Since the early 1990s, many countries in sub-Saharan Africa have established semi-autonomous revenue authorities (ARAs), organisationally distinct from ministries of finance, with some real operational autonomy, and with staff paid at rates substantially higher than those in comparable public sector jobs. This has been seen by some observers as a step to dilute the power of the central state executive. We demonstrate that this is a misreading of the story of revenue authorities in Africa. Both African governments and the international development agencies involved in the reforms see ARAs as a means of increasing central government revenues, and thus enlarging the authority of the (central) state. To date, there is little sign that the creation of revenue agencies has actually increased public revenues. It has, however, facilitated a range of reforms in the ways in which taxes are assessed and collected, and deflected pressures that might otherwise have emerged for substantial privatisation of tax collection.

There is a common perception in Ghana that Accra Hearts of Oak is the soccer club of the National Democratic Congress, and Kumasi Asante Kotoko that of the New Patriotic Party. In this paper we explore the roots of these perceptions by examining the social history of these two clubs specifically, and the Ghanaian soccer league system in general, with an eye for the actors, practices and events that injected political airs into purportedly ‘apolitical’ athletic competitions. With this social history clearly defining the popularly perceived ‘us’ versus ‘them’ of the Hearts/Kotoko rivalry, we analyse on the basis of a modest survey some of the assumptions these widely held stereotypes rely upon. We find that ethnicity and location matter both in terms of predicting one's affinity for a given soccer club and partisan inclinations. These factors do not, however, completely dispel the relationship between sports and politics as spurious. Though not conclusive, there is enough evidence collected in the survey to suggest that one's preferred club, even when controlling for ethnicity and location, does have an effect on one's partisan leanings, or perhaps vice versa. This finding highlights the independent role that often-understudied cultural politics can play.

Using fieldwork data collected in Eritrea, Rome, Milan and Stockholm, and supplemented by human rights organisation reports and discussions with key informants in four cities in the UK, this article examines the extent to which the Eritrean national service and its concomitant Warsai-Yikaalo Development Campaign qualify as forced or compulsory labour as defined by the relevant international conventions.

Previous research on anti-corruption reform in Africa falls into two camps. The first explores ‘best practices’ and policy approaches to controlling corruption, while the second focuses on the politics of anti-corruption ‘reform’, arguing that official anti-corruption campaigns aim to mollify donors while using corruption charges instrumentally to undermine rivals and shore up personal loyalty to the president, and thus have no chance of controlling corruption. This paper suggests that, while the neopatrimonial context is a very significant limiting factor in anti-corruption reform, limited progress is possible. Examining the motivations and effects, intended and unintended, of anti-corruption reforms in Kenya and Nigeria, it finds that while the Kenya Anti-Corruption Commission has indeed been politically marginalised and largely ineffectual, the more autonomous and activist, but politically instrumentalised, Economic and Financial Crimes Commission in Nigeria has had a measure of success. The analysis suggests that this is explained by the EFCC's independent prosecutorial powers and the institutionalisation strategies of its chairman.

The long-standing debate about the proper role for Africa's traditional leaders in contemporary politics has intensified in the last two decades, as efforts to foster democratisation and decentralisation have brought competing claims to power and legitimacy to the fore, especially at the local level. Questions persist as to whether traditional authority and democratic governance are ultimately compatible or contradictory. Can the two be blended into viable and effective hybrid systems? Or do the potentially anti-democratic features of traditional systems present insurmountable obstacles to an acceptable model of integration? Survey data collected by the Afrobarometer indicate that Africans who live under these dual systems of authority do not draw as sharp a distinction between hereditary chiefs and elected local government officials as most analysts would expect. In fact, popular evaluations of selected and elected leaders are strongly and positively linked. They appear to be consistently shaped by each individual's ‘leadership affect’, and by an understanding of chiefs and elected officials as common players in a single, integrated political system, rather than as opponents in a sharply bifurcated one. Moreover, there is no evident conflict between supporting traditional leadership and being a committed and active democrat. Rather than finding themselves trapped between two competing spheres of political authority, Africans appear to have adapted to the hybridisation of their political institutions more seamlessly than many have anticipated or assumed.

The 3 August 2005 military coup was Mauritania's best opportunity to turn the page on decades of the deposed quasi-military regime's destructive politics. This article critically analyses relevant aspects of the transition that ensued in the context of the prevailing models of military withdrawal from politics in Africa. It also examines the challenges that Mauritania's short-lived Third Republic faced. It argues that the transition process did not escape the well-known African military junta leader's proclivity to manipulate transitions to fulfil suddenly awakened self-seeking political ambitions, in violation of solemn promises. While there was no old-fashioned ballot stuffing to decide electoral outcomes, Mauritania's junta leader and his lieutenants spared no effort to keep the military very much involved in politics, and to perpetuate a strong sense of entitlement to political power. Originally designed as an ingenious ‘delayed self-succession’ of sorts, in the end, another coup aborted Mauritania's democratisation process and threw its institutions in a tailspin. This only exacerbated the challenges that have saddled Mauritania's political system and society for decades – unhealthy civil-military relations, a dismal ‘human rights deficit’, terrorism, and a neo-patrimonial, disastrously mismanaged economy.