In the Sierra Leone Provinces, customary land law dictates that if an individual from another chiefdom or country wishes to rent land in a certain locality, he visits a landholder or head of an extended family and expresses a desire to be the landlord's stranger. If the landlord accepts the individual as his stranger, he becomes liable for any damages caused by the stranger to other natives' properties. This study applies some recent advances in welfare economics (see, for example, Coase, 1960; Demsetz, 1964, 1968) to pursue some interesting aspects of the landlord-stranger relationship. In particular, it is argued that within traditional society putting the liability for strangers' damages on the landlords' shoulders was efficient in a value-theoretic sense because landlords were more efficient than the government or the damaged parties in collecting damages from strangers and, therefore, that the magnitude of the collection cost would have been greater if the liability had been placed directly on the strangers. The paper also shows rigorously how and why it was that the higher the cost of collecting damages from tenants, the lower was the real income produced by the land. Therefore, if the government of the damaged parties should become lower-cost collectors, putting the liability directly on the strangers for any damage they cause would become the pareto-optimal arrangement.

The attention of the world was focused on Ethiopia, briefly, when Emperor Haile Selassie I, once considered the inviolate descendant of Solomon and Sheba and the Elect of God, was deposed on September 12, 1974, and when, on November 23, 1974, sixty public and military officials were executed without trial. The Provisional Military Administrative Council, or Dirg, formally assumed power under Proclamation No. 1 of 1974 (Neg. Gaz. 34/1) which deposed the Emperor and “suspended” the 1955 Revised Constitution, while providing that all other laws and regulations remain in force. De facto, of course, the entire legal system remains in suspense and the emerging Grundnorm or basic postulate of Ethiopian public law has become the as yet vague philosophy of Ethiopia Tikdem, defined as encompassing the tenets of Ethiopian socialism.

Although the “revolutionary” movement was undertaken in the name of the peasants, events and legal changes have, to date, affected only the urban areas, and the Dirg's promise to pursue rural development and land reform (Ethiopian Herald, 1974: 4) has remained a mere promise. Will the interests of rural Ethiopians be pursued by the new regime in the future? What role will law play in this process? These problems will be resolved as a result of future political choices, and Ethiopia is at a stage in her history when difficult choices must be made in many areas. It is therefore an appropriate time to assess where the Ethiopian legal system has been and where it could go from the standpoint of improving the quality of the life of Ethiopia's subsistence peasants, who constitute eighty percent of the population.

Few incidents in African colonial history give such an insight into the mentality and the methods of imperialism as the contraband arms trade in Africa. France and England, two of the major powers in Africa, tried to limit the quantity and type of firearms sold in their respective colonies. Fearing African resistance to colonialist control, both nations wanted a definite restriction of weapons and alcoholic beverages, but modern firearms continued to be smuggled and sold in vast numbers. French business representatives sold rifles to the native tribes in English regions, and the British did the same in the French areas. Continually trying to find ways to lessen the chances of African resistance, both states could not halt effectively the lucrative and dangerous business. Because of the old nationalist hatreds and the contemporary desire for new colonial areas, England and France hesitated in halting the arms trade. Additionally, the irrational hatreds and mutual distrusts kept the two powers from reaching any diplomatic agreement, and this in turn threatened the European presence in colonial Africa.

There was constant turmoil over the flow of weapons in all of colonial Africa, especially in two areas: Northwest Africa, or Morocco, and West Africa from Senegal to the southern border of Nigeria. While basically very different in their colonial experiences, these two locations were vital to both English and French colonial expansion. Morocco was close to French-held Algeria and was considered a natural area for France's North African expansion.

This article examines the role of academic unionism in the perennial crisis bedeviling the university system in Nigeria. It is the contention here that contrary to officially sponsored opinion, the crisis can be linked to external factors, especially the government's handling of industrial disputes. The crisis in the system, which started in the early 1990s, can be seen as the direct off-shoot of the macro-economic adjustment programs foisted on the country and the subsequent decrease in government funding of the education sector. Nevertheless, the repressive practices of past military regimes have contributed immensely to the crisis, as have the frequent strikes of the the Academic Staff Union of Nigerian Universities (ASUU). The articles suggests that the crisis can be tackled only with an amelioration of the fundamental problems confronting the system—ranging from underfunding and poor working conditions to excessive government meddling in university governance—and a rethinking of strategies by both the government and ASUU.

“Development” has become a magic word throughout Africa in this decade. And, in a great rush disturbingly reminiscent of the early days of European colonialism, national and foreign agencies are scrambling for a role in this or that project. “Consultant” and “management” offices are appearing in former storefronts in many of the larger cities; these, for a fee, will magically produce plans for any conceivable development scheme. (In 1976 I saw one thick and lavishly bound and illustrated plan for a new industrial town produced by one such firm for a project in a rural area in Nigeria; the volume envisioned in minute detail a plan for living, and for dying—several pages were devoted to plans for the town cemetery, even listing the projected costs of variously located and appointed burial plots!) A great many are playing the development game. The overall result is something like a Hydra, but the heads of the Development serpent often seem to grow randomly and independently of each other. “Development” has become a magic word, but like all things magical, no one is quite certain how it works.

Projects are being undertaken and completed, to be sure, and many of them successfully. But nearly all of them are executed quite rapidly, if not precipitously; time, after all, is money. And in the process, people are being affected.

Development problems, to paraphrase Lerner (1958: viii), are people problems, and this is the level at which social scientists should be able to play a role. From our training in social and cultural systems we think we are uniquely equipped to assess the social impact and implications of projects which seem likely to precipitate rapid social change. But social scientists, even those with extensive African field experience, most often play minor roles in African development. Why?

In evaluating the consequences of the $1.7 billion currently invested by U.S. corporations in South Africa, the issue is distinctly not whether or not the U.S. firms involved have adopted the Sullivan Principles. Those principles, purportedly designed to ensure upgrading and equal pay for blacks, are in reality little more than a smokescreen. Behind their rhetoric, U.S. transnational corporations continue to help South Africa build up its military-industry machinery to perpetuate oppression of the majority of black workers.

In the coming decades, the broad outline of Kenyan development is quite likely to duplicate the Mexican experience of industrial and commercial progress for a minority combined with economic stagnation for the majority. While there are obvious differences in culture, history, and geography, there are basic similarities in industrialization strategy, agricultural structure, urban expansion, and population growth rate. A continuation of the current industrial, financial, and agricultural strategies, and an extrapolation of other variables along certain key paths, will almost surely lead Kenya to the same form of dualistic transformation that has gradually engulfed Mexico over the course of three decades. A rather important point which emerges from the following analysis is that only by a significant reduction in the population growth rate can that result be avoided.

An economic transformation is many faceted, involving technological, institutional, and cultural changes as well as significant shifts in the product mix. From an economic standpoint, an essential element of transformation is a significant growth in labor productivity which, in turn, is translated into a rising level of income per capita. This improvement in average product per worker largely involves the transfer of labor from traditional, low productivity sectors into those which spearhead modernization. This facet of economic transformation is referred to as labor force transformation and is generally understood to be a goal of economic development.

This article examines the malaḥfa, a veil that has long been popular in Mauritania, using the scholarship of materiality to analyze how it and the wearer co-constitute each other. This approach demonstrates how the malaḥfa’s particular form and fabric provide women with certain constraints and possibilities; women activate these qualities to exercise agency, be it in redefining their positions in the social hierarchy, exercising control in their relationships, or asserting authority over others. Focusing on the malaḥfa’s materiality illustrates how such garments can be central to women’s agency and power, and demonstrates how women shape the broader social hierarchy.

The United States and Africa are in deep trouble when the head of the National Endowment for the Humanities disowns its sponsorship of the Ali Mazrui series The Africans on the grounds that it is an “anti-Western diatribe…and politically tendentious.” It bodes ill for the U.S. because it marks a return to the “know nothing” approach to Africa which has dominated American thinking about the African continent throughout most of our history. And it lends respectability to a cold war view of that continent which can only lead to greater misunderstanding, confrontation, and bloodshed for African peoples. What is so disturbing about the reaction of the NEH and a number of the series' reviewers is their exclusive focus on Mazrui's view of the West. Of the many important themes running through the series, did they not see or hear anything else? This self-indulgent preoccupation with the occasional opinion about “the West” is all too indicative of our times.

That criticism of colonialism can somehow be interpreted as “anti-American” points not only to a profound lack of comprehension of the nature of colonialism, but to the proclivity in U.S. policy toward Africa to identify with the wrong side. “Colonization should not be attacked,” claim many on the American right, “because that era was not only the apex of African development but a time when there was no communist threat on the continent.”

The right wing, however, has no monopoly on such myopia and misperception. America and Africa are also in deep trouble when specialists attribute all of Africa's maladies to colonialism or neo-colonialism.

Fifty or more years ago much of Nigeria and other African countries still lacked the rudiments of a lively business in the modern sense of the word. This was mainly because there were much less goods and services to dispose of, much less purchasing power, much less serviceable means of transport for handling the meagre surpluses than are available today. However, there existed centres of aboriginal economic organization which also, even in a rudimentary way, achieved the circulation of goods. For instance, relevant information is available which indicates that even where barter prevailed, extrafamilial and intertribal exchanges were to be found, while what might be termed protomarkets, where particular kinds of goods were bartered at particular times, existed.

From the point of view of the functional common denominator, exchange, therefore, proofs abound which falsify the concept that separates different levels of “the market” or of “marketing” and concentrates attention only on the “modern” aspect. This is to say that what existed in Africa in this regard was, and to some extent is, the first end of a continuum whose other end is the modern market. In many cases, a movement toward the middle of this continuum and even to the modern end is today observable in nearly every country in Africa. Thus, in truth, the difference is not in kind but rather in degree.

What I am trying to emphasize is that the trading instinct is strong in many Africans.

This paper is concerned with the role and responsibilities of Americans who go to African universities to profess, and with the rationale of such undertakings.

In some ways, this may seem to be a threadbare topic. The values to be achieved from such transcultural experiences have long been assumed. At least since World War II and Senator Fulbright’s great initiatives, teaching abroad has been a favored activity. Yet recently we have taken a more skeptical view. The Fulbright and other programs are in some disarray in Africa today, and there is no longer much enthusiasm, in official “development circles,” for exporting university teachers.