This is a study of feuding and conciliation, fissioning and fusing, among the constituent segments of Accra's Muslim community. It articulates the argument of legitimacy – to build a new mosque, to choose a new leader, in effect, to direct the group – and in so doing, politically delineates the principle that by excluding rivals it is feasible to gainsay power for one's own group.

The brutal, eleven-year long civil war in Sierra Leone has been understood by many scholarly observers as ‘a crisis of youth’. The national elections of 2007 were notable for an explosion of popular music by young people directly addressing some of the central issues of the election: corruption of the ruling party and lack of opportunities for youth advancement. Though produced by youth and understood locally as youth music, the sounds were inescapable in public transport, markets, and parties. The musical style is a combination of local idioms and West African hip-hop. The lyrics present a young people's moral universe in stark contrast to that of their elders. This paper addresses the themes of these election-focused songs as well as the emerging subaltern youth identity discernible in supposedly less political songs.

Ethiopia's Productive Safety Net Programme (PSNP) is an attempt to bring food security to 5 million people by providing them with social security to close the yearly hunger gap, coupled with development projects to lift them permanently out of poverty. The programme is an example of the new policy arrangements that aim to link relief to social security and development. This paper analyses the early implementation of the PSNP in two villages of the Amhara Region. The paper shows how the programme was in practice interpreted and used by local authorities to realise a related programme of voluntary resettlement, and how this locally changed the objective from helping the most vulnerable people, to reserving the benefits of the programme for the more affluent and economically potent households. It shows how local responses to food security policies were informed by institutional patterns, discourses about food insecurity and the articulation of policy with adjacent or past policy practices.

Through a comparison of two rural Tanzanian districts, this paper traces the effects of a humanitarian influx – the arrival of refugees and international relief – on the economic practices of the host population in one western Tanzanian district (Kasulu). It argues that, despite popular and Government claims to the contrary, there is little evidence that the influx has effected a transformation of citizens' economic lives. While changes in exchange and resource use patterns have occurred in the five years since the influx began, they are not fundamental and many are better attributed to shifts in macro-economic policy than to the refugees, the presence of the relief agencies or the distribution of humanitarian aid. The fact that the influx has not induced a shift towards increased market activity and capitalist modes of production not only challenges government and popular pronouncements, but also reaffirms the resilience of localised modes of production against external market pressures.

The execution of Ken Saro-Wiwa, noted advocate of rights for the Ogoni people of the Niger delta, who was hanged with eight of his colleagues in Port Harcourt on 10 November 1995, drew universal condemnation from governments, human rights organisations, and literary figures. Following the trial of these Ogoni activists, the Nigerian régime headed by General Sani Abacha decided that the verdict of the appointed tribunal should be endorsed and implemented without delay, despite an international campaign for clemency. In the view of many, Nigerians and non-Nigerians alike, an independent judicial court would not have found the accused guilty of the murder in May 1994 of the four prominent Ogoni who had been killed during a riotous rally. For the military administration, however, the claims for self-determination made by Saro-Wiwa had run counter to national policy, nOt least by having highlighted long-standing tensions between the country's ethnic mosaic and its political centralisation.

This paper discusses the logic of political identification by individuals and groups in the context of re-emerging state structures in northern Somalia. Current identities are analysed as political identities, which are both a product of and a driving force behind political and military conflict in the region. In everyday life political cleavages can be bridged by cross-cutting ties based on neighbourhood, intermarriage or common experiences and history. Only when conflict reaches a certain level and violence escalates, do political identities become mutually exclusive and large-scale fighting become a real threat.

How can Africa's societies reorient and rebuild state apparatuses where predatory, neo-patrimonial governance has held sway? This emerges as a key question if one accepts that dysfunctional institutions, and not just poor initial conditions, a hostile international environment, external shocks, or policy errors, have impeded Africa's economic recovery. Although analysts and organisations place differing weights on these various causes, few now dissent from the consensus that political-institutional reforms are a necessary condition for African development. Yet recognising the need for such change is one thing; knowing how to bring it about is quite another. Few guidelines exist to steer this complex and long-term task. Democratisation is now often cited as one means to foster institutional renewal, and this article draws on the Ghanaian experience to reflect upon the efficacy of this route.

In this historical conjuncture of profound socio-economic disorders, the condition of the peoples of the so-called periphery is as desperate as it has ever been. Understanding the making and nature of their predicament is certainly one of the most basic conundrums in development studies in general, and the study of Africa in particular. A useful way of looking at the continent's dilemma is to focus on two broad factors: structural constraints and subjective conditions. The first speaks to the complex of historical circumstances, habits, and rules bequeathed by the past – ‘the grid of inheritance’, to borrow from E. P. Thompson – and the overbearing logic of the contemporary global systems of production, exchange, and information. The second signifies political choices that are made as the battle with the past, the present, and for the future continues.

This article is an inquiry into the major causes of the continued state of underdevelopment and dependency of Africa in spite of its enormous wealth and tremendous economic potential. It constitutes a follow-up to earlier, historical queries on the present state of African economies:

Viewed from the higher echelons of government in the new nations, the rural leader is an insignificant individual who goes about managing his local affairs and carrying out—with varying degrees of success—the policies and hopes of the government. Viewed from below, from the inner recesses of the village, the leader is a man of authority; a man who has used wealth, heredity, or personal magnetism to gain a position of influence. As seen by nation builders and development experts, the rural leader is tacitly pointed to as the key to success. It is he who can mobilise the people. It is through him that more energy will be expended, more muscles used, and more attitudes changed. Conversely, it is the leader's lack of initiative that will entrench the status quo and doom the modernisation schemes before they begin.

On 11 December 1969 representatives of the Governments of Botswana, Lesotho, South Africa, and Swaziland signed a Customs Union Agreement, replacing that of 1910.1 Preliminary negotiations had been protracted. Bipartite discussions had begun some six years before, between South Africa and Britain, as the colonial power responsible for Bechuanaland, Basutoland, and Swaziland; but South Africa suspended the talks early in 1965, pending a reappraisal of her relationship with the three territories concerned, made necessary by their rapid constitutional advance, which led to complete independence. Negotiations were not resumed until mid-1968; several quadripartite meetings took place in Pretoria during 1968–9, including one at ministerial level. Eventually the detailed draft of the treaty was agreed.

The strange collusion between occult belief systems and different trans-national social networks, embedded in specific transformations of local and global modes of production, results in unique but reinforcing modifications of witchcraft belief, its underlying structures and its impact on the process of democratisation. The amazing range of possible results has been indicated by the analysis of two outstanding examples of witchcraft violence in South Africa in times of transition: in the former homelands of Venda and Lebowa, seemingly ‘traditional’ elements of witchcraft accusations, mediated by a misguided struggle for liberation, stimulated the sympathetic attention of stakeholders beyond the local setting. On the other hand, the occult base of violence in the Transkei became so blurred by involvement of ‘modern’ elements of globalised markets of violence that it was hardly visible any more, although under cover its repressive effects were still very much alive. These different roots of witchcraft violence had serious repercussions on conflict resolution and genuine reconciliation, the base for any sustainable democratisation and development.

Land has had great prominence in Kenya politics throughout the country's colonial and post-colonial history. The purpose of this article is to advance a preliminary political analysis of the impact of two major land reforms undertaken in Kenya within the last 15 years. One of these, begun during the ‘Mau Mau’ rising in the mid-1950s, enabled Africans to consolidate and gain individual legal titles to their land holdings and subsequently to participate in the production of lucrative cash crops. The second reform enabled Africans to buy land from European farmers, many of whom wished to liquidate their holdings as far as possible before independence occurred in December 1963. Both land reforms are still in progress, for the Government is seeking to maximise the economic productivity of those who have benefited from them. Simultaneously, it is seeking to extend land consolidation and title registration to thousands of farmers who have not yet been affected.

Although many African countries have had to address pressures for democratisation and are undergoing some form of transition, Mali is an especially interesting case which could provide useful insights into the durability of democracy on the continent and elsewhere. Mali has experienced extraordinary changes in the past two years leading to the almost total transformation of the political system from a highly authoritarian régime to one which has all the trappings of a liberal democracy. Unlike most other nations, Mali was fortunate in being able to write a new constitution and hold elections without the burden of continued participation in the process by a ruling party and head of state. Therefore, the more open procedures offer a better indication of the degree to which, given the opportunity, a modern democratic system can take root in the African milieu.

The peace accord signed in October 1992 and multiparty elections held in October 1994 brought to Mozambique fresh hopes and opportunities. Post-war reconstruction has been underway for some years, through an array of projects ranging from hand-outs for demobilised soldiers to the World Bank supported Roads and Coastal Shipping (ROCS) rehabilitation project running from 1994 to 2000. Although there is political tension between the two main parties and former contestants in the civil war, Frelimo and Renamo, and a combination of rising urban crime and sporadic banditry on roads in rural areas, generally there has been a strong improvement in political stability and physical security for the majority of the population. Economic reforms, broadly typical of World Bank/IMF stabilisation and structural adjustment programmes, have accelerated during the 1990s and have been underwritten by substantial external financial support. The end of war together with deregulating policy reforms and a sweeping privatisation programme have provoked a surge in foreign investor interest in the country. In aggregate terms and in spite of data caveats, the evidence suggests that Mozambique has become one of the fastest growing economies in Sub-Saharan Africa during the 1990s.

[Peacekeepers] should not… have the obligation, the soldiers, or the equipment to engage violators in hostilities. International peacekeeping forces express and facilitate the erstwhile belligerents' will to live in peace; they cannot supervise peace in conditions of war. Turning them into a fighting force erodes international consensus on their function, encourages withdrawals by contributing contingents, converts them into a factional participant in the internal power struggle, and turns them into targets of attack from rival internal factions.

Problems created by boundaries are among the more frequent causes of war, and North and West Africa has some of the strangest boundary problems in the world.1 Unlike many of the world's borders, the boundaries here are not the walls and moats of history, natural defence lines whose traces mark the military conflicts and diplomatic compromises of the nation's past. The only exceptions are one-sided and even ironic: the treaty of Lalla Maghnia of 18 March 1845 defined 100 miles of the Algero-Moroccan border after the Moroccan defeat by France at Isly, and the line dividing Algeria from Mali and Niger was the result of an agreement in 1905 separating French military explorers in North Africa from rival French military explorers in West Africa. There is therefore none of the legitimacy of national history associated with the boundary lines. This has its advantages and disadvantages: the might of conquest and the right of diplomacy have not sanctified the borders, but the Schleswigs and the Alsace-Lorraines are not present either.

In Africa, as elsewhere, ports are a telling indicator of the tenor of political power and the contests and shifting fortunes among ruling groups. Glaringly evident in the long era of imperial expansion, this is equally true in the present period of late-capitalist commercial acceleration and consolidation. With a focus on Ghana's port of Tema, a leading edge of containerised trade serving a vast swath of the West African sub-region, this essay examines the struggles between state agencies, indigenous capital, and the world's leading multinational shipping and logistics firms invested in port expansion. Rather than the predicted triumph of multinational concerns, the case of Tema reveals the persistent grip of Ghana's national port authority. Deftly capitalising on its claims over land, labour and legislation, this state body also mobilises preferential access to development assistance and financial aid. The result is a port defined by the aspirations and autonomous capacities of what may be described as a neo-developmental state. Both grounded in historical precedent and fragile in its configuration of multiplex and competing interests, Tema lays bare the complex forces at stake in the revitalisation of maritime frontiers now occurring across the African continent.

International donors supporting Kenya's development strategies have increasingly tied aid to the implementation of policy and sectoral reforms. After being confronted by more than 150 required structural adjustment conditions, the Government's good rhetoric but slow response led frustrated donors in November 1991 to suspend all foreign-exchange relief, and large blocks of bilateral aid, pending substantial progress in meeting these requirements.

China's 21st-century re-entry into Africa has been made with considerable new fanfare and in a manner that contrasts sharply with the Maoist ideologist policy of the 1960s. However, how the Chinese perceive Africa, as expressed by the online community, has been little studied. In a country where full democracy and complete freedom of expression are still lacking, online communication arguably plays a particularly significant role. When it comes to topics in China which are not frequently addressed in the public domain, the flow of information among the online community is paramount in shaping public perceptions. The result of systematic qualitative research on the online community in China, this paper aims to bridge the gap between formal studies of Sino-African relations and online perceptions. Reconstructing the online image of Africa is essential in understanding not only contemporary Sino-African relations from the popular perspective but also the distorted nature of information that circulates in Chinese cyberspace.