Marrapodi Compound, a peri-urban settlement to the north of Zambia's capital, Lusaka, is a unique community containing several indigenous religious groups. These religious associations have enabled members of various ethnic backgrounds to create a form of social organization that provides a link between urban and village life. Through case studies of the community's major religions, it is possible to develop a composite picture of Marrapodi's social organization and to examine the importance of religion in each group's adjustment to an urban milieu. This discussion will begin by concentrating on detailed observations of two of the area's major religious groups, the Maranke and the Masowe Apostles.

It is my underlying assumption that the urban blight and social disorganization frequently attributed to shanty communities have been less important than the migrations and organizational efforts of the independent churches in creating the basic themes and direction of Marrapodi's growth over the past twenty years. This social and religious organization has been subtle, accretionary, and occasionally indirect. Exploring the impact of this tacit social organization on the changing shanty compounds and examining the ways in which religion is at the heart of Marrapodi's life will be my central concerns. A second, more external form of social organization, the planning of the local government, will also be examined from the perspective of both the urban planners and the community members interviewed in 1974. I shall concentrate on a description of the world of everyday events as seen from the perspectives of community members. Systematic observation of the social life, doctrine, and rituals of Marrapodi's major churches will be combined with broader historical and demographic information about the community's growth. These perspectives bridge the gap between the assumptions of outside urban planners and researchers and the uncorroborated personal reactions of individual residents. They make it possible to approach the crucial transitions now facing the community.

Increasingly in the literature on underdevelopment, there is growing recognition of colonialism's pernicious effects on women's status in Africa, as elsewhere. Colonialism, it is argued, destroyed the traditional sex role balance both through underestimating and undermining women's economic role, as well as through the havoc colonialists raised in the social sphere by such varied means as forced labor and cash cropping (cf. Seidman, 1975; Diarra, 1971; Tinker, 1975). And yet there is a highly visible elite of African women—women well-traveled, usually professionally trained and/or university educated. If indeed colonialism did have such negative effects on women's status as are now being claimed, how then do we account for the rise of this female elite?

On the basis of data gathered through interviews in Senegal during the autumn and winter of 1974, we will argue that these women are indeed exceptions, that elite women sampled came from highly privileged family backgrounds in which the father was already involved in the colonial order. We will also examine their motivations for acquiring higher education and professional training and their opinions on topics related to colonialism, development, and women's status. From this data we can then better evaluate both their evolution as an elite and their relationship to other women within the particular developing society.

Dakar was chosen as a research site both for the availability of archival records from the colonial era and for its significant population of highly educated women. Dakar, as the former capital of French West Africa, was a center for education, with the Section des Sage Femmes of the Medical School (opened in 1922) and the Ecole Normole des Jeunes Filles at Rifisque (opened in 1938), both located within the greater urban area. These two schools served as the major secondary training schools for girls from all over French West Africa during the colonial era: their graduates were among the first women professionals, and many have since obtained high positions in many sectors of their societies.

There have been a number of attempts by social scientists to discuss the economic significance of the land issue on the politics of Southern Rhodesia. The Land Apportionment Act of 1930, the cornerstone of segregationist policy, has been discussed at length in many treatises on Rhodesia, the most notable being those of Malcolm Rifkind (1968), Robin Palmer (1968), and Lewis Gann (1963). The important Land Husbandry Act of 1951 has been analyzed by Kingsley Garbett (1963), Ken Brown (1959), and J.F. Holleman (1969). Little has, however, been written on the changing distribution of land resources between Black and White, except for an analysis by Roder (1964) which covers aspects of the period up to the early 1960s.

This paper will attempt to illustrate how the process of capital accumulation and discrimination against Blacks in capital markets, through land policy, has worked to impair Black economic advancement. This will be done by demonstrating how the broad trends in racial land distribution in the 1946-69 period have fostered African underdevelopment. The importance of the racial division of land assets on the distribution of income will also be highlighted.

In this paper a simple model is proposed by which the relationship between slave prices in Africa and the number of slaves exported in the eighteenth and nineteenth century Atlantic slave trade is investigated. Statistical evidence indicating a high degree of correlation between fluctuations in prices and in slave exports shall be presented which, in conjunction with a priori theoretical expectations as well as collateral historical evidence, supports the hypothesis that economic motives were one of the major determinants of the African slave supply process.

The statistical analysis also permits an estimation of the “elasticity” of the African slave traders' response to changes in coastal slave prices; such an estimate answers the question, “How much must the economic incentives (in terms of price changes) be increased to bring about a given increase in the numbers of slaves brought to the coast for exports?” Since the price responsiveness of African traders was itself influenced by the conditions they faced in the enslavement, transportation, bulking, and other components of the African supply process, the elasticity analysis permits an investigation into more than the simple issue of whether or not African traders were profit motivated. The analysis provides an indirect view of a wide variety of phenomena occurring within African societies. Some of the possible uses to which the elasticity estimate may be put are examined in the final section of the paper.

Many developing countries share the difficult problem of attempting to provide aid to the large sectors of their population living at or near a minimal subsistence level. These subsistence sectors are often characterized by their traditional orientation and their relative isolation from the commercial or modern sectors of the developing nation's economy. This isolation does not always entail physical remoteness of traditional enclaves, although spatial imbalances and disparities are frequent concomitants of functional dislocation within the economy. The maintenance of separate institutions governing social and economic relationships, and the persistence of patterns of motivation and behavior at variance with modern modes of reasoning, are frequently sufficient to impede contact between closely contiguous groups of traditional and commercially oriented peoples.

Thus although development may be theoretically possible for any group, and is often conceptualized as a continuum between low and high states of productivity and welfare, in some countries a pronounced dichotomy arises between traditional and modern groups. Economies in which functional separation of subsistence and commercial sectors has become acute are referred to as dual economies.

Political science as a discipline has ignored women in its research and consequently in its literature. Cathartic ranting and raving by feminist political scientists about the blindness of their male colleagues will not bring out the fundamental issues. The shortsightedness of political scientists about the political role? of women is not merely a function of the attitudes of the discipline's practitioners (the vast majority of whom have always been males). Nor can the whole problem of how political science views women be discarded with the observation that women are rarely influential actors in public activities and therefore do not merit the serious attention of observers of political life.

The invisibility of women in political science stems from the traditional concerns and emphases of the discipline which come, in turn, from its largely Western setting. By examining politics in other cultural settings, we can come to understand why women have received so little attention in political science. Only with a significant expansion of its scope can the discipline incorporate women into its analyses. The changing circumstances of politics around the world now mandates such an expansion. Nowhere is this more obviously the case than in Africa. Before examining how and why political scientists have ignored African women, it is important to review briefly political science as a discipline.

The sixties will be remembered as the decade of independence for most of Africa, independence won for the most part at the negotiating table. All too frequently the parties negotiating on behalf of African countries were a carefully cultivated elite who simply replaced the colonial administrators and set the stage for the growth of neocolonialism, coups, and counter coups. Unlike Britain and France, Portugal, until its 1974 revolution, refused to relinquish its colonies in Africa–Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique, and Angola.

Guinea-Bissau, a small country on the west coast of Africa, had been a colony of Portugal for 500 years. For most of this period the relationship was one of trading. Portugal was not interested in political control so long as it had access to slaves and other goods. But with the “scramble for Africa” at the end of the nineteenth century, Portugal changed its attitude. Africa was being greedily divided up by the imperial powers and Portugal realized that unless it entrenched its presence and took political control, it might lose out altogether. With the coming to power of Salazar and a fascist dictatorship in Portugal in 1926, the control became both brutal and complete.

In 1956 the African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde (PAIGC) was founded by Amilcar Cabral and a few country people. At first PAIGC's goal was to organize workers in the towns, hoping that through demonstrations and strikes they would convince the Portuguese to negotiate for independence. It soon became clear that this was not going to happen. Each demonstration was met with violence, until the 1959 massacre of fifty dockworkers holding a peaceful demonstration at Pidgiguiti. This was a turning point for PAIGC: they realized that independence could not be won without an armed struggle, one that had to be based on the mass participation of the people. They turned their focus to the countryside and to mobilizing the peasants, who represented 95 percent of the population.

The purpose of this article is to stress the neglected aspects of the inter-war educational policy in British tropical Africa which was generally referred to as Adaptation. It is not unusual to find gaps between theory and practice in various systems of education, but stated policy and educational practice in British Africa were so divergent as to merit special attention. Although a concerted effort was made to introduce Adaptation in 1923, the policy did not remain rigid; in fact it evolved in three distinct yet overlapping phases. Adaptation in tropical Africa was a transplant of an educational policy which grew gradually in New Zealand and India and crystallized during the era of New Imperialism in the 1890s in South Africa and in the south of the United States. The discussion which follows is therefore at once historical and comparative. An attempt will also be made to show that adaptation was linked to the political fortunes of the West.

Adaptation was based on the Colonial Office document issued in 1925, though the Derby Day Meeting which officially conceived this policy was held two years earlier on 6 June 1923. The policy displayed noble intentions: the major effort was directed towards literacy of the masses. The education of girls and adults was not to be neglected. The curriculum was to be geared to the agricultural economy that sustained tropical Africa. Government departments other than Education in each colony were to assist in training artisans and technicians with machine tools. In non-Muslim areas the school would be encouraged to have a Christian bias. Since the colonial government could not finance school expansion on its own, expansion would be through government-assisted schools run by the missions. Circumstances permitting, higher education would be provided.

In recent years, anthropologists and sociologists have been concerned with the problem of the definition of ethnic groups within various societies. This paperl suggests that the purpose of the researcher's definition largely determines the composition of the group and that research on ethnicity may be seen as analogous, in that respect, to approaches to research on language.

For some types of research, it is sufficient to equate ethnic identity with tribal affiliation. This is true in areas of the world where it makes sense to record answers from informants to the question “What is your tribe?”. However, it is necessary in such areas for the researcher to ask the question directly, rather than ask one person to label another.

In a recent article, A.N. Tucker (1973) discusses this same problem with regard to placenames. He cites, for Africa, cases where it was discovered that the official name of a particular place was not the place's name at all but had been supplied to researchers (linguists, anthropologists, geographers, or whatever) by a guide from another culture or linguistic group. Tucker (1973: 163) states that:

As research in social anthropology has turned from studying tribal units in more or less isolated areas toward urban-centered research, it has become apparent that one feature of urban social organization seems to be emergent ethnic or tribal groupings (Arens, 1973: 441). The criteria underlying such groupings, as opposed to those underlying traditional tribal affiliation, are often of a complex nature. Where, in rural areas, it has been possible to ask informants “What is your tribe?” and receive an unambiguous answer (usually related to parentage and/or land inheritance), in urban poly-ethnic communities today as well as in rural yet urban-linked areas, criteria for determining ethnicity are changing. In fact, as Arens has pointed out, in today's Africa common tribal identity in the sense of ethnic consciousness seems to be of particular importance in the cities, where ethnicity—in the absence of kinship—underlies social organization. The common assumption that rural areas are static and urban areas dynamic is being challenged.

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.

A literary scholar runs a certain risk when he ventures into the troubled waters of African politics. But a poet—whether it is Shakespeare carefully plotting his historical plays to conform to and support the Tudor position on the Wars of the Roses or Wordsworth confusing the atmosphere of the French Revolution with the air of heaven or Ginsberg howling with rage and existential despair at the sight of democracy betrayed—makes political statements. Sometimes these statements are only subtly and indirectly political; at other times they are specific and topical. In either case, they are part of the milieu in which a political culture flourishes. They are, in fact, part of the political culture itself.

I want to examine several of the ways in which indigenous poets of West Africa have functioned as part of the developing political culture. And I want to address myself specifically to political culture—a term of some exactness which nevertheless allows considerable latitude for analysis and speculation. The political culture of a society might be described as the political system internalized in the perceptions, judgments, feelings, and attitudes of its people. In their important study, Civic Culture, Almond and Verba (1966: 15-16) have this to say about the “orientation” which constitutes political culture:

Through their wedding celebrations, women from all strata of Mombasa society have participated in the evolution of a variegated Swahili culture. An historical analysis of wedding ceremonies illuminates two important questions: first, the pattern of interaction between people of slave and free ancestry after the abolition of slavery in 1907, and second, the role women have played in integrating into Swahili culture elements drawn from both slave and free peoples.

An awareness of the interplay of ethnicity and social stratification is crucial to understanding Swahili society. Historians have traced successive migrations of people from different parts of Africa and the Indian Ocean, bringing disparate ways of life. But despite the well-known formulation that Swahili culture grew from the mingling of African and Persian or Arab peoples, little attempt has been made to analyze specifically the contributions of African slaves to the mixture. The failure to distinguish different strata in the African component of Swahili culture obscures the class dynamic in coastal society. Scholars do not ignore social stratification, but few describe adequately the interaction between various strata. Still fewer writers analyze cultural artifacts as the expression of different, and often competing, strata. For example, James De Vere Allen, in his excellent guide to the Lamu museum, argues persuasively that “Swahili culture … is an African culture,” not an Arab import, as early British writers assumed. But having exposed the colonialist assumptions behind the earlier idea and having established the indigenous roots of Swahili culture, Allen (n.d.: 1-2) does not attempt to describe the impact of the lower strata on the material culture of the elite, whose articles dominate the museum. Allen is handicapped by the fact that poor people tend to create fewer and less substantial artifacts. In order to analyze the contributions of slaves and other people from the lower strata of society, one must turn to customs, particularly dances, which did not depend upon wealth or power for their creation.

Identification of the consequences of such a complex phenomenon as longdistance trade has engaged historians of east Africa most particularly since the publication of Reginald Coupland's East Africa and Its Invaders (1938) and The Exploitation of East Africa (1939). The more critically long-distance trade is examined, the more dimensions emerge which appear essential for an evaluation of its impact. Studies made in the 1960s examined political consequences of the trade within and among African societies, as well as those economic aspects which affected African rulers (Roberts, 1968; Gray and Birmingham, 1970). More recently there has been a desire to assess the economic consequences to the vast majority of east Africa's population-not just upon the rulers-during the nineteenth century (see Alpers, 1973). The direction of inquiry is certainly welcomed. It, in turn, will no doubt lead investigators to a number of social and religious issues heretofore unexamined; other significant effects of the trade will be identified and their impact at least partially assessed.

One such consequence worthy of consideration is the disease factor. At present we know precious little about the introduction of epidemic diseases into the east African interior during or before the nineteenth century. The most valuable single work available is Dr. James Christie's Cholera Epidemics in East Africa (1876). As a resident physician on Zanzibar, Christie observed and described the effects of cholera on various social and ethnic groups within Zanzibari society. He also endeavored to trace the relentless spread of four specific cholera epidemics from the Asian sub-continent into eastern Africa. Christie, however, was unable to provide precise information about African mortality from cholera within the interior, although impressionistic statements are cited. Given the east Africans' lack of immunity to cholera, there is every reason to assume that its effects were devastating on all people exposed to it (Curtin, 1968: 195). As Christie painstakingly described, cholera was inadvertently transmitted by traders seeking ivory along specific caravan routes through the interior of eastern Africa. Disease and long-distance trade thus became inextricably linked, with caravans serving as an effective mechanism for transmitting alien epidemic diseases as well as indigenous diseases.

Why discuss women's role in development? The reason is quite simple, and it forms the underlying premise of this paper: If all of the persons who are involved in the human tasks of survival and creation of a better life are allowed to share the opportunities available to apply scientific knowledge and technological advances, development will be achieved at the most rapid rate possible. Conversely, if some persons are left outside the stream of this knowledge, the pace of development will be slowed down for the whole society. And the latter is particularly true if those left out play a major part in economic production and are at the same time the persons who bear the chief responsibility for the health and well-being of all the people.

Whether one holds a pragmatic or a humanistic view of development, the participation of women is necessary. From the pragmatic approach, one sees that the most serious problems of development defy solution without the active participation of women. Can hunger be banished without the women, who grow most of Africa's food, and who breastfeed the babies and prepare the meals for the whole family? Can illiteracy be abolished without the women who are the first teachers of children, and whose own level of education affects the progress in schooling of both boys and girls? The pragmatic approach to development also dictates that all available human resources must be mobilized to reach the goal.

The humanistic approach to development is expressed in the definition of development formulated by the President of Tanzania: “Development is development of people toward their greater freedom and well-being” (Nyerere, 1968). All must participate in the tasks of nation-building and share in its fruits.

In an article on educational planning, C. Arnold Anderson and Mary Jean Bowman (1968) suggest that there is a conflict between equity and efficiency in the distribution of schools. Since independence, each Anglophonic African state has altered the English educational inheritance of local religious and voluntary schools and has opted in favor of a more centralized system of state control. Centralized control, according to Anderson and Bowman, could theoretically act as a vehicle for an increase in equity by spreading schools more evenly throughout the population and therefore limiting the advantages which could accrue to the children of the privileged. On the other hand, the authors view centralized control as a device which might obstruct the efficient utilization of schools, since the pattern of school distribution reflects the local population's interest in education and their effort to acquire it.

By extension, Anderson and Bowman infer that localized decision-making would tend to maximize efficiency. They say that “[in] localities where given educational efforts will evoke the largest response in attendance and in demand for further schooling … [such effort] tends to be realized by local interest and resources” (1968: 361).

I wish to explore the Anderson and Bowman equity-efficiency dilemma by focusing upon Uganda as a case in point. I do not differ substantially from them. As assumed from their thesis, there have been changes in efficiency and in equity since Ugandan government became involved in primary education. But in contrast to the expectations of their thesis, I question whether the effect of government involvement has not been detrimental to three specific areas of equity—the same equity under whose guise centralized action was originally motivated.

African socialism is the ideology of Africa. The purposes of this paper are to examine the meanings attached to this ideology by Africans and Africanists alike, to analyze and compare any perceptual differences which may exist among competing viewpoints, and, finally, to indicate areas of consensus or agreement emerging from such an analysis. The ideology of African socialism is investigated here under experimental circumstances. Employing Q technique, 53 Africans and Africanists were asked to sort 75 statements pertinent to African socialism made by African leaders along an opinion continuum. Data were inter-correlated and factor-analyzed, producing three factors or patterns of perceptions toward African socialism, respectively described as pragmatic, scientific, and internationalist. Respondents aligned with all three viewpoints mention Julius Nyerere of Tanzania as their ideal type of African socialist leader. The inference is that Nyerere serves as a condensation symbol for persons of differing ideological persuasions.

Ideology is an important aspect of any political culture. Political culture is part of the general cultural system, and according to Parsons (1964: 57-58), the individual is involved in three possible ways: by his interest in it, by his participation in it, and by his individual value orientation or political beliefs. Verba (1966: 513) observes that the political culture

consists of the system of empirical beliefs, expressive symbols, and values which defines the situation in which political action takes place. It provides the subjective orientation to politics.

At a general level of analysis, ideologies embody issues of importance to individuals or groups. As a working definition of political ideology, Dion (1959: 49) has suggested that it may be regarded as a “more or less integrated system of values and norms noted in society, which individuals and groups project on the political plane in order to promote the aspirations they have come to value in social life.”

Voluntary associations are significant mechanisms by which migrants can be integrated into a new urban milieu, yet not all individuals or sectors of city populations belong to them. While it is widely accepted that associations have a role to play in urban west Africa by offering welfare services (Little, 1965), providing political outlets in the broad sense of that term (Wallerstein, 1966), or defining status (Eisenstadt, 1956), little is known about the configurations of membership (but see Meillassoux, 1968). In order to understand more fully the part that voluntary associations play in the lives of city dwellers it is still necessary to ask fundamental questions. For example:

1) What percentages of urban populations actually belong to, and are active in, voluntary associations?

2) What kinds of voluntary associations are preferred?

3) Who belongs to what kinds of associations?

In other words we still need to know to whom voluntary associations are important and to whom they are relatively unimportant.

This essay addresses itself to these questions by examining voluntary association behavior among residents of one suburban neighborhood of Lagos, Nigeria. In so doing it argues that membership varies substantially according to ethnicity and sex. Yoruba and Ibo-speaking residents are known for their high level of participation in several types of voluntary associations, yet Hausa-speaking residents rarely join any but religious groups. The same contrast can be made between men and women, whose membership preferences are not necessarily similar. Examination of the variables of sex and ethnicity, therefore, begins to provide membership profiles of the various types of associations, but these factors do not stand alone.

It has by now been amply demonstrated that involvement of a local region with the world capitalist economy, or “development,” can have disastrous effects upon the economic status of women (Boserup, 1970). These changes are created by the involvement of the labor force in activities related to world markets in commodities, either by working as wage laborers on plantations, mines, and factories, or by cultivating cash crops as tenants or owners of land. In Africa women have been barred from much of the wage labor available, yet have been expected to subsidize low wages paid to men of their families by agricultural work and trading (Hay, 1976; Stichter, n.d.). Where new agricultural techniques have been introduced, men have been trained to use them despite the preponderance of female farmers in much of African traditional agriculture (Boserup, 1970: 53-65).

I had the privilege in 1969-1971 of working as an anthropologist in Ethiopia, a nation at that time marginal to the world economy. Principal exports were cotton and coffee, both unsuitable for cultivation in much of the Ethiopian highland. Indigenous manufacturing firms employed fewer than 50,000 people in a population estimated at 25 million (Ethiopia Statistical Abstract, 1970: 54). The nation had never been part of a real colonial empire; Italian domination in 1938-41 was too brief to set up successful forms of foreign-dominated economic extraction. Various types of subsistence farming and pastoralism supported the bulk of the Ethiopian population.

Over ten years have now elapsed since the then Government of Northern Nigeria, in what has since been represented as a major attack on the institution of Chieftancy per se (Dudley, 1968, and Whittaker, 1970), set in motion the procedure for a Commission of Enquiry into the financial affairs of the Kano Native Authority which resulted in the Emir of Kano, Alhaji Sir Muhammadu Sanusi, K.B.E., abdicating and going into voluntary exile at Azare, leaving his Emirate entirely and withdrawing to a life of religious seclusion.

Nothing has been published heretofore concerning the motives or the origins of this enquiry, other than the speculation of some scholars which have been based on only the most scanty corpus of material, but it would seem that, ten years after the event, and after so much water has flowed under the bridge, there would now be no impropriety in disclosing at least some of the broader aspects of the Enquiry as the Commissioner became aware of them. In particular, what has not been appreciated to date is that the fundamental element of the crisis when it occurred was really one of legitimacy.

When Felix Eboue made the observation quoted, it was already too late for France to effect any meaningful shift in colonial policy. When Charles Temple made his, British administration theory had already crystallized along the rigid lines for which Lugard had opted, and, in fact, it was against this very rigidity that Temple was inveighing when he wrote the book from which the quotation has been taken. The problem which each of these authorities was addressing, however, is not one that is applicable to the colonial context alone, or even, necessarily, at all. It is much more generally concerned with modernization and modernism, and especially with the dislocation of the traditional process which the unthinking application of modernistic norms invariably entails.

The largest women's voluntary association in Kenya and the only one with a countrywide network of clubs is Maendeleo ya Wanawake (Swahili for “women's progress”). It was organized by a small group of European women in the early 1950s under the auspices of the colonial government's Department of Community Development and Rehabilitation, to promote “the advancement of African women” and to raise African living standards.

This paper will argue that although Maendeleo was founded to improve rural living standards through self-help, and although its national leadership in the early years of independence took a critical position towards the government, in the last few years the leadership has tended to accept the status quo and accomodate itself to the political elite. Moroever the gap between rural and urban women has grown wider and the development projects that have been implemented have been the results of local level initiative. The paper suggests that unless there is a greater commitment of resources from the national executive and from the government, Maendeleo ya Wanawake (MyW) will likely lose its extensive rural base. To support this proposition, the paper contends that:

(1) the national executive and its urban supporters engage in the “patrons' round” of activities, and in the urban context MyW bears more resemblance to a western women's philanthropic organization than to an African self-help organization;

(2) the national executive, though voicing support for women's rights, enjoys essentially an accomodative relationship with the government, and makes little attempt to secure equal rights or more resources for women;