This conference, financed by the Rockefeller Foundation, was attended by the research directors of the following centres: Institut de recherches économiques et sociales (I.R.E.S.), Lovanium University, Congo; Nigerian Institute of Social and Economic Research (N.I.S.E.R.), University of Ibadan; U.N. African Institute for Economic Development and Planning (I.D.E.P.), Dakar, Senegal; Economic Development Institute (E.D.I.), University of Nigeria, Nsukka; Institut de rcience économique appliquée (I.S.E.A.), Dakar; Department of Economics, University of Khartoum, Sudan; proposed Bureau of Economic Research, the University College, Dar es Salaam, Tanzania; East African Institute of Social Research (E.A.I.S.R.), Makerere University College, Uganda; and the Rhodes-Livingstone Institute, Lusaka, Zambia. In addition, there were the director of the Economic Development Division of the U.N. Economic Commission for Africa (E.C.A.), Addis Ababa; the head of the Training Division of the O.E.C.D. Development Centre, Paris; a member of the Institute of Economic Research of the National University of Chile, Santiago; and two representatives of the Rockefeller Foundation, New York.

Like many other Sub-Saharan African countries, Ghana implemented an orthodox Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP), to resuscitate its ailing economy, in the early 1980s. Subsequently, there has been a dramatic expansion in the production and export of processed wood. Based on an empirical study of Ghana's formal wood processing industry, this paper discusses the various determinants that have combined to boost the export-oriented output in the industry, particularly in the first decade of the programme, and assesses the extent to which the SAP-based policy actions account for the change. The study concludes that adjustment played a major role in the change, and suggests that even though SAP supporters and critics disagree on the nature, dynamics and effects of the programme, government measures under the programme are an indicator of what real commitment on the part of African governments can do to engender production expansion in comparable African manufacturing industries.

When contemplating a return to their country of origin, exiled political opposition groups in Africa must consider the viability of their political reintegration. These considerations, in turn, must be carefully balanced against the benefits derived from life in exile. Using the exiled Mauritanian political opposition group Les Forces de Libération Africaine de Mauritanie (FLAM) as a case study, this essay attempts to identify the benefits of exile, which, in the case of FLAM, outweigh the uncertain benefits of domestic political reintegration. FLAM's presence abroad has facilitated the organisation's membership recruitment and retention and temporarily provided a base for military incursions. More importantly, FLAM's exile status has enhanced its international standing, liberated it from domestic constraints and provided it greater access to Western media and policy-makers.

Over the last several decades, officials in both the public and private sectors have applied economic, military, cultural, academic and diplomatic tools to promote the spread of democratic pluralism in African and elsewhere. With the fall of Africa's most resilient tyrant, Mobutu Sese Seko, there is hope that even one of Africa's most troubled systems may be transformed into a state that reflects the will of the people and promotes the common good. Sober observers, however, remain pessimistic. Laurent Kabila's spotted record on human rights, his stubborn intolerance of political opposition, the challenging global economic and political environments, and the long history of bad government in Mobutu's Zaïre are obvious reasons for concern. Furthermore, the example of most other African states is not encouraging. With the exception of countries such as South Africa and Botswana, even the most tenuous democratic progress in Africa is often slowed, blocked or reversed.

Generally, blame for this state of affairs has been levelled against the African political elite, the burden of colonialism, or international political and economic pressures. Specifically, for the Congo, Mobutu's kleptocracy, Belgium's paternalism, America's backing of a friendly dictator and the World Bank's support for ill-advised ‘development’ schemes all have been criticised. While such reproaches may be well deserved, this article argues that it is important to ask if the persistent failure of democracy in the Congo as well as in other African states is also related to African political culture.

In 2005, Cabo Verde became the second African country to receive the new foreign aid programme of the USA, the Millennium Challenge Account (MCA). It was among the few recipients of a second grant. Foreign aid has always been a controversial and hotly contested issue, and the MCA is no exception. This paper, based partly on personal experience with the programme, provides a critical examination of the nature, process and implementation of the MCA grants in Cabo Verde. The country had campaigned aggressively for the grants. The MCA not only financed important public investments, it was debt-free and without conditionalities. However, even while it allowed more leeway over its use and implementation compared with other aid programmes, it engendered its own challenges.

In 2004, a long-awaited piece of post-apartheid legislation, the Communal Land Rights Act – to reform the land tenure of those living in the former ‘homelands’ of South Africa – was passed into law unanimously by parliament. This unanimity, however, conceals the extent to which the process towards this moment was deeply contested. Exploring the efforts by land sector NGOs to secure legitimacy in their engagements with this process reveals the extent to which wider power relations and contestations have determined their positioning. Those within the non-governmental land sector who opposed the legislation pitted themselves against African National Congress politicians and high-profile traditional leaders. However, the adoption of a Mamdani-inspired discourse to contest such politics and oppose the proposed legislation contributed to reinscribing narrow readings of knowledge considered to be legitimate. Their engagements were also shaped by changes in the NGO sector. Reduced funding for land sector NGOs and an increasingly ambivalent relationship between them and government contributed to contestations between NGOs and among people working within them. Their strategic engagements in such wider and internal politics influenced both the frames within which such policy change could be debated and the ways in which individuals working for NGOs consequently positioned themselves in relation to their constituents.

Most of the world's developing nations are primarily rural and agricultural. Therefore, governments have tended to place a policy emphasis on development in those sectors, usually as a result of employing the relatively straightforward argument that they should focus on the needs of the largest proportion of the inhabitants. The movement of population is generally seen in the light of rural–urban migration, although there is some evidence and opinion that this is not per se as massive as usually estimated. In addition, Rakesh Mohan has developed an economic model that suggests a close linkage between the success of rural development policies and an expansion in urbanisation, based on the assumption that the former increase both demand for and awareness of urban goods and services, resulting in a greater propensity for people to move to those places where these resources are most readily availabe. Thus, the more it has to turn its attention to the urban consequences.

The governments of Africa, in planning for economic and social development, have become increasingly aware that they can no longer afford to treat population as an exogenous variable. They have begun to study the component variables of population change, and their interrelationships, and have paid special attention to the critical role of fertility.

The World Federation of Trade Unions (W.F.T.U.) was one of the most hopeful ventures of all the Communist front organisations. Unlike some of the other fronts the Russians did not create it. They captured the W.F.T.U. after it was established, and had a good start. Once captured, however, the W.F.T.U. represented merely an extension of the pattern of the earlier Red International which had been created by the Comintern following World War I as a vehicle to reach the working masses of the world and rally them to Moscow. But like its predecessor—dissolved in 1937—the W.F.T.U. has also failed to make significant inroads among the workers in western countries and win control over them. While it has affiliates in the west, the French Confédération Générale du Travail (C.G.T.) and the Italian Confederazione Generale Italiana del Lavoro (C.G.I.L.) being the most outstanding examples, the W.F.T.U. does not at all dominate these movements. Rather, control for the most part is exercised through the local Communist parties, some of which, while still very much an integral part of an international apparatus, have won some measure of autonomy from Moscow.1

In November 1963 the inhabitants of the Transkeian Territories, the largest block of Bantu reserve in the Republic of South Africa, went to the polls to elect representatives for a Legislative Assembly, upon whom the responsibility for the government of this, the first so-called ‘Bantustan’ to achieve a limited form of self-government, is to be laid. The election was the culminating point in a series of changes in the administrative structure of the area which have been characterised by an emphasis on the institution of chieftainship as the basis of local government. After approximately 60 years of rule through magistrates (later supplemented by a system of district councils) the Bantu Authorities Act of 1955 was introduced, giving greatly enhanced powers to the Chiefs, who now became the heads of the tribally-structured Bantu Authorities.

Le Hasard et l':histoire: entretiens avec Belaïd Abdesselam, Vols. I and II, by Mahfoud Bennoune and Ali El-Kenz Réghaïa, ENAG/Éditions, 1990. Pp. 471 & 409. Dinars 120 & 115 paperback.

Stratégies de développement pour l'Algérie: défis et enjeux by Abdelhamid Brahimi Paris, Éditions économica, 1991. Pp. 425. Also published by Éditions Dahlab, 1991, as the 2nd. edn. of L'Economie algerienne.

Inflation, dévaluation, marginalisation by Mourad Benachenhou Algiers, Dar Ech'rifa, 1993. Pp. 155.

Algérie: la libération inachevée by Ghazi Hidouci Paris, La Découverte, 1995. Pp. 303. FF155 paperback.

Le Mal algérien: économie politique d'une transition inachevée by Smail Goumeziane Paris, Fayard, 1994. Pp. 307. FF130 paperback.

Two years after the centenary of Heinrich Barth's death on 25 November 1865, a big volume dedicated to him was published in Germany. Seven West German scholars, two East Germans, one Austrian, three British, and two French contributed to this book:— Heinrich Barth, ein Forscher in Afrika. Leben-Werk-Leistung Eine Sammlung von Beiträgen …, edited by Heinrich Schiffers (Wiesbaden, Steiner Verlag, 1967, pp. 540). A British centenary edition of Heinrich Barth's Travels and Discoveries in North and Central Africa (London, Cass, 3 vols, 1965) actually appeared in the centenary year.

It appears that in order to be a respectable Africanist, by which I mean simply a scholar whose interest, regardless of discipline, is focused on Africa, one must be a Marxist. Let me quickly add that I am, at least in the abstract, not opposed to this, particularly since I like to consider myself in some way part of that intellectual and political tradition. But the growth of the Marxism industry has not been without, to use the jargon, its contradictions.

The problem of food insecurity in less-developed countries (L.D.C.s) continues to demand the attention of the international community. Despite the progress that has been made in increasing the world's production of cereals and other major foodstuffs, many L.D.C.s continue to face immense difficulties in ensuring an adequate level of food supplies on a regular year-to-year basis. The current African food crisis has once again demonstrated the vulnerability of low-income economies to a sudden shortfall in supplies, and has highlighted the need for additional measures to strengthen food security in the Third World.

Few Decisions exert a greater impact upon the polity and the pattern of public policy-making than those defining the nature of the political system itself. Transitions from military to civilian rule constitute a dramatic type of institutional change which is encountered with increasing frequency in the Third World. One type of ‘planned withdrawal’ initially involes little alteration in the distribution of power. This approach, which has been employed in Zaïre and Ethiopia, typically yields new nomenclature – for example, the military ruler assumes the title of civilian head of state – and a political structure dominated by a single individual and/or party, closely tied to the same ideology embraced by the military predecessors.

The omnipresence of ethnic factors as a determinant in Nigerian politics during the first republic appears almost as a truism for Africansts today. The fragmentation of Nigeria into two units with the secession of Biafra on 30 May 1967 constitutes the most tragic and vivid manifestation of the consequences of ethnic confrontation. But in addition to these well-known ethnic-bloc politics at the macropolitical— Federal—level, competition based on ethnic groups also characterised the regional and local political systems. After all, the separate identities of such ethnic groups as the Ibo, the Yoruba, and the Hausa—Fulani only became relevant and generally accepted subsequent to the Introduction of a representative political system after World War II.

Africa has had more than its share of catastrophes. While the causes of its contemporary dilemmas are debated at many fora, its people continue to suffer at an ever-accelerating rate. To make matters worse, the dismal decline in so many aspects of African life over the past decade has led to numbness and cynicism within and without the continent, causing people to lump separable problems and their solutions into the all-embracing notion of ‘disaster’.

Almost every student of the ideologies of the developing nations is familiar with the thesis regarding African socialism. It is held that village society was traditionally communal, and that consequently the introduction of socialist régimes in the newly established African states might not be expected to pose major difficulties. For many years it has become almost commonplace to comment on this hypothesis in a casual manner, to argue for and against it on the basis of one's own normative commitments, or simply to describe it as a political fact. Rarely has any systematic attempt been made to examine it analytically.