Over the past decade a pervasive concern of African political leaders, development planners, and social scientists has been to find ways and means of improving the lot of those in the rural areas: they comprise the bulk of the population of the tropical African states and continue in the 1970S to be socially and economically the most deprived social group.1 Despite the ‘highest priority’ assigned to rural development in the policy documents of many African governments, neither the allocation of public funds nor the implementation of development strategies have been energetically directed towards improving the living standards of the rural masses. Equally, the recognition of the need for a new development model by an increasing number of scholars has yet to produce adequate guidance for those African régimes which are seeking to transform the rural areas.

Santa Clara, on Angola's southern border with Namibia, is now a very dynamic urban hub, both economically and socially. It stands out in the remote province of Cunene, recording greater growth in the last five years than the provincial capital, Ondjiva. Its recent transformation into a thriving trading centre was mostly due to massive migration and an intensification of trade between Angola and Namibia at the beginning of this century, although the region's history in the last hundred years is a very different one. While local traders and entrepreneurs have developed their own strategies within this context, national and local administrative structures of the recently pacified country are trying to regulate trading and settlement. These forces in action produce both more sustainable and organised urban growth and at the same time influence social and economic development in the region. The main boom seems to be over, due to relatively successful regulation, which makes the region less attractive to business activity. Traders and entrepreneurs operating locally now have to find new strategies and opportunities. This article, based on empirical research and combined surveys, conducts an analysis of these dynamics and contributes to an understanding of regulation impacts, the way in which local traders cope with them, and the strategies they have developed.

The Democratic Republic of São Tomé e Príncipe is the smallest country in lusophone Africa. The inhabitants of these two islands in the Gulf of Guinea just north of the Equator number approximately 115,000,2 of whom over 95 per cent live on São Tomé which has a total area of 857 sq. km. The smaller island of Príncipe, with only 140 sq. km, is inhabited primarily by Cape Verdeans whose ancestors migrated there during the colonial era. The economy has always been dominated by cocoa plantations, known as roças, which despite changes in organisation have been the fundamental sociopolitical foundation of this creole African society.3 The continuity of this unit of production in the national economy, and its attendant impact on the structure of society, remains the central problem facing the country's leaders.

Despite strong empirical evidence of the influence of religious brokers on political mobilisation in Africa, we know very little about the individual-level relationship between religious association and political behaviour. Drawing upon an emerging comparative literature on the effect of social service provision on political participation, this article asks whether Malian consumers of Islamic schooling are as likely to seize new democratic opportunities for electoral participation as their peers who send their children to public schools. Using an original survey of 1,000 citizens, exit polling and interviews, this analysis demonstrates that parents who enrol their children in madrasas are less likely than other respondents to report voting. Conversely, parents who send their children to public schools are more likely to participate in electoral politics.

In the literature of the social sciences, increased political participation is often regarded as one of the symptoms of a ‘modernising’ polity,1 but there have been few attempts to examine the detailed implications in any African rural society. This short article attempts to show that the national leaders in Sierra Leone feared the implications of mass participation in politics. Basically conservative and opposed to the idea of upsetting the status quo, they were satisfied in so far as they retained the support of their people in the struggle for independence, and if thereafter they were able to command enough votes at election times. They were afraid of the changes which countrywide political ‘involvement’ might imply, since these would have threatened their own privileged position.

This article investigates how the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front's (EPRDF) attempt to build a developmental state influenced and shaped its relationships with the Ethiopian private sector. Through a case study of the chambers of commerce system in Ethiopia, the research reveals that the EPRDF's relationship to the private sector was characterised by the twin objectives of (1) curbing the private sector's power to prevent challenges to the EPRDF rule and (2) mobilising the private sector as part of the ruling coalition's developmental state programme. However, these twin objectives, were, in several cases, perceived as mutually exclusive by the EPRDF which, at times, led to a focus on control at the expense of developmental objectives. The ensuing lack of embeddedness posed problems for the operationalisation of the developmental state policies, reducing the EPRDF's ability to institutionalise collaborative relationships with the private sector.

This article attempts to situate the recent power struggle between President Daniel arap Moi and the ex-Minister for Constitutional Affairs, Charles Njonjo, in the context of class antagonisms in the Kenyan state. Over the past few years, Moi survived a number of crises partly as a result of the consistent support he has received from Njonjo. During the run-up to the general election of 26 September 1983, however, Moi was hoping that he could mobilise sufficient support amongst Kenya's political élite to be able to dispense with Njonjo, and thereby remove the only politician powerful enough to pose any threat to his leadership. SinceJomo Kenyatta's death in 1978, Njonjo had been regarded as the third member of a ruling triumvirate, with Moi and Vice-President Mwai Kibaki. In the following analysis, we examine the class context for conflict with the figure most closely associated with the conservative, capitalistic, and pro-British tendency in Kenyan nationalism.

The accusation that Britain neglected the three High Commission territories of Basutoland, Bechuanaland, and Swaziland, especially during the inter-war period, is a common one, both in standard works on the subject and in current controversies over their future. It has been alleged that an important reason for this neglect was the assumption made by successive British governments that their future status was uncertain, particularly in view of South Africa's repeated claim that the territories were geographically part of the Union, largely dependent on the latter's economy, and therefore should be transferred to South Africa's jurisdiction.1 In this article an attempt will be made to test the truth of these assertions in so far as there is evidence for a considered judgment.

Nigeria is a nation of tremendous socio-cultural diversities – in historical background, ethnicity, religion, belief, and especially language, which more often than not is the strongest factor giving identity, harmony, and continuity to ethnic groups, shaping the perceptions of their members. John Paden sees language as ‘a major mechanism of social communication between sub-systems …and… of expressing values, culture and ethnicity within a sub-system’.1 It is easy to see, in this light, how the most difficult problems of the entire political fabric of Nigeria are related to its great diversity of language.

After coming to power in 1985 via what might be described as a ‘palace coup’, General Ibrahim Babangida quickly earned himself the sobriquet of the ‘Maradona’ of Nigerian politics. In October 1989 the President surpassed his own record of unpredictability and unorthodoxy, and surprised even the closest watchers of his military régime by announcing that two parties would be established by fiat and provided with initial funding in the context of the agreed programme of transition to democratic civilian rule, laid out between 1986 and 1987, and scheduled to terminate with the inauguration of the Third Republic in 1992.

This article attempts to understand why ethnic-regional civil war has challenged the national unity of Côte d'Ivoire and not Ghana, two neighbouring countries with nearly identical ethnic, religious and regional divisions, by examining politics at the grassroots. Based on a carefully controlled comparison of two similar regions of Côte d'Ivoire and Ghana, the study investigates how participation in local voluntary associations reinforces the local experience of the state to shape the ongoing development of political values and affect the prospects for ethnic peace and democracy. The article finds that participation in ethnically heterogeneous voluntary associations does not necessarily promote democratic values and practice. In fact, in Côte d'Ivoire, participation in ethnically heterogeneous cocoa producer and mutual assistance organisations reinforces vertical patronage networks based on narrower ethnic identities. In contrast, in Ghana, participation in more ethnically homogeneous local church groups encourages the development of democratic values and practices at the local level that mediate the potential for ethnic conflict and support the consolidation of a democratic regime.

In contrast to its policies in the economic sphere, Zambia has one of Africa's most liberal approaches to press freedom. To convey the flavour of public debate during, or immediately after, the 19-month experiment with a market-determined exchange rate, 10 quotations are presented below:

Large scale mining will continue for 12 to 20 years, but small-working may go on for 50–60 years.

– Francis Kaunda, Chairman, Zambia Consolidated Copper Mines, June 1987.

Coffe after copper.

– Campaign slogan of the Coffee Growers Committee of the Commercial Farmers' Bureau.

Even real socialist countries have to find and use foreign exchange.

– Kebby Musokotwane, Prime Minister, replying to a question in the National Assembly, August 1986.

Zambia's cardinal mistake was to subsidise consumption for a long time, thereby delaying diversification.

– Kenneth Kaunda, President of Zambia, May 1986.

The economic reform programme has begun to succeed: devaluation has stimulated exports.

– Kenneth Kaunda, August 1936, Opening the 21st U.N.I.P. National Council Meeting.

It was not socialist principles which ruined the Zambian economy, but unfavourable economic terms which the North has imposed on the South…I have no power…we agreed to the IMF reform programme much against out better judgement.

– Kenneth Kaunda, August 1986, interviewed by Swedish, West German, and Cuban journalists.

One of the key features of today's global economy is an ‘offshore world’ of financial structures, institutions and techniques designed to provide secrecy, asset protection and tax exemption. While its worldwide impact is very significant, Africa is affected to an unusual extent by the strategies of tax avoidance/evasion, outward financial flows (both legal and illegal) and corruption enabled by the offshore world. This is corroborated by a number of quantitative studies of capital flight as well as by influential investigations such as the Pandora Papers, Panama Papers and Luanda Leaks. The offshore world's limited presence in the study of contemporary African politics, political economy and international relations is therefore striking. The purpose of this exploratory paper is to highlight this gap, provide a preliminary analysis, and suggest that the politics of African insertion in the global offshore economy merits more attention from scholars of African politics.

Narrative is an important means of structuring and giving meaning to experience. While the resulting framework is incomplete because human beings choose only particular aspects to remember, narratives often persist and influence behaviour, often to poor effect. Considering this, the example of the Luo of Kenya is a cautionary one, particularly given African neopatrimonial understandings of state and society. Luo lore establishes the group as once elite and now in abject poverty, victim of a powerful and jealous Kikuyu enemy. This article explores the nature of this elite status, and the means by which group members have responded to particular indicators at the expense of others. This re-examination invites questioning of Luos' conclusion that they were, as respondents say, ‘put out in the cold' from a position of prominence, a stance that has helped shape Kenya into ethnic rather than policy interests.

The state system during the so-called ‘cold war’ rested on a paradox. Peace and stability in the developed countries was accompanied by scores of ‘hot’ wars in the Third World, fuelled and at times created by the United States, the Soviet Union, and their allies. Each superpower had a high incentive to arm client states and rebel armies, in return for political loyalty and access to primary products. Nowhere did the logic of this system have such negative effects as in Africa. There, the result was the militarisation of states, the escalation of wars, and the strengthening of authoritarian forms of rule.

The idea of Black Consciousness heralded an era of alternative political awareness in the late 1960s. A self-empowering, vibrant, reconstructionist world-view emphasised the potential rôle of black initiatives and responsibility in articulating the power of the powerless. Between 1968–76, the Black Consciousness Movement (B.C.M.), as it became known, was one of the most important developments in South Africa, not only as the result of the self-confident protest and rebellion that it unleashed, but also ‘because of the questions it posed about the nature of oppositional politics in South Africa and its relation to the nature of South African society’.1

The literature on democratisation in diverse and divided societies suggests that procedural and institutional innovations can help create the conditions for democracy by adjudicating among groups with competing claims for recognition and inclusion. Some of the most critical assumptions about the relationship between ethnic identity and formal political institutions have been tested in Ethiopia since the early 1990s. Ethnic federalism is a unique and controversial attempt to account for the contested nature of ethnic identities in contemporary Ethiopian politics through a variety of mechanisms, including the use of a referendum to determine ethnic identity. In 2001 the Siltie people voted to separate from the Gurage ethnic group. With this political manoeuvre, the Siltie accessed greater levels of political power and greater resources, but also recognition under the constitutional arrangement as a distinct ethnic group. The Siltie case suggests that formal political institutions have a limited, though important, role in resolving contested citizenship claims. At the same time, it raises vital questions about the challenges of procedural solutions in the context of contested citizenship and democratic transition in sub-Saharan Africa.

As elsewhere in the world, Africa has experienced a rise in litigation against transnational corporations for adverse environmental and social impact. Cape plc and RTZ have been sued in British courts for environmental damage and for breach of employment rights in Africa. Companies which sold products to South Africa's former apartheid regime, such as Fujitsu and IBM, are now being sued in US courts. Shell and Chevron are being sued in US courts for human rights abuses in Nigeria. At the same time, foreign firms have been successfully sued in African courts for social and environmental damage. This article outlines the main relevant court cases and attempts to assess the significance of this litigation. The discussion of litigation in this article is divided into three parts: court cases filed in English, American and African (mainly Nigerian) courts. This is followed by an explanation of the triggers of legal change, a discussion of the impact of litigation and the conclusion.

Political violence in sub-Saharan Africa is down. The number of military dictatorships and one-party states is also down. Are the two trends related? Conventional democratic peace theory says the answer is yes, because the relationship between democracy and peace is linear and positive. A revisionist view, however, raises questions. The majority of Africa's new regimes are not full democracies but mixed regimes that some studies find to have the greatest propensity to violent behaviour. Using statistical analysis of a trichotomous classification of African regimes from 1960 to 2008, this article suggests that neither argument fits the facts. Autocracies and partial democracies in this region appear to have similar exposure to conflict, with both types of systems suffering more conflict than full democracies. Variables other than regime type appear to be the driving forces behind these trends.

This paper assesses the role of the non-farm sector in rural development in Lesotho. Evidence from studies in developing countries indicates that agriculture was formerly used as the main source of livelihood for many people in poor countries. However, due to the decline in agricultural productivity (which results in poverty and food insecurity) caused by unfavourable agro-climatic conditions, many people are turning to non-farm activities as a means of making a living. Therefore, non-farm incomes are used to provide the means of sustenance for many people. However, little attention has hitherto been paid to improving the rural non-farm sector as an alternative or complementary rural development strategy in Lesotho. This research paper uses quantitative research methods to analyse the available data. The main research findings suggest that many people make a living out of non-farm incomes. As a result, this paper proposes that the rural non-farm sector should be given more priority by the government in rural development in Lesotho.