Mozambique’s land law is notable for its intent to balance the recognition and protection of smallholder land use rights with attracting foreign and domestic investment to rural areas. However, the state’s legitimacy may be undermined through the process of recognition, as state actors and local elites circumvent the law for private gain. Walker focuses on two areas where the law has failed to protect smallholder rights: issues of women’s land rights, and the expansion of protected areas. These issues speak to the problem of recognition, revealing ways the state produces authority, but not necessarily legitimacy, in rural settings.

Students interested in the history of Liberia have been hampered by the dearth of serious studies on Africa's first republic. With few noteworthy exceptions, published works on Liberia can be grouped into two rather broad categories. The first consists of works which tend to be too journalistic in concept and execution to satisfy the demands of serious scholarship. The second includes a variety of memoir-like collections of reminiscences and observations recorded by individuals stationed at one time or another in Liberia while engaged in educational, missionary, or developmental programs. Much of the published material in both categories is useful, and indeed quite valuable, for it provides a good deal of information not readily found elsewhere. Yet, while informative, these books do not constitute a body of scholarly work which the serious student of West Africa would wish to have available.

One work which must have a place on the relatively brief list of trust-worthy books of reference relating to Liberia is the exhaustive compilation of basic documents prepared by the distinguished international jurist, C. H. Huberich. Paradoxically, it appears that it was this important work which discouraged many historians from searching further for basic source materials, for Huberich noted that most official Liberian documents were destroyed during a violent storm in Monrovia. Writers on Liberian affairs who accepted Huberich's statement as the final word on the subject seem not to have attempted to utilize unpublished Liberian government papers in their research. Even those researchers who have, in recent years, had sufficient interest to probe into this alleged disappearance of the Liberian archives, or who were desirous of determining the extent of archival materials which might have survived the disaster, were undoubtedly discouraged by ambiguous replies from Monrovia in response to their inquiries.

As the Portuguese crept cautiously along the western coast of Africa, they met a dizzying multiplicity of African cultures but nowhere did they encounter an economic vacuum. Since their primary interest was trade (pious disclaimers to the contrary), they had to discover and then adapt to local and interregional patterns of exchange before they could hope to exploit them to their advantage.

The two centuries between the discovery of Capo Blanco and adjacent Arguim Island in 1443 and the fall of Elmina to the Dutch in 1640 circumscribe the period of Portuguese hegemony and the opening phase of European-African interaction. Though other Europeans followed close on their heels, it was the Portuguese who pioneered both physically and commercially. Ships might put in almost anywhere along the coast where they could find a safe anchorage, but there were five regions that from the beginning seemed to promise profitable and convenient trading contacts: Arguim, Senegambia and the “Rivers of the South,” the Gold Coast, Benin and the Slave Rivers, and Congo-Angola. Each of these presented a different situation and each demanded a different response.

These regions have been the subject of specialized monographs which have brought out the local characteristics of trade as they evolved, but there has been no attempt at an overview, no attempt to compare and generalize from the data now available to present a larger picture of trading patterns on the West Coast of Africa as a whole.

All of us have very decided ideas about teaching. While our geographical interest may be Africa, our disciplinary training and specialties are varied, and our methodologies and ideologies lead us, not only into different research paths, but toward differing teaching goals and learning expectations. Perhaps, common interest in Africa creates a better understanding of, and cooperation among, the various disciplines, and, if that is the case, it is an indisputable advantage in our classes. Still, it would be presumptious, indeed impossible, for a historian to tell a geographer or an economist or a linguist how, or even what, to teach.

However, our profession expects two things of us: to produce original contributions to the pool of knowledge in our specialty, and to teach effectively what we have learned to undergraduates seeking a general education, as well as to graduate students whose educational goals are more akin to our own. There is no small irony in the fact that, for a variety of reasons, as the number of college students dwindles, as the cost of education spirals, and as the job opportunities for new Ph.D.s all but vanish, our peers are more demanding in their evaluation of our research, while college and university administrators are more concerned with “accountability;” that is, total student credit hours produced—our teaching.

There are three points I want to make about teaching, but first I think it is important to make a disclaimer.

L'ouvrage récemment paru de Jan Vansina, “Le Rwanda ancien. Le royaume nyiginya”, m'a donné l'occasion de me replonger dans l'histoire de la royauté nyiginya en quittant les sentiers battus. Cet ouvrage est, en effet, le produit d'un travail minutieux de dépouillement de textes trop négligés et auxquels l'auteur applique les méthodes rigoureuses de la critique historique. Il nous conduit à une vision plus complète et plus nuancée de la royauté nyiginya que ne l'à fait aucun ouvrage antérieur pour la période pré-coloniale. Certaines hypothèses, souvent très plausibles, font irruption dans l'histoire telle que l'a produite le courant majoritaire de l'époque coloniale, la bousculent et la remettent en mouvement. Elles redonnent vie et humanisent ces rois et leur entourage. Ils quittent le carcan de l'idéologie dominante du moment, cessent d'endosser les costumes propres à satisfaire la contemplation fascinée des élites, tant locales qu'européennes. Les rois, incarnés et faillibles sous la plume de l'historien, restent cependant au centre de son ouvrage et l'interrogation demeure: qu' était le peuple des rois? Partant de l'autre point de vue, demandons-nous à quel point et de quelle façon les rois étaient présents dans la vie des populations? Peut-on faire l'histoire de ces populations? Et enfin, pourquoi est-il important de “repeupler” le pays et de faire parvenir le royaume—et ses séquelles gouvernementales—à la periode actuelle?

Comme Vansina l'écrit, l'histoire officielle rwandaise laissait de côté la population. A vrai dire, le but principal de cette histoire était de donner une légitimité à la dynastie.

Jungle imagery and prejudiced stereotypes still abound in American knowledge of Africa. In a 1967 survey of American schoolchildren, E. Perry Hicks and Barry K. Beyer found that the majority still saw Africa through a web of myth and unfavorable stereotypes which appeared to increase as students progressed from grade seven through grade twelve (1970, pp. 158-166). In closing remarks as President of the African Studies Association, Philip D. Curtin noted this dilemma and posed a compelling challenge to the Africanist community. “The 1970's,” Professor Curtin stated,

This essay is written in response to Professor Curtin's challenge and as an attempt to begin a dialogue on how to teach African history effectively. It is our contention that African studies is a recent enough arrival on the academic scene that teachers have not yet developed, or have not yet shared, techniques of instruction to cope with the special problems inherent in the subject matter.

Eskor Toyo's suggestion during his review of the 1966 crisis in Nigeria that the working class should not limit its politics to supporting others but should wage a struggle for power in its own right and on its own plank (1966, p. 34) raised anew the issue of the role of the working class in Nigeria's politics. The suggestion, as it stands, implies a criticism of the role the workers had played in politics and recommends a new line of action. The timing was perfect, for it would seem that, to adopt the new line, all that the working class needed to do was to step into the vacuum created by the decree which banned the existing political parties after the military coup of January 1966. The problem, however, was that, to grab political power for the working class, the workers would have needed to organise and emerge as a demonstrable political force and would thereby automatically have come under the ban and have faced confrontation with the army; hence perhaps Toyo chose the words to “wage a struggle for power.” After all, the army was then getting used to the power it had seized a few months before and would not have given it up without a fight. But the problem for the working class was even more complicated than the impediment represented by the army. This had not to do with the workers being inexperienced in the art of governing, for, as Toyo pointed out, the army had never ruled in Nigeria before 1966 and, as far as anyone could see, the situation was still far from anarchy. Governing, it seems, is one of those arts one acquires on the job.

Country-wide surveys of African newspapers are hard to find. One such survey is Report on the Press in West Africa. Valuable as it is, this mimeographed study may not have been circulated abroad; a summary of its sections on the press of Nigeria is therefore offered here, even though it may no longer be completely accurate.

Development does not occur at the same rate everywhere. The resultant unequal distribution of development concerns planners throughout the world. A variety of spatial investment strategies which affect the development pattern have been proposed. They range from the dispersed, equality oriented investment of Tanzania's ujamaa to the primate city concentration of Ivory Coast's efficiency oriented “African Riviera” project in Abidjan. Most countries throughout the world have sought a middle course—one of “deconcentrated concentration”—in an attempt to balance efficiency and equality considerations. Specifically they have chosen to invest their development capital in “growth centers”—urban areas that have a high potential for generating development in their immediate area and throughout their region. This policy prescription is based on the optimistic belief that development generated in the urban center will spread to the hinterlands of the region.

Kenya has explicitly incorporated a policy of growth centers into their Development Plans. That the country's planners subscribe to the belief of positive spread effects is evident in the following Plan statements:

The interdependence between rural and urban areas grows in the process of development and with it comes the enhancement of the role of the town as the producer of goods and services and the consumer of agricultural production. This interaction leads to cumulative self-sustaining growth (Kenya, 1974a: 114).

Rural life cannot be complete without towns any more than towns can be complete without access to the countryside, and it will be an objective of Government policy to promote the growth of a number of towns to a size where they are large enough to provide the people of the surrounding districts with many of the facilities and amenities available in a modern city (Kenya, 1969: 15).

Despite the prevailing presence of exploitation of the rural by the urban in present day Zaire, it is still too early to pretend to put forward a precise definition and measurement of this exploitation process, especially as far as Zairian small urban centers are concerned. No systematic field research has so far been undertaken on these small centers.

However, this study will show that in south-eastern Zaire the social environment of small urban centers is too suffocating to allow them to play a positive role in the development of the rural masses. Some stifling mechanisms are encountered in the small urban centers, which impede the efficient circulation of goods and services between the centers and the rural areas and exacerbate the exploitation of the rural people by the small urban centers to the greatest advantage of the urban elite and of world capitalism.

The geographical area of south-eastern Zaire, corresponding to the administrative Region of Shaba (formerly Katanga), seems a suitable field for the study of small urban centers. It constitutes, together with the economic pole of Kinshasa and the administrative Region of Bas-Zaire, one of the most industrialized areas in Zaire. Copper mining industry—including production of secondary minerals such as cobalt, zinc, iron, gold, platinum, cadmium, germanium, rhenium—is predominant in southern Shaba. The Gecamines alone supplies the Zaire state with 75 percent of its foreign exchange. It employs a personnel of more than 300,000 units and carries on its different productive activities on a concession of 20,000 sq km. Its extractive and service activities are concentrated in cities (Lubumbashi, Likasi, Kolwesi) and in small urban centers with populations growing from year to year (Kipushi, Kambove, Kwadingusha).

The political climate of the post-war world did not permit the United States to embark on a new era of isolationism in 1945, but few Americans demonstrated much awareness of Asian or African developments. French North Africa was more familiar than many colonial areas because American military operations during the war had acquainted the public with Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia. When demonstrations against French control erupted throughout the Maghrib after VE Day, a minority of Americans recognized that this region of French rule, but of intensely nationalist feelings, could become a serious trouble spot. With the subsiding of the riots, however, even the largest newspapers in the United States offered only limited information on North African events.

During the next decade, leaders of the independence movements waged a campaign to familiarize Americans with the situation in their countries and gain support for their views on how Franco-Maghribi problems could best be resolved. In outlining that campaign and discussing its strategy, this essay attempts to asses the importance which North Africans attached to American sympathy, the methods which they utilized to attain it, and the results which they achieved.

Late in 1946, a spokesman for the Committee for the Liberation of North Africa called the public's attention to the inadequacy of the coverage of the American press. In a lengthy letter to the New York Times, M. Aboul Ahrass accused France of denying foreign newsmen access to North Africa because of the fear that their reports would discredit the French administrations (December 30, 1946: 18).

Over thirty years ago a Nuer said to me: ‘We do not want what you Turks call progress. We are free men. All we want is to be left alone.’ (Jackson, 1955: 150)

This brief essay sketches an outline of the social history of small towns and their role in transforming the social and physical environment of the pastoral Nilotes of the southern Sudan. In broad terms, it is a review of historical and ethnographic facts which have a wider currency in pre-colonial Black Africa. I am less concerned, however with the detailed peculiarities of this centuries-long Nilotic experience, than with an understanding of how unintended circumstances have, over time, engendered the many problems imposed upon local peoples in the contemporary world.

The increasingly common dependence on history for anthropology emerges clearly in the course of these remarks and observations. In the effort to highlight process rather than detail, the paper begins with some relevant observations written by 19th century travellers in the region, authorities in their own time who through their writings, invited and encouraged more intensive European occupation of these territories. Clearly, their observations on the effects of alien exploitation in the southern Sudan were not intended to serve this end, yet the 19th century sources offer muted echoes of the more recent observation by Southall (1979: 213) that “Most small towns [in Africa] appear as the lowest rung of systems for the oppression and exploitation of rural peoples.” A corollary to this insight is the obvious fact that small towns have been a vital resource for those in a position to oppress and exploit.