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

This paper challenges the prevailing focus on ethnic division and conflict in Southern Sudan in recent years, demonstrating that even within ethnically divisive debates over land, there are shared, transethnic levels of moral concern. These concerns centre on the commodification and monetisation of rural and kinship resources, including human life itself, epitomised in ideas of land being bought with blood, or blood being turned into money by the recent wartime economy. It argues that the enduring popular ambivalence towards money derives not only from its commonly observed individualising properties, but also from the historical association of money with government. Southern Sudanese perceive historical continuity in government consumption and corruption, and express concern at the expansion of its alternative value system into rural economies during and since the war. Whilst seeking to access money and government, they nevertheless continue to employ a discursive but powerful dichotomy between the moral worlds of state and kinship.

There is much disagreement about the effect that income distribution has on economic growth. This study uses high-quality household-expenditure-based data to estimate this effect for a sample of sub-Saharan African states. It uses an ordinary least squares (OLS) technique to estimate the effects of income inequality in a standard reduced-form growth regression for a set of cross-section data for the period 1986–97. It finds that higher levels of inequality seem to impinge negatively on growth prospects over the medium term, but that this effect is weak and that the finding of a negative relationship is not robust. It then tests whether this negative consequence of inequality for growth is attributable to inequality's effect on political instability, as the literature suggests. The evidence indicates that high levels of inequality do not affect political instability in any statistically significant manner for the countries in the sample, but that they do negatively affect the risk perceptions of potential investors, and so may contribute to lower growth prospects.

A major problem encountered by the builders of many of the new states in Africa has been that of defining a satisfactory position for the traditional tribal authorities in a more integrated and democratic political system. In Botswana a solution has been sought not only at the level of local government, where much of the Chiefs' power has been transferred to elected district councils, but also at the national level, where a House of Chiefs has been created to advise Government and Parliament. This body merits examination as a constructive effort to synthesise indigenous and imported institutions, and to accommodate the interests and demands of the hereditary rulers and their more conservative subjects, who remain deeply rooted in the tribal structure, in a manner which is acceptable to the new élite and their supporters, who are eager to modernise quickly.

THE importance of industrial growth is widely agreed in Zambia, as elsewhere.1 In the post-independence era, Zambia's manufacturing sector actually did grow at a rate exceeding that suggested by the U.N. experts as critical for attainment of the goals of the ‘Development Decade’ of the 1960s.2 But the rapid expansion of manufacturing industry did not contribute significantly to the spread of increased productivity in all sectors of the Zambian economy.

The abduction of two Frenchmen in January 2011 in Niamey's supposedly most secure neighbourhood has led many to question the functioning of the city's security apparatus. This paper analyses Niamey's security landscape, initially from an historical and then from a spatial perspective. It argues that for a comprehensive analysis of security, we must first decentre our perspective on security construction, and thus take informal non-organised modes of policing just as seriously as policing by state and vigilante organisations; and second, take into account the inseparability of sociality and security, a fragile balance of trust and acceptable risk. In conclusion I argue that this focus may be one way of comprehending the kidnapping: how was it possible and what were its implications for Niamey's security landscape?

French culture, economy, and polity have long dominated the small African country of Gabon. The French control of the colonial era, which reached its nadir in the 1898–1930 period of the brutal ‘concessionary companies’, has been replaced, since independence in 1960, by an insidious rapprochement with Paris, fashioned by Gabon's leadership. A French journalist long familiar with the continent has written, ‘Gabon is an extreme case, verging on caricature, of neocolonialism ’.

Amongst commentators and scholars of the turn-of-the-century partition of Africa, it has become virtually axiomatic to note the ‘artificial’ nature of the boundaries drawn up by the colonial powers. Cutting, as they often did, through otherwise homogeneous ethnic, religious, linguistic, and even geographic clusters, the European remapping of the continent is criticised, at least implicitly, for its allegedly blind or indifferent disregard for indigenous social and cultural systems prevailing at the time of the conquest.

Droughts across Africa have led to a shift in livestock ownership from impoverished pastoralists to absentee owners who contract hired herders to manage their animals. The assumption has been that these contracts are exploitative and negatively affect herd and rangeland management. We conducted an ethnographic study of a mobile pastoral system in the Far North Region of Cameroon to examine whether herding contracts provide sustainable livelihoods and allow herders to rebuild their herds. We found considerable variation in contracts and livelihoods, and argue that the social organisation of herding contracts may explain why they have no negative impact on herd and rangeland management.

For better or worse, Africa is coming of age. The golden epoch of high hopes for pan-African co-operation and unity has passed. In its place is coming a new era of confrontation, ideological conflict and even ‘African imperialism’ that threatens everything pan-Africanists believed in and were crusading for… at the dawn of [the] continent's independence from colonial rule. The change in the nature of pan-African politics from lofty idealism to hard-nosed realpolitik is nowhere more evident than in the present paralysis of the Organisation of African Unity. The Angolan crisis and now the Spanish Sahara dispute have laid bare the new realities of the African continent in a revealing and even devastating manner. – The Montreal Star, 16 March 1976.

THIS article aims to clarify the national political culture of Tanzania through an analysis of one important institution — the Cabinet. Although attention to the norms and rules that regulate political behaviour in formal and informal ways can reveal insights that are not disclosed by other approaches, political culture has been a neglected field in the study of African politics.

By way of contrast, class analysis has been a popular approach to African politics in past decades.1 It has been shown, for instance, that those in government positions siphon off surplus from the peasantry through the marketing of agricultural produce. This has happended in countries as diverse as Ghana, Côte d'Ivoire, Malawi, and Tanzania, 2 where there are enormous differences in economic performance, as well as with respect to the way in which political conflicts are handled. People n similar class positions can act in a variety of ways – this is a matter of culture – because there is more than one possible logic with which to perceive and defend interests.

The removal of the governing Sierra Leone People's Party (SLPP) from power through the ballot box in 2007 represents a watershed moment in the growth and maturation of Sierra Leone's teething electoral democracy. This is because the peaceful alternation of political parties in power tends to strengthen democracy and nurture public confidence in elections as mechanisms of political change. In contrast to what happened in 1967, when the SLPP derailed the country's first post-independence democratic experiment by orchestrating a military coup after losing power in parliamentary elections, the SLPP in 2007 found itself isolated both internally and externally, and could rely neither on the support of a restructured army and police nor on external patrons like the United Kingdom which, among other things, suspended budgetary support for the government pending the satisfactory conclusion of the elections. The emergence of the People's Movement for Democratic Change (PMDC), whose membership consists largely of disaffected former SLPP members and supporters, and the electoral alliance forged between the PMDC and the All People's Congress (APC) in the presidential run-off, doomed any chance the SLPP may have had of holding on to power. The elections were referenda on the SLPP, which lost both the presidency and the legislature because its rogue leadership squandered the goodwill of the public, misappropriated donor funds with impunity, and failed to deliver basic social goods and services.

Against the background of celebrations about the rise of a middle class in Africa and its widely posited role in promoting democracy, this paper explores the politics of the black middle class in South Africa. It does so by examining three propositions: first, that the black middle class was a positive force in the struggle for liberation and democracy; second, that post-1994 strategies of the African National Congress (ANC) government which have benefited it secure its political alignment with the ANC's ‘party-state’; and third, that its growth and increasing diversity will contribute to the consolidation of democracy. The conclusion drawn is that while the black middle class may indeed play an important role in furthering democracy, its political orientations and behaviour cannot be assumed to be inherently progressive.

Recent studies on vigilante groups show how they often begin as popular schemes for imposing order, before degenerating into violent militias which contribute in turn to social and political disorder. The Masai, a group of khat sellers and consumers in the Ugandan border town of Bwera, represent a more complex case. By using vigilance tactics in the provision of security, the Masai actually help to shape public authority within Bwera town instead of creating institutional chaos. They also provide a range of services, imposing a degree of order on illegal cross-border activities in the area. However, a closer look at the Masai shows that their vigilance activities are mainly performed out of self-interest, as a quid pro quo enabling them to continue their illegal activities of smuggling, general criminality outside town and illegal drug use. Therefore they straddle the ‘crime or social order’ dynamic, representing a criminal gang of illegal drug traffickers which also provides services for public community interests. As such, they contribute to both order and crime.

Women in Tanzania's largest city, Dar es Salaam, used to be described as ‘relatively inactive’ as regards paid work or self-employment.1 One study undertaken in 1971 found that only one-fifth of urban women were either working for wages (13 per cent) or earning their own sources of income (7 per cent).2 The situation could not have been more different in the late 1980s, with as many as 66 per cent in Dar es Salaam being self-employed. Although about the same proportion of women were in some kind of paid employment as during the previous decade, it appeared that since then many of them had been leaving their place of work to farm and to engage in small income-generating projects, known as miradi midogo midogo or shughuli ndogo ndogo in Kiswahili3.

Eight years of reconciliation, policy reform, and economic recovery have now followed 20 years of dictatorship, corruption, civil war, and economic decline in Uganda. This stems from the interaction between a government which has created a benign environment for development, and donors who have provided generous support conditional on compliance with a standard package of structural adjustment policies involving changes in macro-economic management. These include the removal of price distortions on foreign exchange, capital, and essential commodities, improved fiscal and financial discipline, the reduction of marketing monopolies and state controls, and civil service reform. Government has set up participatory political structures at national and local levels, restored law and order, and taken many of the unpopular decisions required to enforce the changes demanded by adjustment policy.

What are the reasons for the extraordinary dynamism of many African border regions? Are there specificities to African borderlands? The article provides answers to these questions by analysing the historical development of African state borders’ social and economic relevance. It presents a typology of cross-border trade in Africa, differentiating trade across the ‘green’ border of bush paths and villages, the ‘grey’ border of roads, railways and border towns, and the ‘blue’ border of transport corridors to oceans and airports. The three groups of actors associated with these types of trade have competing visions of the ideal border regime, to which many dynamics in African cross-border politics can be traced back. The article contributes to African studies by analysing diverging political and economic developments in African countries through the lens of the border, and to border theory by distilling general features of borders and borderlands from African case studies.

This paper examines contentious state–society and centre–periphery relations in the DR Congo and their implications for state-building. Since the 2006 post-conflict elections, the state's authority has come under fire in the western province of Bas Congo, where a politico-religious group (Bundu Dia Kongo) has emerged as a serious challenger. Enjoying huge local legitimacy, the group has articulated political grievances that the newly elected central government has violently repressed. As locally perceived, elections are a legitimising tool in the hands of the government to impose its unfettered authority in the name of the state-building project. Furthermore, and backed by donors, the Kinshasa authorities also refuse to implement a wide-ranging decentralisation reform. This has fed disenchantment about post-conflict politics in Bas Congo, boding ill for democratic politics and the prospects of state-building in the DR Congo.

Post-conflict elections in Mozambique, held in 1994, 1999 and 2004, established a formally competitive and pluralistic system. This paper examines the country's emerging two-party system as an essential feature affecting prospects for democratic deepening and consolidation. The condition for political parties to actually help the establishment of democratic politics is their development as durable, socially rooted, country-wide effective and legitimate organisations. The paper contends that the current party system has indeed been a major instrument for political expression and for the channelling and peaceful management of conflicts. It shows how both Frelimo and Renamo – and the competition between them – have deep-seated historical origins and well-established regional roots. Yet, a number of aspects concerning the Mozambican party system negatively affect the deepening of democratic politics: the legitimacy of the party system is weakened by post-conflict polarisation and uncertain mutual recognition; the ethno-regional entrenchment of the two main parties bestows a communal connotation on electoral competition; and most importantly, the party system remains unbalanced and unevenly institutionalised, with Frelimo's disciplined and fundamentally institutionalised organisation opposed by a strongly personalistic and weakly organised Renamo, which struggles to operate within state institutions and to accommodate internal differences.

THE conventional wisdom has it that European/Western constitutional forms cannot be expected to take root in African political soil, much less grow and flourish, since they are based on essentially alien predicates and principles. That is why, it is further claimed, practically all the so-called ‘independence’ constitutions were quickly annulled, abrogated, or simply put aside by the generation of ‘founding fathers’ and/or their immediate successors as leaders, despite having been adopted in the 1960s amid universal jubilation and optimism about the continent's democratic future. Needless-to-say, this bit of conventional wisdom suffers from the post hoc, ergo propter hoc fallacy that given the failure of constitutions, it must follow that they were at fault – a conclusion warranted neither by an examination of their provisions and the circumstances of their genesis, nor of the contexts in which they allegedly ‘failed’.