South Africa's security establishment, specifically the South African Defence Force (S.A.D.F.), illustrates important linkages between national security and political reform. The military and police influence reconciliation, for better or for worse, in all post-conflict states, especially those experiencing an interregnum between authoritarianism and hoped-for democracy, and in which no undisputed ‘winner’ has yet emerged. Alexis de Tocqueville noted long ago that ‘the most perilous moment for a bad government is one when it seeks to mend its ways’, Reform and political change, as Samuel Huntington observes, ‘may contribute not to political stability but to greater instability …[and] encourages demands for still more changes which can easily snowball’. Both suddenly unrestrained popular demands and forces loyal to the ancien régime (including the military) may threaten the process and outcome of reform.

Political realities in the capital cities of impoverished countries emerging from violent conflict illustrate how local actors can be hindered in conducting political affairs independently from the interests and influence of national governments as well as international agencies. This experience problematises the argument that the main cause of political impasse in African cities governed by opposition parties is incomplete decentralisation, whereby a devolution of responsibilities is not matched by a downward reallocation of resources. Although resulting competition constrains local governments' opportunities to deliver basic services, we need to look beyond the national scale to uncover the drivers of institutional change and gauge the promise of donor-driven local political empowerment. Urban politics in Africa continues to be shaped by global aid discourses, which are translated into local policy frameworks through interest convergence between international and national actors. The case of Freetown, Sierra Leone provides an illustration of such macro-level alignment and resulting local frictions. At the same time, it also demonstrates how local politics have challenged the technocratic, apolitical reinvention of urban governance in the global South perpetuated by the international aid industry.

This paper examines acts of land ‘self-provisioning’ (‘siziphile’ land occupations) and ‘radical land restitution’ (of land previously annexed from people by the local authority for a pilot grazing project) by villagers in a communal area in Lupane District in north-western Zimbabwe. Situating these occurrences within the wider and historical context of ‘madiro’ (freedom farming and unauthorised development of settlements) and Matabeleland land politics and semi-proletarianisation, it stresses the livelihood history of households, the disappointments with local job opportunities and destruction of urban-based livelihoods in a crumbling economy, and the accompanying crisis of communal area agriculture. It concludes that these factors provided a real threat to semi-proletarianisation. By self-provisioning of the land the overriding concern of villagers was to maintain a certain level of livelihood survival, even if it was at odds with their livelihood strategies, while they sought opportunities to maintain semi-proletarianisation.

At the end of June 1997, the mandate of the third United Nations Angola Verification Mission (UNAVEM III) was completed with conditional success, and superseded by the more modestly manned and resourced Observation Mission in Angola (Missão de Observação das Nações Unidas em Angola – MONUA). The ‘draw-down’ of UNAVEM III marked the end of one period in the UN's somewhat chequered history of engagement in Angola. The completion of its mandate followed the apparent commitment on the part of UNITA (União Nacional para a Indepêndencia Total de Angola) to move ahead to the final implementation of the Lusaka Protocol of November 1994. By the terms of this protocol, UNITA was to demobilise the greater part of its army and integrate the remainder into the national armed forces (the FAA – Forças Armadas Angolanas). Already in April, UNITA had complied with a central part of the political requirements of the protocol by inaugurating a new coalition government of national unity with the ruling MPLA-PT (Movimento de Libertação de Angola – Partido Trabalhista).

The general pattern of agricultural performance in Africa south of the Sahara is rather bleak. Various publications sketch a picture of decreasing output, food shortages, rising imports, soil erosion, famine, and even mass starvation. The annual rate of change of the total agricultural and food production for sub-Saharan Africa compares unfavourably with the already disquieting figures for the developing world in general. The data reflect a serious situation which is all the more alarming because of the enormous importance throughout the continent of the farming sector. Indeed, this is the single largest contributor to G.D.P. in many African economies: more than 80 per cent of the labour force in almost half of these countries are employed in agriculture, and for most of them it provides over 50 per cent of their export earnings.

Are there lessons Africa can learn from Taiwan and the other East Asian newly industrialising countries (NICs)? Evaluating the relevance of their experience is fraught with difficulties inherent in making comparisons across regions, during different periods of time, with different preconditions. Clearly, developments in Africa have to be based on local institutions, values, and resources. Yet Taiwan's successful combination of industrialisation and growth with equity reflects goals that are important for African policy-makes. The country's G.N.P. per capita increased from $143 in 1953 to $7,284 in 1990. Even during the 1980s, its economy grew at an average annual rate of 8·2 per cent as against only 0·5 per cent in sub-Saharan Africa for the period 1980–7. Taiwan's sustained growth has been widely shared by all income groups, with the top fifth of households only receiving 4·5 times as much as the bottom fifth. By way of contrast, in Côte d'Ivoire (1986–7) and in Botswana (1985–6), the share of the top 20 per cent was respectively almost ii and 24 times that of the bottom 20 per cent.

This study assesses the capabilities of business associations for conducting meaningful policy engagements with government. Using information from 21 associations and five state institutions, this work investigates the level of autonomy and ability of business associations to coordinate and order their interests for policy decision-making. Findings reveal that the ability to organise an association's own interests is hindered by weak systems and internal structures, especially at sub-sector level. Most associations are financially weak, have limited professional expertise and experience a low level of commitment from members, which affects their capacity for autonomy. It is important that business associations create regulations to make membership ties binding, so as to strengthen their influence on policy. Associations should also be more aggressive in mobilising finances, and they should identify synergies and develop partnerships with the state to build their capacity for participating in policy-making.

The unsatisfactory nature of the frontiers between the independent African states is widely stressed, and provides an additional argument for those who would like to see a regrouping of the African scene in terms of larger political units. This short article discusses the boundary between Ghana and Togo—a classic example (it might be thought) of colonial division calling for early revision along rational lines. It was demarcated between Britain and France some 40 years ago: now African governments have come into existence on both sides under leaders who have given their support at one time or another to Pan-African movements for closer union. The alternative is likely to be constant friction, the interruption of trade, the harbouring of refugees seeking a base from which to continue a struggle already lost in their own country, and accusations by the party leaders in Ghana and Togo that these refugee organisations are actively sponsored by the Lomé or Accra governments. These unhappy consequences are indeed present today following the independence of Ghana in 1957 and Togo in 1960; and it is worth enquiring why they should have come about, in view of the great advantages which it is generally assumed would flow from a more cordial, open association between the two republics. In January 1963, the assassination of Sylvanus Olympio added a further, tragic element to the problem, although whether the coup d'état which installed a new, quasi-military government in Lome will materially alter the relationship between Ghana and Togo remains to be seen.

This study documents and evaluates the so-called ‘brain drain’ from sub-Saharan Africa to the United States during the period 1974–85. The objective is to use the available data to provide some insights into the rôle of this region in the international labour market for trained personnel. This is done by comparing the relative volume, pattern, and trend of migration to the United States from a sample of 17 countries against that for Africa as a whole, and against that for the world. The rationale for this kind of analysis rests on the need to determine the significance for all concerned of the growing transfer of technology, and to identify the factors which control the process.

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 distribution of land-use rights both defines and shapes African political economy. Control over land can be utilised in various ways to accumulate capital for either autonomous or comprador investments in the domestic economy. The acquisition of official titles to land concomitantly affords the holder opportunities to exploit those who do not possess this valuable resource. For these reasons, command over land offers the state a powerful means of regulating access to the dominant class. This study focuses on the ways in which allocations of statutory certificates of occupancy have affected the on-going process of class formation in two northern States of Nigeria: Kano and Bauchi. We are particularly interested in identifying, through information collected from a sample of application files, those elements of the population who were admitted and denied access to the dominant class through the land-allocation process during the late military-rule period, 1976–9.

The greatest achievement of Arabism in the Sudan has been the unquestioned acceptance by the whole world that this is an Arab state, in spite of the fact that only about 40 per cent of the population is Arab. Indeed, the predominance of the Arab Sudanese in the country's culture, politics, administration, commerce, and industry makes it de facto an Arab state. The ascendancy and assertiveness of the Arabs caused the North–South conflict to be almost intractable, while their economic and political domination led even the Northern Muslims to begin to assert themselves, although they had traditionally looked with favour upon assimilation into Arab culture.

The ability of technological advancement to diversify the means of political control available to the state is a distinctive feature of modern life. Today, with the exception of the most underdeveloped and brutal régimes, the overt use of state force is complemented by a variety of control techniques, some so oblique as to defy detection even by the groups they are designed to regulate or repress. South Africa's stalled revolution, the subject of considerable concern to many analysts, is clearly not attributable to black acceptance of the present system, nor for that matter is it simply the result of the effectiveness with which the white minority has applied the more blatantly violent and directly coercive means of domination.1

This article examines reciprocal relations among Wolof small farmers in Senegal after the emergence of rural weekly markets (loumas) and the implementation of neoliberal policies in the 1980s. Contrary to the notion that markets are a force of social dissolution, new trading practices and free market policies have not weakened community relations among small farmer neighbours and kin. Rather, the spatial and temporal patterning of loumas has served to strengthen intra-community bonds. Farmers have, since the formation of loumas, limited their travel beyond their home zones. While at loumas they interact avidly with extralocal merchants, they have not allowed outsiders to settle permanently in local villages. Furthermore, because loumas occur only once a week, farmers continue to benefit from daily, multiplex interactions with one another. After analysing the spatial and temporal organisation of loumas, this article looks at specific examples of small farmers augmenting their economic security during a period of economic restructuration by innovating new modes of reciprocal exchange with one another.

My aim is to examine one particular mode of political participation: the urban riot. In the West African context its importance is enhanced by the fact that there exist few, if any, other ways in which the mass of the population can participate in the political process and seek to bring some influence to bear upon governments. For most of the time, in the majority of states in the region, constitutional mechanisms for influencing governments have been largely absent due to the prevailing climate of political authoritarianism. Only in the Gambia have competitive parties operated throughout the last 10 years, although a few other states (Nigeria, Ghana, Burkina Faso, and Senegal) have had this type of democratic system for part of the time. For the rest, single-party or military rule has held sway, and opportunities for influencing, or indeed replacing, governments through the ballot box have been marked by their absence. Authoritarianism has extended not only to opposition parties — or, in the case of the military, any political organisation — but also to autonomous or semi-independent pressure groups, which have in general been fairly weak, even where not banned altogether.

After a 14-year struggle the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF) took control of the entire northern Ethiopian province of Tigray in 1989. But it was not until two years later, when the TPLF-led Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) captured power in Addis Ababa, that plans to rehabilitate and develop the badly weakened provincial economy could proceed in an environment of peace. This meant that the TPLF in Tigray could for the first time begin to utilise the resources of the central state for its programmes. Since 1991 the post-revolutionary régime has been attempting to stabilise the rural economy, repair and strengthen the province's infrastructure, create a climate in which private investment can flourish, and begin the process of establishing an industrial base to meet the rising demands of off-farm labour.

This article largely contrasts conditions observed in Tigray during the first half of 1993 and those existing in December 1995 and 1996, when my primary objectives were to update my doctoral study of the history of the Tigrayan revolution for publication, and to gauge – with the help of subsequent interviews in Ethiopia – some of the changes that had taken place in the province during that three-year interval.

Political instability upsets particularly those observers whose own countries have had no experience of it for many generations. They often exaggerate its effect on social and economic life and expect the activities of society practically to cease, where governments topple. But, beyond this miscalculation of effects, observers sometimes conclude that governmental instability in the developing countries reflects some human inferiority of their peoples. Unfortunately this kind of belief also tends to take root among literate opinion-makers in the developing countries, who often are no better than outsiders in interpreting the complexities of their own situation. In this development there are dangers of damage to political and social morale which could be much more serious than temporary phases of internal economic disruption and foreign disinvestment. What in fact are the reasons for the fall of governments in post-colonial Africa?

In the years following Rwanda's civil war, the country has remembered those killed in the 1994 genocide with 100 days of official commemoration, known as Kwibuka. The temporary commemoration period is characterised by an explicit acknowledgement and public discussion of ethnic identity, which stands in puzzling contrast to the state's policy of ethnic non-recognition, enforced during the rest of the year in hopes of achieving national homogeneity (Ndi Umunyarwanda). Thus, one observes seemingly diametrically opposed practices of legally erasing identity groups because of their link to conflict and a unique, three month-long saturation of reminders in the form of public speeches, memorial programming and burials, and commemorative signage. A blurring of ‘Tutsi’ with ‘survivor’ and the deliberate passing down of survivor identity to Tutsi youth have created, over time, conditions for a ‘survivor nationalism’, which exacerbates social tensions and risks sustainable peace in the long term.

Corruption is a wide-spread phenomenon in the developing world. The term is usually reserved for ‘the practice of using the power of office for making private gain in breach of laws and regulations nominally in force’, or as more flamboyantly defined by M. McMullan, ‘a public official is corrupt if he accepts money…for doing something that he is under duty to do anyway, that he is under duty not to do, or to exercise a legitimate discretion for improper reasons’.1 Corruption is thus a description of activites emanating from and related to officialdom. Irregular activities among private individuals are a matter of private enterprise. They are not usually classified as corruption, but as straightforward theft, fraud, embezzlement, and the like.

The popularity of unity governments to settle both internal political divisions and outright conflict has grown in the last 20 years. However, more often than not unity governments fail to mitigate the political dynamics baked into the political economies and suffer from being insufficiently anchored in local society. The Government of National Unity (GNU) in Zanzibar, formed in 2010 as the culmination of the ‘maridhiano’ political reconciliation process and following numerous attempts at reconciliation led to initial successes, is a case in point. Zanzibar's GNU turned out to be ‘position’ rather than ‘power’ sharing, constitutionalised through a hybrid format of the politics of continuity and collusion. As such the position sharing system broke down when voters in the 2015 election sought neither continuity nor collusion, but transformational change of governance. This was in turn blocked by veto actors in favour of continuity, resulting in the collapse and discontinuation of the GNU in Zanzibar.