perfume essence, is the major export crop; sisal, vanilla, cocoa, and coffee are also exported. Coconuts are the only export commodity which has survived from the precolonial economy.

Oil is a metonym for terms in books and articles in diverse disciplines in African studies. Some portray oil as a causal agent that thrusts formerly low-income countries into the highly competitive neoliberal global economy. Others present it according to the oil curse/blessing binary. As a curse, petroleum causes dysfunctional and costly behavior. But increased revenues from oil just as certainly result in concrete improvements demonstrating a resource blessing. Heilbrunn uses case materials to explore environmental degradation, oil theft, community-company relations, post-conflict reconstruction, local content in contracts, and corruption. These key concepts form a basis for the keyword/concept essay on oil in Africa.

There is much about the Central African republic of Zambia to make it indistinguishable to the casual Western observer among the multitude of black independent fragments into which the monolith of colonial Africa was blown by the wind of change. Its borders are all too familiarly arbitrary and just as paradoxically treasured; its population, though of one ethnic group, is divided in loyalty by strong tribal and regional affinities which nurture the ghosts of ancient feuds never entirely laid by the 60-year interregnum of alien rule; its economy is dependent upon primary product export and thus at the mercy of markets well beyond its control; the frailities of the new princes of the political kingdom have become all too clear in the eight years since the last unlamented duty at the midnight stroke in the independence stadium; and the expectations so feverishly aroused in the popular breast in the euphoric march to freedom remain, for many, as distant a prospect as ever.

This paper is an attempt to link women’s empowerment in the democratization process and the sexual division of labour and resources in land management. Following the introduction, section two will assess the scope of women producers’ participation in the agrarian sector. Section three will analyze traditional land management systems. The impact of land reforms on women’s access to land is examined in section four. Finally, the conclusion will stress the need to create the legal and political climate that will allow the emergence of a more balanced land policy as a first step towards sustainable democratization.

Women’s potential contributions in rural development, particularly in food production, have been extensively documented.

On May 17, 1970, Portuguese colonial forces in Mozambique numbering 50,000 and headed by the newly appointed Commander-in-Chief, General Kaulza de Arriaga launched a sweeping offensive against the areas in northern Mozambique held by FRELIMO, the Mozambique Liberation Front. Operation Gordian Knot was intended to crush the FRELIMO forces which had been operating in Mozambique since 1964. Now, four years after “Gordian Knot,” General de Arriaga has retired from the Portuguese armed forces. Following the coup that rocked Portugal on April 25 the new provisional Portuguese government has opened discussions with FRELIMO in Lusaka on the colonial problem. And FRELIMO forces are operating in strength in five districts of Mozambique—from Niassa and Cabo Delgado in the north, to Tete in the west, to Beira and Vila Pery in central Mozambique. The purpose of this article is to examine the Portuguese military defeat in Mozambique and the growing strength of FRELIMO, to look at the situation as it appears immediately following the coup in Portugal, and to briefly relate these developments to U.S. policy towards Portuguese colonialism.

The most dramatic testimony of the Portuguese military failure is of course the coup in Portugal. Many accounts have noted that General Spinola's book, Portugal and the Future, which heralded the coup, made clear in its analysis that Portugal could not defeat the liberation movements militarily and that a political solution had to be sought. The signs of the erosion of Portugal's position have been evident: the feeling of “hopelessness” among Portuguese youth about the colonial wars; an estimated 100,300 draft resisters and deserters abroad added to the some one million expatriates working outside the country; an increasing tendency for troops in the field “to shy away from contact with the enemy, taking defensive stands only“; fewer than one hundred places taken in the military academy with room for four hundred; the massive discontent within the Portuguese junior officer corps about conditions of service; the growing refusal of military duty (one half of the last class called refused to report).

The fact that more than half of the world’s refugees are presently found in Africa is a reality that has gone unrecognized or been ignored by the Reagan Administration policies toward refugees. This is partially a reflection of the lack of understanding of the American public about the extent and magnitude of the refugee crisis in Africa. The current total of 6.3 million African refugees is likely to increase substantially in the near future. In absolute terms, the increase in the number of African refugees for the last ten years is over 5 million, an increase of more than 500%. The rate of increase between 1979-81 is particularly significant. Within two years the refugee population swelled by 50%, giving Africa the tragic responsibility of being a host continent for more than half of the world’s refugees (See Table 1).

This study is intended to be more than a narrative history of civil-military relations in the pre-colonial Ndebele society (located in what today is the Matabeleland District of Rhodesia): it seeks to stimulate interest in, and to develop a systematic framework for, investigating and evaluating the character of militarism in Ndebele society, and in pre-industrial, subsistence-level societies in general. Hopefully, it will provide insights for broader application in examining modern civil-military relations in both African and non-African societies.

The study has been developed within two methodological frameworks. The first endeavors to apply current theories of fragmentation and fragment societies (Hartz, 1964) to the study of non-Western society. The Ndebele were a Nguni fragment of the Zulu Kingdom (Omer-Cooper, 1966; Lye, 1969). Like the early white settlers in America, Canada, South Africa, and Rhodesia, they were forced to cope with problems of migration, conquest, settlement, and rapid incorporation and assimilation of indigenous peoples. Also, like the settlers, the Ndebele had to restructure some of the institutions of their parent Zulu culture to meet the challenges of their new environment. As a fragment people, they had to institute new formulae for self-identity, self-determination, and nationalism.

The second framework is a broad, interdisciplinary approach to the study of civil-military relations. It is assumed that civil-military relations of any society should be studied as a system composed of interrelated and interdependent elements. The most important of these are: the structural position of the military institutions in the society; the function and influence of the military in politics, in public administration, and the society at large; and the nature of the military ethic compared to the dominant political ideology of the society.

The relative distribution of education is linked with relative social and economic development among nations and inter-regionally within the same country (Denison, 1962). Evidence from comparative studies shows that intra-national variation is usually greater than inter-national variations (Gould, 1971: 82-89) and tends to intensify among lower level political formations (Gould, 1972: 65-74).

Historical evidence indicates that the educational advantages of some regions are derived from proximity to the coast and nodal centres of growth and favorable climatic conditions conducive to missionary activities (McCaskie, 1972: 30-35). Recent studies in Africa have shown that educational development is related to sets of economic variables and modernization processes. Among these are urbanization and trade, migration and European settlement, the development of transportation network (Soja, 1968), the spread of cash crops, and emergence of new occupational structures which constitute the preconditions for the demand and diffusion of education (Foster, 1966; Brownstein, 1972). These social and economic factors, at the regional and subregional levels, exert influences that give rise to variations in enrollment at the different educational levels.

With the growing awareness of the importance of the development of human capital (Becker, 1975; Schultz, 1961: 1-17; Mincer, 1970: 1-26) and the potential political dangers when educational inequalities are linked with ethnic differentials (Diejomaoh, 1972: 318-363), public policy has become an important factor in the determination of regional distribution of education.

This paper attempts to establish the relationship between the varying regional education attainment and quantifiable regional economic, social, and locational characteristics as well as instruments of public policy. The importance of these factors over time, with a view of isolating the most potent in the attainment of the highest educational objectives, will be examined.

On a continent where military coups, civil wars, and other forms of violent disorder have been commonplace, Kenya has appeared an anomaly. The regime of President Jomo Kenyatta has maintained uninterrupted and relatively peaceful civilian rule since the country's independence in 1963. Until recently, Kenya's postindependence body politic had shown few outward signs of social or political stress.

Kenya's era of stability may now be nearing an end, however. In early 1975 the country began experiencing a series of crises and disorders that constitute the worst violence since the 1950s nationalist revolt that brought Kenya's present elite to power. Some observers are beginning to question the Kenyatta regime's ability to contain a variety of mounting tensions and pressures (see Africa Report, 1975a: 29, 48-49; 1975b: 28; 1975c: 23-24).

In the pages that follow, I present an analysis that predicts a continually escalating state of social and political unrest in Kenya. In the first section, I argue the inherent long-term instability of the Kenyatta regime in terms of the regime's failure to adapt to the aspirations and demands of significant portions of Kenya's newly independent citizenry. In the second and third sections, I present, as a case study of the kinds of underlying social and political processes contributing to instability in Kenya, an examination of the mechanisms through which it appears that members of a growing body of unemployed school leavers are being inexorably drawn toward points of social and political rebellion.

A central debate in the literature on the state has focused on the state's relative strength and weakness in relation to society (Skocpol 1979; Nordlinger 1981, 1987; Evans, et al., 1985; Carnoy 1984). While this debate initially examined developed states and, more recently, semi-industrialized states in Latin America, increasing attention has shifted to African states. It is here where a paradox has emerged that has generated further questions about state power and state-society relations. Africa is plagued with political instability, coup d'etats, deteriorating economic conditions, and ineffective policy implementation (Sandbrook 1985). The current difficulties in meeting scheduled debt repayment deadlines and the pressure to make significant economic adjustments further illustrate the precarious financial status of many African states. Yet, African societies are well known for their heavily centralized bureaucratic apparatus that consumes a substantial portion of expenditures and capital investments. One indicator of state influence is the steady growth of parastatals in African countries. As they have expanded in number and in function, state power over these firms also has grown. And, in response to rapidly deteriorating economic conditions, many African states have enacted widescale debt management controls on foreign investment, public borrowing, and public sector investment. Scholars, whether conceptualizing this influential social group as an “organizational bourgeoisie” or a “managerial bourgeoisie,” consider African state bureaucracies to have their own power capabilities and defined interests (Markowitz 1977; Sklar 1979).

In 1939 Nigeria was divided into three Regions for purely administrative reasons. These regions, to all intents and purposes, did not constitute separate governments. In fact, between 1939 and 1945, these regions had no legislatures of their own. Even under the Richards' Constitution, when they had separate legislatures they had no independent powers. In practice the state legislatures under the Richards' Constitution (1946-1951) were no more than agents of the governor and the central legislature. Between 1951 and 1954, however, glimpses of a federal division of powers began to appear because the regional legislatures had powers to make laws over issues within the boundaries of their regions. More specifically, the regional legislatures exercised such powers in electoral matters. For example, in 1951, the Electoral Regulations for election into the central and regional legislatures were in two parts. The first part was the General Regulations under which the elections were conducted while the second part was the Specific Regulations which laid down the procedure for elections in each region of the country. To a large extent, although the Macpherson Constitution of 1951 was not federal, the Electoral Regulations under that Constitution paid due respect to the varieties in the nation following the tripartite administrative division of 1939. It was not until 1954 that a federal constitution with a clear division of powers and recognized spheres of influence finally came into operation.

In the wake of the genocide, it has been argued many times that the history of Rwanda needs to be rewritten, that past understandings of the history of this society contributed to the atrocities of 1994. Indeed, our understanding of history influences the present by lending justification to our actions today. But such a relationship of past and present works both ways. As the very demand for a new history suggests, our vision—and therefore our presentation—of history is also influenced by our contemporary view of historical process. In a sense, history is always an attempt to make sense of political and social issues for which we have no answers in the present. Therefore, at one level, historical inquiry is always an attempt to understand the present, and a history that ignores the important questions of the day becomes simply antiquarianism.

But such a reality evokes some fundamental methodological and conceptual questions. To what degree—and in what way—do present concerns influence the ways in which we proceed to construct history? At what point does history become simply propaganda? To what degree do our current preoccupations shape our questions of history, and to what degree do they mold the content of our histories? Do we base our analyses on the known empirical record, critically analyzed, in as complete and comprehensive a fashion as is feasible? Or do we simply fashion our conclusions to meet present concerns? Concern over content—not questions—leads often to a selective presentation of the record, a simplified version of history, with the selection determined by the desired outcome.

The Serkawa, or Sarkawa, of Yauri Division, Northwestern State, Nigeria, provide an excellent opportunity for analyzing the interrelationships of the concepts of three major theoreticians: Frederik Barth, Ward Goodenough, and Max Weber. The Serkawa describe themselves as “Hausa who fish” and have moved into Yauri in increasing numbers since the late 1960s in order to fill an ecological niche created by the building of Kainji Dam, a major hydro-electric dam at New Bussa, Borgu Division, Kwara State. These professional fishermen, an offshoot of the Sorkawa from Songhai, have moved into the riverine environment which the Gungawa (Reshe) abandoned under governmental fiat. The Gungawa (literally, ‘island-dwellers’) were resettled on the mainland.

The major theoretical problem examined in this paper is that of the interrelationship of the concepts of class, status, and party and their relationship to that of ethnicity. Finally, ethnicity as a mode of identity is examined. The primary objectives of this study are: (1) to examine the consequences of ecology on identity and presentation of self; (2) to assess the interrelationship of Weber's concepts of class, status, and party in a situation of change; (3) to suggest that these are various modes of the same phenomenon; (4) to combine the insights of Barth's optative approach to ethnicity with that of Weber; (5) to analyze the political uses of ethnicity in a multi-ethnic situation; and (6) to apply Goodenough's reformulation of status and role theory to ethnic groups.

There are a number of benefits to be derived from using such an approach. Ethnic groups in this framework become social persona whose boundaries can be defined by their distribution of rights and duties vis-a-vis other similarly defined social persona. This approach has the further advantage of making the concepts operational without forfeiting their taxonomic clarity. It also succeeds in focusing on dynamic and relational aspects of stratification rather than on those that are static and descriptive.