Home historically to a politically engaged youth sector, Nigeria has, over the past two decades, witnessed a growing incidence of religious extremism involving educated youth, especially within university campuses. For all its important ramifications, and despite the continued infusion of social and political activity in the country by religious impulse, this phenomenon has yet to receive a systematic or coherent treatment in the relevant literature. This paper aims to locate youthful angst displayed by Nigerian university students within the context of postcolonial anomie and the attendant immiseration of civil society. Youth religious extremism on Nigerian campuses reflects both young people's frustration with national processes, and their perceived alienation from modernity's ‘cosmopolitan conversation’.

ON 16 August 1983, towns throughout Nigeria's Ondo State erupted into violence. The ostensible cause was popular reaction against rigged gubernational elections which favoured a National Party of Nigeria (N.P.N.) candidate in an overwhelmingly Unity Party of Nigeria (U.P.N.) State. It is easy to dismiss the violence in Undo (and in Oyo State too) as the protest of a frustrated plebiscite – as indeed it was. But western accounts of ‘the breakdown of democracy’ in Africa, so often associated with primordialism, tribalism, and class conflict in plural societies, seldom grasp experiences of the breakdown itself.1 From the external perspectives of national integration and voting behaviour, popular violence involving mobs and crowds is characterised as affective, ‘irrational’ action, in contrast to the ‘rational’ norms of institutionalised democracy.2

This article examines the ethnic character of Ituri's complex emergency. It considers the local context in which the IDP predicament has unfolded, asking questions about the prospect of, and responsibilities for, post-conflict reintegration. As militia disarmament and peace are linked but not coterminous, it is argued that militant ethnic agendas at the core of the conflict must be scrutinised for their ongoing significance. Revealing the past to be a contested terrain, these agendas call for an apartheid-style solution along lines of segregation first envisaged by Belgian colonialists. To move towards ethnic reintegration, Iturians face the challenge that they must create a common history freed from the stranglehold of extremist interpretations.

This article explores the relationship between transnational governance initiatives for ‘conflict-free’ certification in the eastern provinces of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and the regulatory pluralism one finds on the ground. Efforts in certifying artisanal gold mining are scrutinised by analysing how three different gold mining sites in the DRC's South Kivu province are governed. Most artisanal mining in the DRC is usually referred to as ‘informal’ – a term associated with non-state actors. Instead, the article introduces the idea of a mode of governing that follows the principle of ‘débrouillardise’, which combines different rule systems and state and non-state regulators. It argues that ‘conflict-free’ governance will need to improvise via ad hoc agreements on the legal status of mining sites among state authorities, economic actors and international monitors. The act of declaring mining sites legal will provide for the semblance of a ‘conflict-free’ status and a unitary state system of rule, while in practice, the plurality of regulatory authority will not be reversed.

The attention of the world was briefly focused on Ethiopia when Emperor Haile Selassie I, once considered the inviolable descendant of Solomon and Sheba, and the Elect of God, was deposed on 12 September 1974, and when two months later 60 public and military officials were executed without trial. The ‘creeping coup’ began in March 1974, and was undertaken by the military Co-ordinating Committee (commonly called the Dirgue, the Amharic word for ‘committee’) in the name of the peasants. Until the Nationalisation of Rural Lands Proclamation of 4 March 1975, however, the activities of the Dirgue were designed to secure an urban power base, and the peasants and the politics of numbers were tacitly irrelevant to a continuing paternal, factional, and urbanised political style. As the prologue to the Proclamation indicates, the Dirgue recognises the centrality of land reform to a broadly-based rural development:

The continuing prominence of coups d'état in the political life of the Third World has sustained interest in the question of whether, and in what circumstances, the armed forces are capable of making a positive contribution to modernisation. During the 1960s, a number of scholars began to take a favourable view of the military's modernising potential based on ideal-typical conceptions of armed-force organisations which, in Henry Bienen's felicitous phrase, were ‘unencumbered by empirical detail’.1 A second dimension of support for the positive image was perceived in the attitudes and class background of the officer corps.2 Critics of this viewpoint questioned the accuracy of these characterisations given the impact that transfer to a different socio-economic and political context has on institutional performance. Case-studies of Third-World militaries found that many lacked a single corporate identity, suffering from factionalism along cleavages of age, ethnicity, and regionalism; organisational cohesion was undermined by a proliferation of patron-client relationships.3 The motives for staging coups also were questioned, the military being perceived as particularly well-equipped to defend and pursue its corporate interests.1

On 10 July 2003, a civilian coup was attempted in Anambra state in South-east Nigeria. Barely two months after Chris Ngige was sworn in as the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) governor of Anambra, a team of armed policemen disarmed his security detail and took him into custody. The governor's attempted ousting made public the breakdown of his relationship with his political godfather, Chief Chris Uba, and sparked a debate on godfather politics in Nigeria. Using the case of Anambra, this article investigates the complex network of personalised relationships that holders of state power maintain with their national and local clientelistic constituencies. It explores the political underpinnings of the crisis and its links to national-level power dynamics, particularly within the ruling party and the Obasanjo presidency.

This article examines the smuggling of coltan into and out of artisanal mining areas in northern Katanga where the ITRI Tin Supply Chain Initiative (iTSCi), a policy on conflict minerals, tries to improve transparency in trading tin, tantalum (coltan) and tungsten. The article approaches smuggling from a sociology of economic life perspective, closely examining how and why artisanal miners and mine-based middlemen (négociants) helped smugglers (hiboux) in the trafficking of coltan. The findings indicate that the social networks in which miners and mine-based négociants are embedded allow the miners, négociants and smugglers to maintain close relationships and to breach official regulations, but miners and mine-based négociants also rely on the same networks to cheat in their dealings with the smugglers. This article concludes that, rather than considering coltan mining areas to be ‘enclaves of regulations’, understanding and addressing smuggling at both local and broader contexts call for a comprehensive, more contextualised approach.

In the debate over relief for Africa and the Third World, the situation of dictatorial, corrupt, and mismanaged régimes is often subsumed with the rest. It is rather uncritically accepted that indebtedness chiefly results from the impact of international factors, such as falling commodity prices, International Monetary Fund conditionalities, and rising metropolitan interest rates. The independent national state, whatever its policies and form, is seen as simply the passive victim of such forces, and little or no differentiation is made between the régime and the groups and classes of the domestic society.

As infrastructure development has become a key ingredient in Africa–China relations, the role of African governments in co-determining the design, funding and governance of the continent's infrastructures has come under close scrutiny. This article sheds light on the rehabilitation of a symbol of Sino–African friendship: the Tanzania–Zambia Railway Authority (TAZARA). Employing Jessop's strategic-relational approach, it is shown that the strategies of the shareholding governments in the negotiations with a Chinese consortium were informed by strategic learning from previous railway privatisations, corresponding cost–benefit analyses and reflection about Chinese commercial interests. Zambia's indebtedness and Tanzania's autocratic developmental state under President Magufuli formed crucial elements of the structural context in which the fate of Africa's Freedom Railway was negotiated. The article transcends both crudely structuralist accounts of a supposedly all-powerful China and voluntarist conceptions of African agency that are void of structure. Assessing (African) agency requires analytical sensitivity towards the dialectical interaction between specific strategic capacities and strategically selective political–economic contexts.

In January 1963 the London talks on Swaziland's proposed constitution ended, as expected, in a deadlock. It had long been evident that the demand for equal (50–50) white and Swazi representation as advocated by the Swazi National Council (S.N.C.) and the European Advisory Council (E.A.C.) could not be accepted by the representatives of Swaziland's emerging political parties. This formula, which would give the country's 9,000 whites an equal voice with the nominees of the S.N.C., who were supposed to speak for the 270,000 Swazi, was vigorously denounced by all progressive elements in the country.

In recent years African literature has-at last-been receiving the serious treatment it has long deserved, largely as a result of the efforts of the literary critics who have demanded strict attention to texture and structure.1 Although there are still a few old-time missionary critics, such as G. D. Killam and Ernest Emenyonu, who pass off environmental commentaries under the shibboleths of literary criticism, the general thrust appears to be towards more formal textual consideration: the examination of how the content of a work is satisfactorily shaped into a perceivable Gestalt.

National integration continues to be a matter of considerable debate and experiment among those concerned with the administration of Zaïre, but has attracted little attention elsewhere, even within the country. It is not to be confused with another policy – or alleged policy – that of suppressing tribalism in favour of national solidarity. Although ‘tribalism’ and ‘regionalism’ are constantly denounced by President Mobutu Sese Seko and other officials, they are major sources of corruption which the Government, by its practice, actively encourages by frequently reassigning all personnel in the higher ranks of the public service, and making sure that an ethnic mix is maintained in every agency. Officers commonly complain that the only thing that matters is one's tribal designation, not one's ability or performance. Engineered ‘tribalism’ of this sort has nothing to do with ancestral traditions and communal habits.

Touts can be defined as free-lance workers at railway stations, airports, ferry points, and especially motor-parks, who undertake the self-imposed responsibility of recruiting and organising passengers who wish to travel by road, and for this work they receive a fee, or more appropriately, a ‘commission’, that is generally paid by the drivers of the vehicles just before their departure. All the owners are private entrepreneurs, who both compete and collaborate with one another to provide road transport for the public.

In foreign affairs, Kenya presents various faces to the international community. In global terms external policy has been markedly radical in nature and characterised by a strong sense of morality and idealism. Rarely does a major Kenyan foreign policy statement fail to contain some allusion to the inequalities of the present international order or some reassertion of both the desirability and the attainability of a peaceful and just international community of nations. In East African affairs, however, Kenya's policy has often been governed by rather more conservative and legitimist thinking, notably where any radical departure from the status quo is contemplated. It would appear that where foreign policy issues touch directly on primary Kenyan interests—say, national security, national development—the overt radicalism of Kenya's broad international policy is subject to considerable restraint. This ambivalence in Kenya's foreign relations can probably be best explained by examining separately the basically domestic pressures towards a broadly radical policy internationally and towards a more cautious conservatism within East Africa. One further aspect of Kenya's foreign relations is in the field of inter-African affairs, where tentatively one may suggest that Kenya has come to play the role of a prestigious neutral between two amorphous, but often distinct, groupings of what have been termed ‘radical’ and ‘moderate’ states.1 Here, foreign policy is far less a product of domestic pressures, and contingencies of history and factors of personality reassert their importance in foreign policy analysis.

The Federal Republic of Nigeria shall not be governed, nor shall any person or group of persons take control of the government of Nigeria or any part thereof, except in accordance with the provisions of this constitution.

Amílcar Cabral was primarily a man of action. His political leadership is best understood by looking at what he did rather than at what he said. More importantly, his writings were essentially analyses of the events in which he was involved; they were not theories about, or inquiries into, abstract social or political questions. He did not view himself as a political theorist although his writings obviously have theoretical relevance. He was loath to commit himself to any ideology or theory. The majority of his writings are party documents, and they reflect the very specific purpose and audience for which they were intended.

Namibia is distinctive in Africa for at least three significant reasons. First of all, it remains the continent's last colony in defiance of world opinion and the United Nations. Secondly, it has experienced Africa's longest armed liberation struggle apart from South Africa, with no end yet in sight. Thirdly, and most importantly, that conflict is not being waged against some distant metropolitan power, but Namibia's dominant and pariah neighbour. Just as this geographical contiguity has facilitated South African attempts to retain control over Namibia, it seems certain to impose severe constraints on the scope for pursuing independent policies once Namibian sovereignty is finally achieved.

Despite policy commitments and legislated mechanisms, the system of participatory democracy in post-1994 South Africa is largely considered to have failed. In order to understand how underlying ideas can help to explain weaknesses in practice, this article examines how participatory democracy is understood by the ruling African National Congress (ANC). It shows that the multiple intellectual traditions shaping the participatory model have led to a set of policy initiatives that are not without internal tension. In part, the technocratic creep associated with improving public sector performance has stymied participatory efforts by placing efficiency and delivery over democracy and empowerment. Alongside this, however, the ANC's own conception of ‘democracy’ remains interwoven with its mass movement history – linking the role of popular participation to the extension of its own hegemony. The intent of policy to deepen democracy through structures of participatory governance is thus undermined by a teleological framing of participation as an intra-movement activity.

It is often assumed that political parties in Africa have only weak formal structures and are instead dominated by informal, personalised networks. This paper seeks to challenge this view by presenting a much more nuanced picture of intra-party dynamics. Based on unique survey data from Ghana, it is shown how formal and informal party structures co-exist and interact at the national and constituency level. Because informal relationships are not directly observable and difficult to study, the paper employs a social network approach to map the personal interactions between the Members of the 6th Parliament of Ghana and their respective parties. It is found that the local party organisation plays a strong role in both of the major parties NDC (National Democratic Congress) and NPP (New Patriotic Party). There are, however, also differences between the parties. At the national level, the NDC is strongly centralised and dominated by its national executives. The NPP, in contrast, has an informal power center located in the Ashanti Region. Ethno-regional factions play only a minor role in both parties. By demonstrating that the relative importance of informal relations varies even between parties in the same country, the paper contributes to a better understanding of the variation in party organisation across Africa.