The end of the Cold War and the crisis of socialism (statism) have ushered in the emergence of a “new” cycle of capitalism, which is characterized by wide ranging deregulation, privatization and vigorous globalization of capital (Cox 1994; Bienefeld 1994; Barber 1995). With this unfolding order, the role of the state in economic activity, including its protection of the vulnerable segments of society either through direct redistributive welfare mechanisms or by encouraging poverty-reducing and labor-absorbing economic activities, has come under serious attack. An ideology of free market and open global competition that increasingly limits the role of the state in economic activity has risen to prominence. According to some, a unified global economy has emerged and the global system has already entered a postnational stage (Barber 1995). While recognizing the intensification of interdependence among countries, many disagree that such a transformation has already taken place in the global system (Underhill 1994; Holm and Sorensen 1995; Boyer and Drache 1996). In most developing countries, however, the role of the state has been reduced to essentially adjusting national economies to the global economy instead of autonomously charting its own development strategy.

Under the new global order, development in Africa and in the rest of the countries of the South is widely viewed to rest largely on integration with the global economy. Policy measures that are believed to advance integration with the global economy, including promotion of exports, attraction of foreign investments, correction of macroeconomic imbalances and decontrols of prices, exchange rates and imports are almost universally promoted in these countries.

In Ghana, regional and local cultural festivals that recently have been created or “modernized” provide an interface between local communities and the state. At these festivals, local political elites formulate demands on the government, and conversely, the government attempts to popularize its policies. At the same time, cultural festivals function as public arenas where local cultural identities are articulated within a framework negotiated by the state and the media. The staging of local culture thus always has a national dimension, even when the material is of local origin. Public self-representation at cultural festivals can also be an important factor in internal integration of local societies. The article examines these themes with reference to cultural festivals in northwestern Ghana which the author has observed and whose organizers and participants she has interviewed since 1989.

There is strong evidence that labor is highly mobile in many developing countries, especially in Africa. The history of the African continent is rich in accounts of various forms of movement across and within national boundaries—promoted by trade, warfare, pastoralism, slaving, natural disasters, and evangelization. Evidence, of fact and in myth and legend, indicates the occurrence of large-scale migrations in the past. The dispersion of Fulani-speaking peoples throughout the northern parts of West Africa is well documented. In addition to such movements, there are the age-old seasonal wanderings of herders seeking water and pasture for livestock. During the present century, the migration of labor to centers of mineral, oil, and industrial production has become one of the most important demographic features of West Africa and the continent as a whole (Adepoju, 1977, 1978; Zachariah and Conde, 1981; Addo, 1974; Little, 1974; Mabogunje, 1972, 1980). The migratory movement of population in Africa is very dynamic and complex; its general features are not well understood, and hence are rarely studied.

This paper is an attempt to understand the economic and sociocultural factors that have influenced the character of the international migratory flow of labor in West Africa. The hub of the investigation is to provide an understanding of the patterns of labor migration in West Africa and evaluate the models utilized in the explanation of international migratory trends in the region.

The DR Congo embarked upon decentralization reforms in 2006 to improve governance and accountability, undermine predation, corruption, and personal rule, bring government closer to the people, and promote local development. As of 2014, despite some regional variations, Congolese decentralization had instead increased the degree to which the state extracts the resources and incomes of its citizens. It had also fostered provincial centralization at the expense of local governments, produced largely unaccountable provinces governing with little transparency, and unleashed self-serving provincial elites. After providing original empirical evidence for these claims, this article suggests that decentralization was thwarted by the failure of formal reforms to affect informal ruling institutions and by an erroneous diagnosis of Congo’s governance failures that singled out the abuse of elites without identifying the generalized nature of the instrumentalization of sovereignty by officeholders at all levels of the state. The article concludes by using Congo’s experience to illustrate important flaws in decentralization reforms in Africa.

This article surveys African studies in China during the twentieth century. It is divided into five parts: “Sensing Africa” (1900–1949), “Supporting Africa” (1949–65), “Understanding Africa” (1966–76), and “Studying Africa” (1977–2000). From a Chinese perspective, the author tells how, when, and why Chinese scholars have conducted their research on Africa according to paradigms that evolved during the last century. In conclusion, the author points out the achievements as well as the problems in African studies in China today.

This paper suggests that a genealogy of European conceptions of African magic still needs to be written. It focuses on a specific Western commonplace, one that pictures Africa as the dark heardand of magic and witchcraft while at the same time saying that this occult core is difficult or dangerous to write about. The analysis of a number of different texts in which this commonplace emerges suggests that this recurrent fear of an African occult core is part of the Western engagement with the occult in Africa through its translation as “witchcraft.” The translation of African magic as “witchcraft” threatens European understandings of self and other just as much as this translation is an attempt to contain the African occult within imperial, colonial, or neocolonial discourses. These different attempts to write about the occult in Africa suggest that this threat of translation cannot be contained; a recent text even suggests that it extends itself to unsetding our sensory perception of the world around us. The magic of Africa requires a still more radical engagement than Africanist anthropology has produced thus far.

When the #RhodesMustFall (#RMF) movement erupted at the University of Cape Town (UCT) in March 2015, it not only sparked the proliferation of student movements across South Africa, but also led to the formation of #RMF at the University of Oxford and similar movements at universities in the United States. By drawing on ninety-eight interviews with various actors involved in both movements, Ahmed’s empirical research contributes to the limited academic literature on the connections between the #RMF movements in Cape Town and in Oxford. The example of the #RMF movement in Cape Town inspired the #RMF Oxford movement to challenge the epistemic architecture of the University of Oxford.

In the last two decades we have witnessed an increase in online petitions and campaigns emerging from Europe and North America against homophobia in various African countries, creating a particular form of visibility with some remarkable global success. Based on these online petitions and postings as well as the responses of African activists, this article reflects on the politics of this global queer solidarity. By suggesting a restrategizing of antihomophobia politics, it contributes to the ongoing debate about LGBTI politics in a transnational and global framework, pointing to the challenges but also the possibilities for the future.

During a 2014 security operation in Kenya known as Operation Usalama Watch, Somali refugees spoke of money as their only valid ID, knowing that only cash, in contrast to identity documents, would be accepted by police and military. The article argues that such extortion should not be interpreted uncategorically as an example of refugees’ exclusion from state-derived citizenship rights. Rather, by paying bribes to resist forced removal from Nairobi, Somali refugees constructed a global diasporan identity tied to free flows of capital. By using money as a substitute for identity documents, refugees appealed to a notion of rights untethered to the state. At the same time, by speaking of money as their government, they articulated a critique against a political system that excluded them.

The promotion of the private sector has become an integral part of Ghana's economic development strategy since it embarked on its structural adjustment program (SAP) in 1983. Private sector development, which involves the improvement of the investment climate and the enhancing of basic service delivery, is considered one of the necessary factors for sustaining and expanding businesses, stimulating economic growth, and reducing poverty. This article examines the policies of Ghana's New Patriotic Party (NPP) government and its strategies for making the private sector the bedrock of economic development and for achieving what it calls the “Golden Age of Business.” It argues that while the policies and initiatives being pursued have the potential to help in the development of the private sector in Ghana, the government has to play a more central role in this process, not only by creating the enabling environment for private businesses, but also by providing business with support and protection. While the “Golden Age of Business” is a neoliberal concept, its effective implementation requires a robust statist input.

Crop cultivation and the rearing of livestock in the open spaces of large third world cities have reached the point where their importance as a part of the urban informal sector can no longer be overlooked. In East Africa, several recent surveys have confirmed that urban cultivation, carried on largely by women, is both prevalent and vital to the livelihood of a significant proportion of the population (Freeman 1991; Rakodi 1988; Mazingira Institute 1987). These surveys complement a rather slim body of previous field research focused specifically on urban agriculture in Africa. Most of the latter deal with cities in Francophone central and west Africa (Vennettier 1988, 1972, 1961; Jeannin 1972; Morriniere 1972; Lassere 1958). A number deal with cultivation in the peri-urban fringe (Swindell 1988; Guyer 1987; Haubert 1985). The general conclusion of these studies is that many urban households, at all income levels, produce a considerable proportion of their own subsistence needs. The more recent evidence further suggests that, despite a relatively short history in large African cities like Nairobi, cultivation of open spaces by women seems set to become even more important in the years to come.

By contrast, most studies dealing generally with African urban development and the informal sector have either ignored women cultivators altogether (International Labour Organization [ILO] 1985, 1972; Sandbrook 1982; House 1981; Rempel 1978; van Zwanenberg 1972), accorded their food-production efforts little real significance (Peil and Sada 1984, 59; Hake 1977), or viewed them as a subcategory of other, more visible activities of urban women entrepreneurs (Coquery-Vidrovitch 1991; Beavon and Rogerson 1990; Robertson 1976).

This article looks at the relationship between economic ideas and policymaking in Africa over the last half century. It discusses the ways in which the focus of economists working on Africa has moved from the structuralist-developmentalist and neo-Marxist perspectives of the 1960s and 1970s, through a neoliberal phase of the 1980s and 1990s, to a more eclectic combination of neo-institutionalism, growth orientation, and welfarist interests in poverty and redistribution issues. These shifts in development thinking, while not unique to Africa, have not been the subject of much debate in Africa. The article argues that such a debate is long overdue, including an interrogation not only of the leverage of foreign interests, but also of the profession of economics itself and the implications of its material underpinnings and social construction on the integrity and credibility of its research.

Ghana opened a new chapter in its checkered political history when in December 2000 the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC) was removed from office by means of the ballot box. The New Patriotic Party (NPP) won half the parliamentary seats and its presidential candidate, John A. Kufuor, triumphed with something to spare in the second round of balloting. Although there were some violent incidents that marred the proceedings, the assessment of most observers was that the polls were well conducted and that the final result accurately reflected how Ghanaians had actually voted.

In a context of globalization and liberalization, Africa is increasingly confronted with the commercialization of its space. Various large-scale actors, including international private investors, investor states, and local entrepreneurs, are constantly seeking to expand their land holdings for the production of food crops or biofuels. This article presents two Rwandan case studies and analyzes how large-scale land acquisition by foreign and local elite players affects local livelihoods. It identifies broader agrarian and social changes taking place in Rwanda and Africa and provides suggestions as to how the tables might be turned in order to protect local livelihoods in the further evolution of Rwanda’s agriculture.

Increasing numbers of Chinese migrants have arrived in southern Africa over the past two decades. Perceptions of and reactions to the Chinese, however, vary from country to country and within countries. This article, based on several years of field and survey research, examines perceptions of Chinese in South Africa and Lesotho. The author argues that in addition to the global context, national political and economic realities, history, and memory shape local perceptions of China and the Chinese people who now reside in these spaces. States and other political actors play a key role in constructions of foreigners. Competition, whether real or perceived, is also important in shaping negative attitudes toward migrants. However, personal interactions and memories can serve as mitigating factors, even in the face of negative news of China or Chinese activities.

This article investigates food security and well-being in the context of “development-forced displacement” in Ethiopia. In the lower Omo, a large hydroelectric dam and plantation schemes have forced people to cede communal lands to the state and business speculators, and indigenous communities have been targeted for resettlement in new consolidated villages. The authors carried out a food access survey in new villages and in communities not yet subjected to villagization and complemented this with ethnographic research carried out over a period of four years. The results of the two methodological approaches were inconsistent. The survey data suggest that household food access was poor in both places but better in villagization sites than in the other communities. The ethnographic research, however, suggests that village settlers were unable to feed themselves from the irrigated plots they were allotted and were therefore dependent on food aid. They spoke of indignity, bodily discomfort, and the severance of meaningful social relations. This article discusses the contrast between the information generated by the different research methods and asks how this tension relates to two major narratives about development: development as a process through which the state actualizes a national dream, and development as a process that creates affluence for some by impoverishing others.

This article focuses on constructions of whiteness in South African autobiographies and other narratives of the self. It attempts to understand how the category of whiteness—racial, social, political, and economic—is given meaning in this context. The essay departs from US- and British-based studies of whiteness, as well as from African studies of “settlers.” It aims to draw out the particularities of the South African context and the ways in which whiteness emerges within the tropes of looking, watching, masking, concealment, transfiguration, and secrecy in these texts. It shows that the play between visibility and invisibility emerges as a central paradox in this body of writing. Thus it attempts to shift contemporary South African discussions away from racism per se toward a discussion of how race works in psychical, symbolic, and political terms. It considers amplifications of whitenesses which may have been at odds with official and critical orthodoxies in order to approach registers out of which whiteness may come to be situated differently in this context.

The assertion “homosexuality is un-African” is widely viewed as an expression of homophobia. However, without knowledge of what homosexuality and “Africanness” mean in a given context, any understanding of how to shift the prejudices associated with this assertion remains limited. Research conducted in 2010 with police, high school learners (students), and a sample of more than one thousand residents from two urban townships in South Africa contributes to this understanding. This article draws on data from the research to explore the significance of cultural translation when considering what constitutes same-sex prejudice and how it may relate to notions of authenticity or “real Africanness.” While the research provides evidence of same-sex prejudice, there is also evidence of qualified acceptance of same-sex sexuality and of efforts to combat prejudice. Opportunities for change are discussed with reference to the data.

In this paper, I am less interested in the differences between the main competing schools, than in their similarities. The differences were often artificially emphasized at the expense of basic common assumptions. All approaches we have used in African studies are deeply rooted in 19th-century epistemology since the neo-Marxist epistemological break never materialized (Jewsiewicki, 1987). Notwithstanding the fundamental importance of Marxist approaches to the transformation of academic knowledge about societies in Africa, there was no intellectual revolution.

The modern world system approach that belongs to the radical paradigm partially accounts for this failure. As knowledge is socially produced and strongly related to the power relationships, one cannot expect a radical epistemological break to occur in a society that is a historical product of 19th-century economic and social systems. In radical paradigm terms, how can one expect a capitalist mode of production to produce an epistemology and a theory that would be a “Copernican revolution” (Sahli quoted in Jewsiewicki, 1986: 5) in knowledge?

As Martha Gephart (1986: iii) stated recently, “An overview paper is a fortuitous marriage of an important topic and… individual.” Such is the case of this paper initially commissioned as an evaluation of Marxist African studies. The final result mediates my personal history as an African scholar and my perception of the growing difficulties of African studies with ‘Africa,’ their invented object. (Mudimbe, 1988)

In many respects the ambitions of this paper are similar to the goals of Meier and Rudwick (1986: xi):

An intriguing, if little known, autobiography, Femme d'Afrique by Aoua Kéita (1975), is a valuable social document which allows us to reconstruct women's response to the independence movement in the French Soudan (now Mali). This response took the form of a nascent women's movement which emerged under the sponsorship of the Union Soudanaise du Rassemblement Démocratique Africain (USRDA), an anticolonialist political party. Aoua Kéita's career as a pioneering midwife and political militant in the USRDA from 1931 to 1968 spanned the transition from colonial rule to independence in Mali (Morgenthau 1964; Foltz 1965).

Until recently, women were rarely included in scholarly discussions of African reactions to colonial rule. With few exceptions (Kanogo 1987; Ba 1989; Musisi 1991), most studies now available on the topic have been written by non-Africans and reflect the assumptions of western feminism (Riviére 1968; Dobert 1970; Van Allen 1974; Denzer 1976, 1981; Urdang 1979,1984; Rogers 1980; Geiger 1982, 1987; Johnson 1982; Mba 1982; O'Barr 1984; Wipper 1985; Cromwell 1986; Presley 1991). As an account by an African woman of the movement for independence in the French Soudan, Femme d'Afrique provides a welcome counterweight to discourse about third-world women by first-world women (Barthel 1975; Robertson 1984; Hay 1988; Staudt 1989).