This article explores the phenomenon of in-kind remittances of maize and its implications for rural household livelihoods and food consumption. Interviews with a sample of 391 households in eight villages in Malawi are used to substantiate the discussion. Explanations for in-kind remittances are sought in the micro-level interaction between the formal market realm, informalised exchange systems and the household. Remittances are not connected to lower commercialisation levels, suggesting that the explanation for remittances should be sought in the production and consumption patterns of the households. Remittances function as an important redistributive mechanism for food across space. The role of smallholder food production for urban livelihoods as well as the subsistence responsibilities of rural households are underestimated if agrarian household level linkages from rural to urban areas are not recognised in national production and consumption surveys and among policy makers.

This essay analyses the construction of the anti-corruption war under the civilian government in Nigeria between 1999 and 2008. We consolidate existing insights in the literature in three key ways. First, we show that in democratising contexts like Nigeria, the gravest threats to anti-corruption campaigns often emanate from a combination of intra-elite rancour and political intrigue. Second, we provide an explanation of what happens when, literally, corruption fights back. Finally, we suggest that where anti-corruption efforts are not backed by other radical institutional reforms, they fall prey to the overall endemic (systemic) crisis, a part of which, ab initio, necessitated the anti-corruption war.

Three critical trends in the evolving practice of regional peacekeeping in sub-Saharan Africa have undermined the usefulness of the common conceptual dichotomy between regional peacekeeping and UN/global peacekeeping. First, sub-Saharan African states have distanced themselves from long-term autonomous regional peacekeeping, and currently favour explicitly interim missions that are a prelude rather than an alternative to UN peacekeeping. Second, the analytically clear line between regional peacekeeping and the separate sub-Saharan African tradition of solidarity deployments (i.e. military support of embattled governments) has in practice become blurred, and the regional vs global peacekeeping dichotomy not only fails to acknowledge this trend but helps to obscure it. Finally, sub-Saharan African states are increasingly addressing regional conflicts by participating in UN operations deployed in the region. UN peacekeeping has thus emerged as a preferred form of regional peacekeeping in sub-Saharan Africa.

What determines people's willingness to consider punishment for human rights abusers? This article investigates this question in the context of Zimbabwe in the aftermath of the country's violent presidential election campaign of June 2008. Based on a national probability sample survey, the paper shows that exposure to violence was reportedly widespread and that attitudes to transitional justice are mixed. In considering how to handle abuses, Zimbabweans weigh the pros and cons carefully and, recognising that peace and justice are difficult to obtain simultaneously, generally prefer the former. The article analyses the various factors that together predict a citizen's proclivity to claim transitional justice in its most demanding retributive form. Reflecting power relations, the results indicate that political partisanship is almost as important as individuals’ personal experience of actual and threatened acts of violence.

Against the background of conflict in the Great Lakes Region, the UK and France promised, at their 1998 Saint-Malo summit, to set aside rivalries and cooperate on Africa. In subsequent Anglo-French gatherings, they singled out the DRC and pledged to work together there to promote peace and tackle poverty. This article asks whether this coordination took place and whether it involved a ‘deconflictualisation’ of approaches, ‘coincidental’ cooperation, or ‘sustained and reciprocal’ collaboration. It looks for evidence of institutionalisation of UK-French ties and policy cooperation in the fields of peacebuilding and poverty reduction. It then identifies the pressures for, and barriers to, collaboration, focusing particularly on the role of interests, foreign policy norms, institutional factors and resource constraints. It concludes by setting out the wider implications of UK-French cooperation and the limited prospects of closer future collaboration.

This article examines recent Chinese efforts to construct a series of official economic cooperation zones in Africa. These zones are a central platform in China's announced strategy of engagement in Africa as ‘mutual benefit’. We analyse the background, motives and implementation of the zones, and argue that they form a unique, experimental model of development cooperation in Africa: market-based decisions and investment by Chinese companies are combined with support and subsidies from an Asian ‘developmental state’. Though this cooperation provides a promising new approach to sustainable industrialisation, we also identify serious political, economic and social challenges. Inadequate local learning and local participation could affect the ability of the zones to catalyse African industrialisation. The synergy between Chinese enterprises, the Chinese government and African governments has been evolving through practice. A case study of Egypt provides insight into this learning process.

This paper challenges the prevailing focus on ethnic division and conflict in Southern Sudan in recent years, demonstrating that even within ethnically divisive debates over land, there are shared, transethnic levels of moral concern. These concerns centre on the commodification and monetisation of rural and kinship resources, including human life itself, epitomised in ideas of land being bought with blood, or blood being turned into money by the recent wartime economy. It argues that the enduring popular ambivalence towards money derives not only from its commonly observed individualising properties, but also from the historical association of money with government. Southern Sudanese perceive historical continuity in government consumption and corruption, and express concern at the expansion of its alternative value system into rural economies during and since the war. Whilst seeking to access money and government, they nevertheless continue to employ a discursive but powerful dichotomy between the moral worlds of state and kinship.

It is commonly assumed that the advent of democracy tends to bring about social welfare improvements. Few studies, however, have examined empirically the impact of third-wave democratisation processes on social policies in developing countries, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa. Through a diachronic comparison, this paper examines the effects of Ghana's democratisation process on the evolution of its health policy. It shows that the emergence of democratic competition played an important role in the recent adoption of a crucial health reform. A policy feedback effect on politics and a process of international policy diffusion were additional but secondary factors.

This article explores men in arms’ conceptions of armed violence in a country which has been prone to a violent cycle of rebellion and repression. Based on ethnographic research in Chad, it analyses combatants’ life trajectories in an unstable political environment and a militarised economy. It moves beyond rebellion towards an analysis of the most mundane patterns of the activities conducted by men in arms, to understand what is at stake beyond times and spaces of war. It argues that armed violence is an ordinary way of expressing contestation, as well as a practical occupation or métier, a French word that indicates a non-institutionalised profession.

The unfolding of the Third Wave of democracy cast a mounting weight on election observation in transition countries, partly due to the inability of regimes in power to conduct free and fair elections. However, observation is not always neutral. Sometimes observers distance themselves from the data they collect, leading to controversial certification of elections. In this case stakeholders may view them as partial, hence downsizing their credibility and trust. Yet observers' reports have rarely been reviewed. This article evaluates three reports by the leading election observer in Tanzania, the Tanzania Election Monitoring Committee (TEMCO) for the 1995, 2000 and 2005 general elections. It notes that despite the prevalence of the same factors that TEMCO considered as irregularities in the 1995 and 2000 general elections when it certified those elections as ‘free but not fair’, it issued a ‘clean, free and fair’ verdict on the 2005 general elections. This conclusion, at variance from the data, reveals problems in assuring observer neutrality.

At their 1998 Saint-Malo summit, the UK and French governments promised to set aside a century of rivalry and cooperate more closely on Africa. They also signalled their intention to develop a continent-wide focus on Africa, which would include building up the capacity of regional organisations. They were helped in this latter goal by the winding up of the OAU and its replacement by the AU in 2002. This article therefore examines the extent and nature of Anglo-French cooperation vis-à-vis the AU. It sets out briefly the history of UK and French neglect of the OAU, reviews the key developments that pushed for a more coordinated stance on the AU, and then – drawing on extensive interviews in London, Paris, Brussels, Addis Ababa and Dakar – evaluates the extent of Anglo-French cooperation. It concludes by noting the uneven nature of Anglo-French cooperation vis-à-vis the AU and assesses the reasons for this.

Over the last two decades, developing countries have lowered trade barriers considerably. As a result, they have experienced a surge in food commodity imports. In Ghana, Senegal and Cameroon, a flood of frozen poultry imports in the late 1990s and early 2000s threatened domestic poultry producers. In response, they organised to demand protectionist measures. This article examines why the Cameroonian and Senegalese governments responded to these demands while the Ghanaian government did not. Employing data from interviews in Senegal, newspaper coverage in all three countries, and documentation from non-governmental organisations, it argues that Cameroonian, and to a lesser extent Senegalese, producers were able to influence government policy because they faced few barriers to collective action and built alliances with consumers before lobbying government. The findings suggest that a public choice, interest group-focused approach is still useful for explaining policy outcomes in West Africa.

Droughts across Africa have led to a shift in livestock ownership from impoverished pastoralists to absentee owners who contract hired herders to manage their animals. The assumption has been that these contracts are exploitative and negatively affect herd and rangeland management. We conducted an ethnographic study of a mobile pastoral system in the Far North Region of Cameroon to examine whether herding contracts provide sustainable livelihoods and allow herders to rebuild their herds. We found considerable variation in contracts and livelihoods, and argue that the social organisation of herding contracts may explain why they have no negative impact on herd and rangeland management.

Private sector development (PSD) has emerged as a core component of donor strategies aimed at making free markets work for ‘the poor’ through assistance to business sector capacity in low-income states. PSD initiatives cannot be understood, however, as technical exercises aimed solely at promoting development through business competitiveness. Instead they serve as normative concessions through which developmentally questionable market-opening has been rationalised by donors in pursuit of lucrative commercial opportunities in emerging economies. Examining the European Union's (EU) PSD framework in bilateral relations with the African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) states, the article examines the utilisation of PSD discourse in the ‘development branding’ of Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs). PSD discourse is seen to facilitate a ‘double-veiling’ of asymmetric ACP–EU trade ties via legitimising images of equitable market-opening and the trickle-down of business wealth to ‘the poor’. Nevertheless, the reality of reciprocal trade structures combined with Europe's anaemic PSD resources bears little resemblance to the strategic illusions of PSD. In particular, the interventions of Europe's Centre for the Development of Enterprise (CDE) in cotton and textiles sectors in East Africa are seen to have dubious outcomes for ‘development’ in ACP former colonies.

Comparing pre- and post-genocide Rwanda, this article argues that clear continuities exist between the regimes of Juvénal Habyarimana and Paul Kagame. Both have projected a remarkably similar image of ‘benevolent leadership’. Presenting themselves as harbingers of an ‘improved’ or ‘new’ Rwanda, both leaderships have claimed to be best able and willing to guide Rwanda along the right path to peace, security, ethnic unity and development. ‘Benevolent leadership’ in both periods has also served as a tool to try and shape regime relationships with international and domestic audiences. Internationally, each government has worked to promote Rwanda and its authorities as a good development partner. Domestically, these projections have served to establish norms of order and obedience. We argue that projections of ‘benevolent leadership’ have been a tool designed to win over the international community and discipline the Rwandan population.

People in sub-Saharan Africa rely on a variety of informal mechanisms to gain access to land for urban farming. However, the literature on land tenure focuses on gaining access to land for housing, whereas farming, which is highly visible in the urban landscape of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, requires farmers to negotiate their access in ways distinct from housing. A close examination of four open-space farms in Dar es Salaam reveals that there are different methods of gaining access to land for farming as opposed to housing. Additionally, theorising this access reveals that the landowners who allow farmers on their land for food production also derive benefits. This can provide a framework for current efforts to integrate urban agriculture into the city zoning plans.

This paper analyses the declining importance of political parties in the Central African Republic (CAR). The country can be considered an extreme example of the lack of viability of a state in general, and democracy in particular. However, the quality of elections has exceeded the average in the sub-region over a substantial time-span. Hopes for a democratic future only faded in recent years. The paper hypothesises that both political parties and rebel movements are failing to adequately represent (ethnoregional) interests, but that parties are suffering more in the course of the enduring war and the peace process. Patterns of elite behaviour are presented as the main explanation for the resulting crisis of representation, with international actors' preference for inclusionary power-sharing deals seen as the main aggravating factor.

Angola's oil-fuelled reconstruction since the end of the civil war in 2002 is a world away from the mainstream liberal peacebuilding approach that Western donors have promoted and run since the end of cold war. The Angolan case is a pivotal example of what can be termed ‘illiberal peacebuilding’, a process of post-war reconstruction managed by local elites in defiance of liberal peace precepts on civil liberties, the rule of law, the expansion of economic freedoms and poverty alleviation, with a view to constructing a hegemonic order and an elite stranglehold over the political economy. Making sense of the Angolan case is a starting point for a broader comparative look at other cases of illiberal peacebuilding such as Rwanda, Lebanon and Sri Lanka.

Many sub-Saharan African societies have undergone significant political shifts in the last two decades. Changes in political representation and leadership have generated new forms of political mediation and communication. This article interrogates one of the most visible transformations in Kinshasa's political society: television news reports about urban misery, often resulting from a malfunctioning state, in which Kinshasa's inhabitants testify about their difficulties and press fellow citizens, as well as local and national leaders, to bring about change. Exposing suffering is a shame mobilisation strategy, and so becomes a political act. Through the discursive and visual aesthetics of the proximity account, citizens and political leaders are inserted into one political community. The main argument of this article is that the proximity account illustrates a new kind of political communication. In this article I analyse the socio-political contexts in which the proximity report emerged and became popular. I trace the materialisation of this new kind of interaction between political leaders and citizens to the transformation of the late Zaïrian ‘state’, to vernacular understandings of ‘democracy’, and to the influence of NGO activities and Pentecostal Christianity.

Farmers and families in western Kenya have grown increasingly dependent on the pig industry as a primary resource for savings and income. The post-election crisis in 2008 had a serious impact on people living in western Kenya because the region was the stronghold of the opposition Orange Democratic Movement (ODM). The pig industry was affected in a number of ways, including an increase in the price of food and farm inputs, sale of pigs to provide food and other essentials for the family, or because of forced migration, leading to a drastic decrease in numbers of pigs. This will have a negative effect on the long-term viability of the pig industry due to decreased availability of growing, breeding and market weight animals.