Ever since the ‘democratic renewal’ of 1989–90, Benin has been regarded as a model democracy in the African context. The holding of local elections in 2002–03 can be seen as the culmination of this turn to democracy. Donors attach high expectations to decentralisation and local democracy. Based on an empirical analysis of municipal elections in Parakou, the country's third-largest city, the paper tries to gauge whether these expectations have been realised. The paper argues that while multi-party democracy has been instituted under considerable pressure from the outside, the particular form it has taken derives instead from rationales of national and local politics which go back to the late colonial period, and from recent developments in Benin's rent-based economy.

On 21 October 1969 the duly elected civilian Government of Somalia was overthrown by the armed forces. General Maxamed Siyad Barre took the helm of the Supreme Revolutionary Council, which proclaimed itself the ‘guardian and saviour of the nation’. The coup has been seen by some as the breakdown of a true democracy, and by others as the foundation of a ‘socialist progressive society’. The egalitarian Somalis have now experienced both a parliamentary democracy and a military oligarchy. Under which have they fared better? Now that President Siyad and the S.R.C. have been ruling Somalia for seven years, perhaps a sober assessment of their performance, in contrast to that of the civilian régime, is in order.

The pace of conflict-resolution in the Third World has been nothing short of astounding since 1990. A whole array of low-intensity wars have been terminated. Some, such as in Nicaragua and El Salvador, had occupied pride of place in the reinvigorated test of wills between Moscow and Washington during the 1980s. Others, as in Kampuchea, were fuelled by the parallel rivalry between Moscow and Beijing, which both fed off and had an impact on the key dispute between the United States and the Soviet Union. A few, such as the ‘bush war’ in Namibia and the fighting in the Western Sahara, never became serious testing-grounds for the superpowers.

For those who follow African events closely it is the phenomenon of nationalism which attracts greatest attention. It was a rising sense of national identity which threw off the colonial yoke, and this ongoing creation and exaltation of culture and society at the national level can either foster or frustrate the creation of viable political units. We are therefore obliged to keep abreast of African nationalism if we are to understand the course of events and forecast the shape of things to come in this developing continent.

Most Africans in Kenya have always lived and worked on the land, and until fairly recently their land-tenure arrangements have been governed by customary law. Colonial administrators were divided about the desirability of granting individual titles to African farmers, and concentrated their efforts on persuading them to plant cash-crops, to fight soil erosion and, where necessary, to consolidate their holdings. It was only in the mid-1950s, when large-scale compulsory land consolidation schemes were initiated in the Kikuyu Land Unit, that serious thought was given to the nature of the title which the owner of a consolidated holding would acquire.1 The East Africa Royal Commission advocated the adjudication and registration of individual titles in suitable areas,2 and eventually a working party was appointed to consider what legislation would be necessary to implement this recommendation. As a result of its report,3 a system of registration of title based on the English model was introduced. Once the processes of adjudicacation and consolidation have been completed, the title of the owner is registered and, where appropriate, any interests not amounting to ownership are also entered on the Land Register. The land thereupon ceases to be subject to customary law,4 and is governed instead by the complete code of substantive law – based broadly on English law – which is contained today in the Registered Land Act, 1963.

This article explores the phenomenon of in-kind remittances of maize and its implications for rural household livelihoods and food consumption. Interviews with a sample of 391 households in eight villages in Malawi are used to substantiate the discussion. Explanations for in-kind remittances are sought in the micro-level interaction between the formal market realm, informalised exchange systems and the household. Remittances are not connected to lower commercialisation levels, suggesting that the explanation for remittances should be sought in the production and consumption patterns of the households. Remittances function as an important redistributive mechanism for food across space. The role of smallholder food production for urban livelihoods as well as the subsistence responsibilities of rural households are underestimated if agrarian household level linkages from rural to urban areas are not recognised in national production and consumption surveys and among policy makers.

The Great Lakes region has been in profound turmoil for the past 15 years. Through the game of shifting alliances, and because of geographic proximity in an area with porous borders, conflicts have tended to merge, thus giving rise to a huge zone of instability. Conflicts have been compounded by the export of war to neighbouring countries, and the extreme weakness of the Congolese state has led to the ‘satellisation’ of large parts of its territory. This has in turn led to the privatisation and criminalisation of public space, to the advantage of both neighbouring countries and local, regional and international ‘entrepreneurs of insecurity’. From political, ideological, ethnic or security-induced, violence has become predominantly predatory, with loyalties and alliances essentially based on the search for personal or factional enrichment. In human terms, the damage caused by the occupation and plunder of eastern DRC has been colossal.

The general assumption often made by writers that the ex-soldiers played a significant role in the politics of Nigeria breaks down when subjected to critical analysis.1 It is true that these men were potentially excellent material, who could have been effectively utilised in the struggle against colonial rule because of their training, their newly-acquired confidence, and their experience of the outside world. However, certain factors rendered their role as a group insignificant in the history of the nationalist movement in the country.

The political status of strangers in African societies, particularly in urban areas, has been insufficiently analysed.1 This may be partly because studies of African politics and political development have been dominated by a conceptual framework which contrasts two types of society, the ‘traditional’ or ‘tribal’ and the ‘modern’ or ‘developed’. The former usually implies a rural community with a relatively self- sufficient political system.2 In such a society, the traditional leaders are usually associated with a particular ethnic group and territory; and their authority may be derived from sacred sources, such as tradition itself, ties to land, or genealogical links to ancestors. In the ‘modern’ society, leadership is assumed to be ‘rational’ and ‘secular’, oriented towards western rather than traditional values.3 Political development has often been somewhat vaguely conceived as the transformation of a society from the traditional to the modern type.

Numerous commentaries have been written on Frantz Fanon's theory of decolonisation in relation to the peasants, most of them focusing on his claim that they constitute the most revolutionary sector in the Third World. This article critically re-examines what Fanon said–and what others think he said–dealing specifically with generalisations based on his observations of the Algerian peasantry during the war of independence, November 1954 to July 1962.

The success of World Bank policy has recently been proclaimed in Adjustment in Africa: reforms, results, and the road ahead (New York, published for the World Bank by Oxford University Press, 1994), which maintains that the Bank's macro-economic policies have improved economic performance, and that, in general, the greater the degree of implementation, the better the results. My review of this policy research report is intended to show that the presented data fail to support this claim and even bolster the contrary thesis.

Although the essential character of Africa's dependence on the world system changes very slowly, if at all, particular aspects of it are always in flux. For whilst dependence continues to generate underdevelopment, some growth has occurred in several countries at particular periods with important implications for certain classes. The incorporation of the continent into the world system is an ongoing process that reflects shifts in (i) the nature of the world system, and (ii) the nature of Africa's political economies. The sub-structure of the periphery – the capitalist and extractive modes and relations of production – evolves slowly, but the super-structure – the politics and ideology of the state – are considerably more volatile. Given the organic links between the sub- and super-structure, the instability of the latter affects the continuity of the former.

The collapse of Mobutu's Zaïre in 1996/97 was the result of an unprecedented correspondence of domestic, regional and international interests. The Zaïrean state was established and sustained during the Cold War with Western support as a bulwark against communism and source of raw materials. It maintained itself after the Cold War by playing on external fears of state collapse and by supporting French regional interests. By 1996, with the failure of French credibility and US refusal to intervene, it had no reliable external protector. Internal support was non-existent, and an opposition alliance was constructed under Kabila's leadership. Regional states, notably Rwanda and Angola, intervened to protect their own security. Though successful, this regional alliance itself proved to be unstable, leading to a recurrence of war in 1998.

I Want to indicate how the political economy of contemporary Africa is to be explained, and what might reasonably be conjectured about its development. I am mainly interested in the salient features, namely: intense ethnic conflict, the single-party system, the high incidence of efficiency norms in political competition, the recurrence of military coups, political repression, and the poor performance at economic development.

This article examines an unusual phenomenon in the context of modern African labour migration. It explains how Malawi, which had long been a significant source of migrant workers for its neighbours, managed to withdraw over one-half of its international labour force from abroad in the first six years of the 1970s, and to integrate these individuals into the domestic economy within a very short period of time. Traumatic movements of large numbers of migrant workers have been all too common in contemporary Africa, usually manifested as expulsions from host countries during periods of economic stress. A recent notable example was the exodus of about a million foreign workers from Nigeria in the course of one month in 1983. What is unusual about the reduction in international labour migration from Malawi is that it was induced mainly by economic opportunities rather than by coercion.

The ‘non-electoral context’ of elections is often overlooked in democratisation studies, in order not to obscure an otherwise clear model or theory of transition. A key challenge for research on democratisation processes is to balance electoral ‘formalities’ with contextual factors, qualitative perceptions and non-electoral issues, in order to reach a more nuanced and comprehensive understanding of democratic transitions. This article advocates a multilayered approach to – or a ‘thick description’ of – elections, as this will capture the diversity of real life experiences and expose alternative power discourses competing with the electoralist one in influencing the path of democratisation. In so doing, it casts light on the crucial impact of the Eritrean–Ethiopian war on Ethiopia's 2005 election, in addition to other qualitative and contextual factors, which lead to the conclusion that the advancement of democracy through multiparty elections in Ethiopia under the Ethiopian Peoples' Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) has failed.

Insistent calls to ‘decolonise’ African studies beg the question of what this quest actually involves. If it refers to an attempt to understand the continent's diverse and complex societies that builds on their indigenous structures and values, this was a task initiated during the decolonisation era of the 1950s and early 1960s. Led by historians and drawing heavily on insights from anthropology, it led to a revolution in the understanding of Africa, which nonetheless failed to maintain its impetus as a result of the political authoritarianism and economic decay of the post-independence period, which had a particularly damaging impact on Africa's universities. Of late, however, the phrase has come to refer to developments notably in North America and Europe, which in subordinating the study of Africa to agendas in the global North may appropriately be described not as decolonisation but as recolonisation. A genuine decolonisation of knowledge production for Africa must rest on a return to its roots within the continent itself.

The imperative to regulate and redistribute land has become almost universal to governments in the developing world. In Africa, this kind of policy has been couched in impressive language that justifies increasing regulatory control as the only viable way to revolutionise the productive use of land for national development. Land reforms often signify one element of a larger trend involving the expansion of the state at the expense of other forms of societal authority. As such, they represent the frontier of a widening struggle over legitimacy and control between ‘state’ and ‘society’. Scholars from a wide variety of intellectual traditions have recently shown increasing interest in exploring the nature and impact of the state. However, the overall utility of such an approach in helping us to understand political developments in Africa has often been hindered by the absence of empirical data.

This article addresses the theme of entrepreneurship in Africa by focusing on second-hand car markets in Cotonou, Bénin. At first glance this booming business seems to confirm neo-liberal and institutional models of entrepreneurship, in which entrepreneurial behaviour constitutes rational calculation in a situation of economic opportunity. The universe in which African car traders operate, however, is characterised by significant capital scarcity, dramatic losses and widespread bankruptcies. The article argues that viewing entrepreneurs as economic calculators is not the proper way to understand the Cotonou car trade. Based on case analysis of a Béninese car trader, it shows that the outcome of car trading in Cotonou is determined by the manipulation of social contacts, characterised by self-interest and distrust among business partners. Analogous to the Klondike gold rush, it appears that the car trader's engagement with the trade is to a large extent motivated by the dream of making a fortune. Thus, even though entrepreneurial failure is widespread among African car traders, most of them remain convinced that car trading can yield significant profits.

In 1962 the Nigerian Federal Minister of Economic Development said,

It is our duty as a nation to see to it that we produce population census results which have been thoroughly conducted, verified and appraised, and therefore acceptable, without any shadow of doubt, to all governments of the world and to all international bodies such as the United Nations and its agencies, the World Bank, etc… The impressions of the manner in which a country conducts its affairs are one of the factors which earn for it the respect or disrespect of the rest of the world.1