Important changes have been occurring in the ill-defined area of study called development economics. The purpose of this article is to identify and describe what are judged to have been the most important changes in development economics during the last decade, and thereafter to evaluate their relevance to the circumstances of the economies of Africa.

Genuine efforts have been made in recent years to build a more egalitarian and just society in Tanzania. A ‘leadership code’ forbids senior government and party officials to have a second income from business interests or rents; a steeply progressive tax system reduces income differentials from a ratio of 1/100 before independence to 1/10 in the 1970s; a period of national service is obligatory for secondaryschool and university graduates; fairly successful attempts have been made to radically reform the whole educational system; and the major financial, industrial, and commercial enterprises have been nationalised. But 13 years after its inception in 1967, it is now generally acknowledged that the policy of creating ujamaa villages has failed in terms of what they had been designed to achieve: namely, the building of a socialist society in the rural areas of Tanzania where more than 90 per cent of the population lives.

Late in 1979 the Zambian Government unveiled its Third National Development Plan which will guide policies until the year 1984, and this implies that problems of unemployment, particularly in urban areas, will be partly overcome by an expansion of self-employment possibilities.

Such was the enthusiasm for the new initiative that the absence of reliable information surrounding it was largely ignored. This article attempts to provide relevant data concerning a number of issues which will be vital in implementing any measures to encourage self-employment in the so-called ‘informal sector’ of the Zambian economy. In particular we shall endeavour to quantify the likely flows into the labour force, particularly from the educational system, the possible growth of formal wage employment in urban areas, and the current size and composition of the informal sector. Finally, conclusions are drawn concerning the possible rôle of this sector in absorbing the unemployed in the plan period.

Discussion of industrial activity in capitalist Third-World countries has usually centred on a series of dualistic frameworks, most recently the opposition between the so-called ‘formal’ and ‘informal’ sectors of an economy. Such dichotomies attempt to divide the activities of labour as cleanly as possible into two groups sharing common characteristics. The categories that emerge – modern/traditional, large/small-scale, formal/informal – overlap to a considerable degree because, in effect, they all attempt, with varying crudity, to compare the socio-economic characteristics of those dominant capitalist enterprises which are based on intensive capital, high-level technology, and a large scale of production, with those activities in the economy which are not based on such features. As such, the second category tends to have both negative and residual components.

The constitutional development of Nigeria which started under the British occupation has been marked by two fundamental principles: the decision to set the political evolution of the country on a federal basis, and the effort, far less successful, to integrate the traditional institutions into a modern political system. This second principle will be the subject of this article, which I hope will also shed some light on the complex relationships between tradition and modernity, and thus show the importance of ‘primordial loyalties’ in political life.

One of the principal tasks of administration in Zaïre is to establish a stable domain consensus, a concept that has been defined as follows: a set of expectations both for members of an organization and for others with whom they interact, about what that organization will and will not do. It provides, although imperfectly, an image of the organization's role in a larger arena, which in turn serves as a guide for the ordering of action in certain directions and not in others.1

The potential for superpower confrontation on the Horn of Africa in 1977 and 1978 focused world attention on Somalia. For a few brief months, the popular press published regular accounts of President Siad Barre's military campaign in the Ogaden desert against neighbouring Ethiopia. The U.S. Department of State heralded the rôle of Soviet and Cuban advisers in the conflict. When Somalia ousted the Russian forces and abrogated the Treaty of Friendship and Co-operation with the U.S.S.R., the move was interpreted as a major diplomatic setback for Moscow. Now, as quickly as it erupted, the news flow about the Horn has halted.

When Henry Kissinger became Secretary of State in September 1973 he instructed all American embassy personnel to monitor human rights in the countries in which they were serving. President Jimmy Carter was not responsible for America's interest in human rights, only for the policy of affirmative action. When his Assistant Secretary for Human Rights commenced work she found only two members of the State Department permanently assigned to the task, and her sole guideline was the manual for setting up her office.

Throughout Ghana many commercial passenger vehicles bear mottos and names, boldly written on their bodies, usually at the front. The widespread nature of these inscriptions would seem to suggest that they are a part of the occupational sub-culture, namely the distinctive pattern of behaviour, norms, and customs which serves to identify commercial transportation. A general theme running throughout the present study is that this sub-culture reflects not only the unique needs of the drivers, but also the socio-economic and cultural environment within which they operate.

The Lesotho Minister for Agriculture, Co-operatives, and Marketing was reported recently to have shaken the delegates at the World Conference on Agrarian Reform and Development in Rome by his observation on the value of such intergovernmental gatherings on the subject of development:

On 22 October 1966, 393 students, all but 70 of them from the University College, demonstrated in Dar es Salaam against the Tanzania Government's proposals for National Service to be compulsory for students completing their education at Form VI level and above.1 Marching through the streets of the capital to show their disapproval, and carrying banners some of which read ‘Colonialism was Better’2 they were diverted to State House, where they had to deliver their ultimatum to the President, Mwalimu Julius K. Nyerere, in person. Flanked by his Ministers, he listened to their demand that unless the terms of the National Service were changed they would not accept the scheme in spirit: ‘Let our bodies go, but our souls will remain outside the scheme’. In his reply, the President made it clear that he had no intention of forcing anyone into National Service against his will. But since these students were unwilling to serve the nation, they should be returned immediately to their parental homes. Whereupon the demonstrators were rounded up by waiting (and obviously prepared) police, finger-printed, and despatched under armed guards to their homes throughout the country.