Since the early 1960s, Guinea, Mali, Mauritania and Senegal have cooperated over the Senegal river. Contrary to the norms of managing international rivers, the riparians have subjugated their sovereignty and incurred national debt to jointly develop the benefits from their shared river, despite intra-basin tensions and conflict. The Senegal experience highlights an alternative path to tackling the consequences of climate change, poor water management and increasing demand. In seeking to explain the intensity of international cooperation displayed in the basin, this article examines the characteristics of international rivers and the Senegal basin's history, and concludes that Pan-Africanism, francophonie and the political leaders' attitudes to regional cooperation shaped l'espace OMVS.

There has been an extended discussion in universities, governments, and international organisations throughout the post-war years of the potential and the means for increasing the flow of private long-term capital into the under-developed areas. This flow has been intended to ease the immediate constraints, principally those of capital and foreign exchange, upon development in these areas. Yet, in 1966, private foreign investment in the under-developed areas fell by 12 per cent, and by an absolute amount greater than the increase in official aid. This investment is, in any case, highly concentrated in a very few under-developed countries. Since 1964, income payments on earlier private investments have probably exceeded the total inflow of private capital which the developing areas have received.1 What prospects exist for gaining more private capital for the use of the under-developed world?

For more than a decade, the South African Government has tried to suggest that a rethinking of some of the basic tenets of that country's race policy—apartheid—was not only possible, but was actually underway. Starting with the March 1973 appointment of the Theron Commission to look into the position of the then 2·3 million Coloureds of South Africa (persons of mixed-blood), there have by April 1984 been no fewer than three government-appointed commissions of inquiry, two parliamentary select committees, and three President's Council reports—all dealing with such fundamental matters, in addition to the position of the Coloureds, as trade-union rights for blacks, the movement of Africans into urban areas, and—repeatedly—constitutional change.

Prior to the discovery of rich oil deposits, Libyan development prospects seemed markedly discouraging. In a primarily agricultural economy, cultivation was narrowly confined to two physically separated coastal belts constituting less than 3 per cent of the country's total land area. Under the combined influence of outmoded techniques and the hostility of an arid soil, agricultural productivity was low. Possibilities for developing other forms of economic activity were few and unpromising. Libya seemed destined for an existence of continued dependence upon foreign assistance.

The Institute of Development Studies organised an international conference on this topic at the University of Sussex, Brighton, from 12 to 16 September 1971. A background paper prepared by the convenors, Richard Jolly and Rita Cruise O'Brien, outlined the purpose as follows:

Urban unemployment in Africa is a theme on which much has been written in recent years but which is still ‘in fashion’ and of considerable importance to a broad range of scholars and policy makers…there is a great risk of dissipating one's efforts over that whole field. In planning this conference, we have tried therefore to be guided by three dominant principles: (a) to restrict the topics for discussion so as to focus on what seem to us important issues, on which further understanding could be generated by a bout of concentrated thought, analysis of data and discussion; (b) to invite a limited number of people engaged in current research or involved on the spot with investigation or policy-making; (c) to request authors of papers to start at what might be called the current conventional wisdom among specialists and to build their analysis from there… It will be assumed that persons attending the conference are generally in touch with recent literature on the subject.

The primary purpose of this article is to offer a critical, multifaceted evalution of the economic assistance extended by the European Economic Community (E.E.C.) to the African, Caribbean, and Pacific Group of states (A.C.P.s) under the terms of the Convention of Lomé. The first agreement was concluded in 1975, followed by the second in 1979, which runs until March 19852. Both, of course, were signed in the capital of Togo. The Lomé Convention is largely a product of the E.E.C. association policy, included as Articles 131–136 in the Treaty of Rome3, primarily at the insistence of France. This led to the Implementing Convention of 1958 which governed the aid and trade ties between the E.E.C. and the 17 colonial dependencies of member states. Specifically, the Implementing Convention instituted a free-trade area between the associated dependencies and the Community, and created the European Development Fund (E.D.F. or Fund) as a source of supplementary aid.

Colonial institutions are thought to be highly persistent, but measuring that persistence is difficult. Using a text analysis method that allows us to measure similarity between bodies of text, we examine the extent to which one formal institution – the penal code – has retained colonial language in seven West African countries. We find that the contemporary penal codes of most countries retain little colonial language. Additionally, we find that it is not meaningful to speak of institutional divergence across the unit of French West Africa, as there is wide variation in the legislative post-coloniality of individual countries. We present preliminary analyses explaining this variation and show that the amount of time that a colony spent under colonisation correlates with more persistent colonial institutions.

The existing literature has demonstrated that both ethnic and economic factors affect a vote decision in African democracies. I show that there is a meaningful interaction between the two cleavages in their influence on voting. In particular, I argue for political salience of agricultural subsectors that shape the electoral consequences of economic performance in the context where agricultural policy affects the livelihood of the majority population. Relying on the analyses of the 2007 and 2013 elections in Kenya, I illustrate how likely an individual, who is attached to a politically coherent ethnic group, votes for a candidate, the majority of whose ethnic members engage in the same industry as the voter himself regardless of the candidate's ethnicity. The results show that the sector factor reinforces the positive and negative effects of ethnic communities on incumbent support, and also explains voting by ethnic minorities whose motives for voting are not ethnic.

Tax compliance is a major concern as states try to increase state revenues in order to provide services for their populations. Remarkably, taxation has not figured centrally on the agenda among scholars working on the African voter. This article contributes through studying the social practice of taxes, by asking: how is taxation understood as a political practice? This is studied using focus groups across the private and public sector in Namibia, where the willingness to pay taxes and the relative tax burden is high. This micro-study of citizens’ experiences focuses on the perceived room for political practice in relation to taxes, sense of influence over taxes and whether taxes are thought about in citizenship terms. The article shows that taxes are relegated to a sphere of politics where deliberation and opportunities for accountability are missing, yet ideas of duty are central elements of tax compliance.

In 1964, in response to a growing number of strikes, the recently-formed independent Government of Kenya established a new method of resolving industrial conflict. The purpose of this short article is to describe the operation and effects of the Kenyan Industrial Court, and to draw attention to some features that have affected its efficient operation.

As the result of recent demographic research, we now have a reasonable basis for estimating rates of birth, death, and population growth in subSaharan Africa. These findings suggest that fertility is higher, and mortality lower, than had previously been assumed. This combination of high fertility and declining mortality implies a high rate of population growth. The compatibility of such a growth rate with existing plans for social and economic development is doubtful. This article examines the findings and issues, and seeks to determine the feasibility of population control in sub-Saharan Africa.

Any writing that purports to address African reality today must take as its starting point the international economy. Small states, which are both economically and politically weak, have very little room for manoeuvre within the global system, even at the best of times. The present international depression has circumscribed their freedom of action even further. Still, African states must do something. They must seek to address existing conditions. If the last two decades have made anything clear, it must be that the rest of the world is not going to rescue Africa from its plight. Only Africa itself can do that. However limited they may be, there are always choices to be made.

Observers have been intrigued by the relationship which has developed between the United Nations and Africa, a continent that now houses one-third of the membership of the world institution. Investigators have been seduced by subjects such as African frustration with the world organisation,1 African cohesion on Assembly roll-calls,2 African co-operation with Latin America in New York,3 or the impact of Mother Africa's offspring upon the United Nations.4 A few authors have sensed the magnitude of the impact which the world organisation has had upon the continent5, and several have detailed discrete instances of what has happened. What we have not seen is a general assessment of this impact with supporting data. My aim is to fill this gap in the literature, and to determine to what extent the existence of the United Nations has made a difference for Africa.

There is a very close relationship between education and the economic growth of modern nations.1 Most of us also accept the slogan that the real basis for social, economic, and political progress is the development of the skills, knowledge, and creative capacities of people. These, of course, are ‘self-evident truths’. But by themselves, they really offer little practical justification for tangible investment in education projects.

What is Africa doing wrong? Africans as well as others are increasingly asking this question. We are, in effect, invited to consider that there are, perhaps, negative as well as positive aspects to the nation-building process in post-colonial Africa. To the layman, indeed, the image of Africa has tended to accentuate the negative. The strife in the Congo during the early 1960s, the civil war in Nigeria, numerous military coups d'etat and political assassinations, bureaucratic corruption, disappointing progress in the economic field, and more recently famine and drought, all could lead to the conclusion that efforts at nationbuilding have been less than successful.

PERHAPS the most notable feature of the literature of economic development and planning over the past decade has been the discovery—or the belated rediscovery—that capital investment is not the sole source of economic growth; that the quality of the labour force is intimately connected with the (potential) rate of economic growth; that this quality is based on, and can be affected by, the education that members of the labour force received; and that consequently manpower and educational planning is a necessary part of over-all economic planning. Indeed so thoroughly has this new orthodoxy been accepted that some countries now have manpower and educational plans even though they may have no over-all development plan worth speaking of.