A problem which has complicated multilateral trade negotiations like GATT's Uruguay Round is that OECD countries have adopted important departures from the most-favored-nation (MFN) principle in their trade regimes. Recently these departures have taken the form of regional trade preferences, such as the Canada-United States Free Trade Arrangement, NAFTA, the Australia-New Zealand Free Trade Arrangement or European Community and EFTA preferences for Eastern Europe. Developing countries receive important trade preferences under the OECD countries' Generalized System of Preference (GSP) schemes, and through preferences extended under the EEC Lomè Convention and the US Caribbean Basin Initiative (CBI).

Since the Uruguay Round will lower trade barriers on an MFN basis it poses a dilemma for preference-receiving countries. Specifically, MFN tariff reductions will erode these countries' margins of preference and cause their competitive position to deteriorate vis-à-vis other suppliers. Trade losses will occur as some preference-receiving goods are displaced (diverted) by exports from other (non-preference receiving) countries. As a result, preference-receiving countries could justifiably try to minimize reductions in MFN tariffs. Overall, the strategy which these countries might adopt vis-à-vis the multilateral trade negotiations could be determined by an assessment of whether the likely trade gains from lower MFN tariffs on their non-preference receiving goods would offset the expected losses from their preference-receiving exports.

This study examines the problem of preference erosion from the perspective of Sub-Saharan African countries. Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) was selected for analysis due to the extensive multiple tariff preferences these countries receive in OECD markets (i.e., GSP, Lomè Convention and, in many cases, least developed country preferences), and the fact that the region's export growth has been below that of most other countries (World Bank 1992).

It gives me particular pleasure to be here. I think that I am the first Canadian citizen to be honored by the presidency of what has increasingly become an international organization. And yet, I am very much one of you. I was born and raised in the United States. I served in its army and represented it abroad as a Fulbright professor before becoming a Canadian. Passionate as my commitment to my adopted country is, my roots remain here, no place more than in this community of scholars.

Like many of my generation, my career has been marked by a tension between thought and action. As a historian, I wanted to understand the world in which I lived. As an activist, I wanted to change that world, to make it a more just, more tolerant and more egalitarian place. If you had asked me 25 years ago why I chose Africa, I would have stressed my scholarly objectives. I would have mentioned the problems that interested me and the questions I wanted to answer. In retrospect, the appeal of Africa for myself and many of my generation of Africanists was very much the excitement of watching the destruction of an oppressive colonial order and being involved in the creation of a new one. Furthermore, the quest for justice and self-determination abroad was linked, sometimes unconsciously, to the quest for equality and social justice at home. For myself, as for many of my peers, the conflict between thought and action often cut deep, and we sometimes paid a price.

The inability of most African states to find a political norm compatible with the exigencies of independence is by now a truism. The inherent lack of political order on the continent and the common recourse to political violence have been the subject of much debate among scholars and observers of African political events. Within the general framework of instability, it is apparent that there are many differences in political occurrences in seemingly colonial-inherited and weak frameworks, and a proliferation of internal variations within each state which derive from the differential impact of values and norms nurtured on the sub-national or the traditional level. These phenomena have pointed forcefully to the need to approach the study of African political processes in African terms. Indeed, the Africanization of the study of politics on the continent may perhaps be a vital precondition for the understanding of the contemporary African political scene.

The quest for African explanations for political events has, unlike parallel efforts in other disciplines, been far from smooth. Justifiably, attention was first focused on the examination of continuities and discontinuities in the political history of given areas. Such essentially micro-research efforts, while exciting in that they have uncovered new empirical data and provided important insights into the complexity of traditional African political life, are nevertheless problematic because the patterns of political thought and organization that they trace are not easily transferred to the macro level. The purpose of this paper is to isolate basic political culture constructs prevalent in the pre-colonial period in an attempt to conceptualize, in African terms, some contemporary political occurrences on the macro as well as the micro level. Two basic assumptions lie at the core of this undertaking: first, that traditional political culture models (herein defined as those general political orientations and specific political values that dictate patterns of political behavior and institutional growth) provide paradigms for political organization and action in Africa today; and second, that by examining the interaction of the concrete articulators of the various political culture models, it is possible to determine some of the main factors underlying the dynamics of political behavior in independent Africa.

This article explores the role that teachers in the Côte d'Ivoire played in the democratization process in the early 1990s. More specifically, it looks at the socio-economic and ideological factors that placed teachers at the helm of the contestation movements that contributed to the end of nearly three decades of autocratic one-party rule. While this is a case study, its implications are, mutatis muntantis, more general. The principal argument developed in this article is that teachers occupy a strategic but precarious position in many African societies (Diop and Diouf 1990). They, more than any other social group, with the possible exception of students, embody the contradictory dimensions of post-colonial African politics and society. On the one hand, as Robert Fatton (1987, 63–64) notes, they are connected to the ruling class in so far as those in power often turn to them as a way to legitimate their rule. On other hand, teachers are part of Africa's fragile middle class, since they benefit from the relatively high expenditures of African governments on education. Nevertheless, they, particularly secondary and university teachers saw themselves as an alternative elite to those in power (Oyediran 1993, 221).

The Efik inhabit Calabar which is the capital of the Cross River State of Nigeria. They constitute a people of about 200,000 for whom well-documented archives and bibliographies exist mainly in Nigeria and in Great Britain (Ekpiken, 1970). The Ekpe Society (Bassey n.d.), a Leopard-Spirit group of initiates, is their regulatory institution which makes use of the ukara cloth and possesses an ideographic system of writing named nsibidi.

From 1979 to 1983, teaching structuralist-synchronic linguistics and semiotics at the University of Calabar in Nigeria created some degree of student hostility. In this paper it is attempted to reply to them. To do so, the so-called semiotic square had to be misused while still defining categorial terms. This square has been framed within the evolutionary process of a regional history (Aye, 1967). Then a transformational analysis of culture which needs to be tested elsewhere is proposed. It is hoped that this model may help to structure the amorphous field of interdisciplinary research in African studies. An attempt to describe Efik self-perception and how most of them see the development of their consciousness in time follows.

Two of the most obvious objectives were: 1) to understand how change in the course of Efik history affected an African people located at the crossroads of many cultures and what could constitute the real challenge to them of building a modern society in an environment which may be characterized today by two major criteria: “non-identity” and “non-alterity;” and 2) to examine how for the Efik themselves historical events persuaded them of having lost their past or even their recently adopted identity and why this nihilist ideology left them with no desire for what seemed to be an unpromising future.

This village level study in Senegal seeks to improve the understanding of peasant behavior in developing countries. Policy makers designing programs for and interventions in the agricultural sector should benefit from an enhanced understanding of the workings of rural grain transactions. The study attempts (1) to provide a summary of principal producer grain transactions and (2) to discuss in greater detail millet marketing in rural Senegal. The methodology presented and conclusions advanced should encourage other researchers and Third World governments to recognize that evaluations of market process are vital to design effective agricultural policies.

For example, many West African countries have chosen to rely on national marketing organizations instead of using the private trader to commercialize food grains. Such reliance stems from their belief that the private market is noncompetitive and that public sector intervention will lead to efficiency gains. The conclusions of this study show that policy makers should first test the assumption of noncompetitive behavior before assuming that intervention will provide greater efficiency.

The first section of this paper provides some background information on Senegal agriculture. Next comes a summary of producer transactions. An analysis of the millet marketing process appears in the third section, while the last section indicates some policy implications.

Inspired by Mbembe’s emphasis on plasticity as a hallmark of African forms of knowledge, Geschiere notes the risk that this leads to a celebration of Africanness, sliding into culturalism and identity politics. But Mbembe relates this plasticity also to the continent’s position as the last frontier of capitalism. Such a historical view converges with Joseph Tonda’s work on éblouissement (endazzlement) as a global phenomenon. Everywhere people are now being blinded by an overproduction of images. However, Africans have a long experience of living with multiple realities and “alternative facts.” Is this relevant for dealing with the risk that we all become blinded by the images we ourselves have created?

Sequels, spinoffs, serials, and other kinds of generic works are prevalent in Nollywood filmmaking and popular with fans. These spinoffs and other generic works are characterized by a degree of familiarity, made evident in their repetitive and or affiliative dimensions. According to Adejunmobi, familiarity as a mode of media engagement in Nollywood generates specific pleasures connected to the repetitive dimensions of the films and television shows. These highly repetitive works also sustain a type of leisure activity for viewers without dedicated leisure time who combine Nollywood viewing with everyday work. This form of leisure is identified as a leisure of concomitance.

Southern Africa is one of the three areas of great regional tension now affecting the conduct of world diplomacy. As our obsession with Southeast Asia diminishes. Southern Africa and the Middle East assume more importance. Because of the generation of peace being negotiated with China and the Soviets (and not in spite of it), we shall grow increasingly mindful of the continuing violence in these areas. Local problems move to the fore as the threat of world war appears to subside. Matters of unfinished business will not be neglected; we have seen them sprout up in Canada with regard to language, in Britain with regard to religion, and in Southern Africa with regard to race.

Prior to 1960, such countries as England and Belgium trained a number of Africans in the technical areas of “movie-making” through their colonial film units which produced health and educational documentaries as well as propagandist shorts praising the colonial order and/or disseminating the Christian faith. Nevertheless, little had been done to encourage native “movie-thinking.” The late Paulin Soumanou Vieyra (Benin/Senegal), one of the pioneers and early historians of African cinema, often pointed out how the French colonial authorities would refuse scholarships to aspiring African film students, arguing that priority was to be given to the training of African doctors and teachers. One could very well suspect that there also might have been some concern as to the kind of politically detrimental anti-colonialist images these film students would have later produced.

For most, it was unthinkable. To others, it was just a dream. Yet for some African American students at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale (SIUC), traveling to Africa is now a reality. It all started in 1997, after I led a group of students to Tanzania. My travels were a part of Operation Crossroads Africa, a 42-year-old program designed to promote an understanding between Africa and the African diaspora through cultural exchanges. As word of my journey to East Africa spread throughout campus, African American students visiting the Black American Studies program asked me some probing questions. Two students who came into my office devoted much time and attention to a picture of some Crossroaders pinned to my bulletin board. “Where’s the Black students?” one said, mumbling under her breath. “Yeah,” the other student said in agreement, “Why don’t you take us? We are the ones that need to learn about Africa!” The students’ observations were indeed true.

The first-time visitor to Salisbury cannot help but be impressed by the exceptionally clean and modern downtown area. The well-kept parks and spotless boulevards put any city in the United States to shame. Supermarket shelves are well stocked, and the near total absence of beggars makes one wonder if this is in fact part of the African continent. If one stays inside the downtown area and its rich suburbs, one can easily miss the ugly truth that millions of people in this relatively affluent nation are suffering from malnutrition and that whole communities have been destroyed by starvation.

African scholars and activists often suggest that study-abroad programs to Africa be transformed to include an Africa-to-Africa exchange component. Their argument often includes discussion of the possibility that conventional study-abroad programs might perpetuate a colonial relationship between rich nations and those of the African continent rather that developing new relationships among African citizen diplomats. The following is an excellent overview of this debate.

By October 1994 the population of refugees from Rwanda and Burundi registered with the UN High Commission of Refugees in Tanzania was about 570,000. (Personal communication: Yukiko Hameda, UNHCR-Nairobi.) And from the point of view of the international and Tanzanian authorities responsible for refugees, the crisis continues to grow. On December 23, 1994, Patrick Chokala, Press Secretary to the Tanzanian President, claimed that 300-400 refugees enter Tanzania every day; the total number then was 591,000. (Daily News, Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, 24 December 1994.)

The human tragedy, the genocide which began after President Habyarimana’s plane was shot down on April 6, 1994 and which in the space of a few short months left one-half million people dead and precipitated the flight of two and one-half million people to refugee camps in Zaire and Tanzania, cannot be undone, although expeditious and fair judicial procedures are a necessary step to a secure future.

The Nigerian civil war is now history. The Republic of Biafra lives in the pages of books, pamphlets, and newspapers. In that form, it is no threat to the people of Nigeria who, in a solemn oath of allegiance in January 1970, pledged to consign Biafra into oblivion and face the task of reconstruction and reconciliation. Biafra is now an issue only for historians who are plagued with the search for an answer to “what might have happened if…” But the war itself has left deep scars not only upon the lives of the survivors, but also on their beliefs and attitudes towards life. Unless he visits the right places in Nigeria, the visitor today may hear nothing and possibly see nothing to remind him of the war.

No one is happy with the Reagan Administration’s southern Africa foreign policy strategy known as constructive engagement. Liberals object to the tilt towards South Africa, to the linkage of Cuban troop withdrawal from Angola to the Namibian negotiations; to the resulting moribund state of those negotiations; and to the deemphasis of human rights and development issues in favor of increased emphasis on military and security issues. Conservatives object to economic assistance packages for African socialist and self-styled states; to the declining U.S. support of Jonas Savimbi’s ostensibly pro-Western UNITA forces in Angola; to Administration efforts to improve relations between the United States and the Marxist states of Angola and Mozambique; and to the Administration’s apparent willingness to accept a SWAPO (i.e., communist guerrilla) outcome in Namibia.