The majority opinion of those who have contributed to the literature on conversion in sub-Saharan Africa suggests that Islam has been more ‘successful’ than Christianity in attracting the faithful. The standard inventory of explanations for this state of affairs include the following: first, it has been commonly noted, Islam has proved to be more compatible than Christianity with indigenous customs, cosmology, and morality. A second point that has been argued with some consistency (though evidencing not a small measure of ethno-centric bias) is that ‘it is easier for the African to govern himself by the few rules set forth by Mohammedanism…than…by the all-embracing stringent laws of Christianity’. A third, more encompassing stance, implies that conversion to Islam can be accounted for sociologically, ‘while the acceptance of Christianity involves the recognition of divine truth’, in which case a similar line of analysis is uncalled for. Thus, according to William Arens, a thorough review of the voluminous literature indicates that there is an ‘ideological flavour’ in much of what is accepted as objective and authoritative material on this topic, and that a more balanced understanding of the facts could be realised if greater attention was given to the study of the social context of evangelical Christianity in Black Africa.

What is the impact of access to political party finance – money that parties use to fund their campaign activities – on politics in Africa? While multiparty elections have become more regular in the developing world, many opposition parties are still failing to win elections. This paper argues that poor access to political finance weakens democratic consolidation and negatively impacts the participation of less-resourced candidates who are unable to self-fund. As a result, opposition parties are forced to rely on weak promises of aid from international donors and unreliable state funding. This in-depth analysis of political finance, based on extensive interviews with politicians and government officials in Zimbabwe, political documents, news reports and a review of court cases, reveals that uneven financing has weakened opposition parties and serves as an extra advantage for incumbents.

The last few years have been notable in Africa for the many attempts which have been made to bring about economic integration, on the one hand through political regroupings, on the other by various kinds of economic associations between fully sovereign states. At present, the number of ‘political’ integrations is small. One of the most important recent examples, the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland, was broken up in 1963 after a life of ten years. The Federations in former French West and Equatorial Africa did not survive the independence of their constituent territories. In fact, about the only examples of this kind of integration at present are Cameroun, Somalia, and EthiopiaEritrea.

A Year has elapsed since the granting of independence to Basutoland and Bechuanaland and, on an academic level at least, there appears to be no slackening of interest in the problems besetting the new states of Lesotho and Botswana and the remaining territory of Swaziland which is due to receive independence in 1968. Each of the books considered here contributes in varying degree to our understanding of their prospects in an environment in which internal stresses combine with external dependence upon a powerful neighbour to limit the choices of their governments in many crucial areas of policy.

In May 1989 the National Commission for the Study of National Unity appointed by President Pierre Buyoya issued its eagerly awaited report, ostensibly designed to find a lasting solution to the bloody confrontations that have repeatedly pitted Hutu against Tutsi. For the first time in the history of independent Burundi an official statement has been made public which explicitly recognises the centrality of the Hutu-Tutsi problem, and sets forth specific solutions to resolve it. As such this is a document of historic significance, and the sum of its recommendations must be seen as an important breakthrough towards national reconciliation.

The erudition of the late W. E. B. DuBois was never more prophetic than in 1903 when he issued his famous dictum that ‘The problem of the 20th century is the problem of the color-line – the relation of the darker to the lighter race of men in Asia and Africa, in America and the islands of the sea.’ The United States of America, for its remarkable technological achievement and democratic example, despite decades of difficulty in race relations; and the Republic of South Africa, for its unique violation of human rights: each represents in its own special way both the best and the worst in human history, and are fitting testaments to DuBois's clairvoyance.

Although it has been estimated that women produce more than 60 per cent of the food crops in many African countries, less than one in five has found employment in wage-earning occupations as development has occurred. Why has this happened? Our hypothesis is that there are two primary constraints on their improved economic status in addition to tradition and culture, namely: lack of access to education and to capital. Access to land and to information may be important handicaps in some areas, but are assumed to be of less general significance.

Since the original draft of this article was completed during the early summer of 1969, the attempt at radical co-operative agricultural reform initiated in Tunisia in January 1969 has been abandoned, and its main promoter, the former Minister of Planning and of the National Economy, Ahmed Ben Salah, has been deprived of all political influence, excluded from the party, and finally arrested in March 1970.

This paper explores tensions over scale and viability in irrigated agricultural development in Tanzania. A revival of ambition to transform African agriculture has reawakened debate over what type of agriculture can best deliver increased production and poverty reduction for rural populations. This paper examines these debates through the lens of an ethnographic study of an irrigated rice farm in Tanzania. With a chequered history of state and donor intervention management, Dakawa, Rice Farm in Mvomero District is now collectively farmed by a cooperative society of ‘small farmers’. It is widely hailed as a success, both of irrigation production, and of ‘small farmers’ in delivering this. However, such narratives of smallness and success obscure a more complex reality in which smallness of scale may be more of a discursive tool than a reflection of empirical reality. Although notions of ‘viability’ and ‘success’ in such development interventions are themselves also contested and depend on perspective, there is evidence that there are fundamental problems of both short- and long-term viability.

Continuous pressure against the South African Government has led to what previously seemed unthinkable: the reform of apartheid. Strikes from 1973 onwards, the Soweto revolt in 1976, the increasing resistance from school and consumer boycotts, the strengthening black trade-union movement and mass political organisations, and the unceasing campaign by the African National Congress, have led the State President, P. W. Botha, to declare in early 1986 that apartheid in its present form cannot be maintained, despite strong reactions from sections of Afrikaner interests. Many of the structures thought essential to racial segregation are to go: the pass laws controlling the movement of African men and women, the fiction that the ‘Bantustans’ are ’independent’ or ‘national’ states, and that urban blacks are citizens of other countries. There is even the promise of political representation for Africans. These measures appear to mark the end of Botha's attempt to create a divided black working class — some with residence rights in white-only areas, and others, notably unskilled migrants, without. The specific shape of the more racially-integrated South Africa which Botha promises remains unclear. It is not surprising in a recession that the President appears to have recognised the inappropriateness and disproportionate cost which maintaining structures of black recruitment to white employers has on the state's exchequer — not including the cost of policing influx control.

Economic planning is now a commonly acclaimed ideal in the underdeveloped countries, particularly in Africa. Both the theory and the practice were transmitted by the developed countries. Certainly, the advanced economies have very different conceptions of planning, depending on whether they are centrally planned or market-oriented. The former embrace economic planning by ideological predilection; the latter are moving in the direction of ‘indicative’ planning, or at least state intervention on an extended scale. This course was induced by the goad of the crisis-ridden years of the great depression, the exigencies of World War II, the pressures of post-war reconstruction, and the stupendous technological and organisational revolution of our times. In the metropolitan countries—France, Belgium, and the United Kingdom—the idea and practice of economic planning was propagated to the colonies during and after the war.

While conducting research on the occupational and educational aspirations and expectations of secondary-school students in Kenya during 1972, I obtained quantitative and qualitative data from a sample of 699 African students indicating that the problem of crime among unemployed school leavers is likely to substantially worsen in the coming years. The purpose of this article is to present that data within the context of a discussion of secondary education, unemployment, and crime in Kenya.

Why would rural Malian women express interest in political participation? Mali implemented a gender quota during the 2016 local elections. In a rural village where I conducted immersive research, the majority of women I interviewed following the 2016 poll expressed interest in running for local office in the future. Scholars of women's political participation theorise that quotas bring women to elected office and increase women's political participation. These theoretical perspectives cannot fully explain why women in rural Mali would express enthusiastic interest in political participation. These women participate extensively in savings and credit associations. Drawing on data generated through engagement with women in their daily lives, I explore how economic advancement can shape women's participatory aspirations. Examining longer-term changes in the local political economy of this rural village provides a deeper understanding of why women responded positively to a new institutional opening for political participation.

This article is concerned with an analysis of the causes of the poverty of the developing countries. The decade of the 1960s opened with a new wave of optimistic expectations for the periphery.1 There were, first of all, the massive decolonisation efforts, which to many implied the eclipse of imperialism and the possibility of meaningful economic reconstruction by the former colonial people, now that political power was in our own hands. ‘Seek ye first the political kingdom and all things shall be added unto you’, succinctly if unaptly captured the prevailing mood of the time.

This article presents the cases of two migrant men, a Senegalese and a Nigerian, who spent many years in Istanbul. Although their backgrounds, personalities and circumstances were different, they both did export-related commercial work in the city. After describing sub-Saharan migration to Turkey and the literature concerning it, the text focuses on the stories these migrants spontaneously presented as they explained why they had become migrants. It was striking that with very different personal details, events and coincidences, both stories attribute the decision to migrate to Istanbul to a traumatic accident that forced the protagonists to change a life that until that point did not involve transnational migration. In the stories the protagonist's ambition, determination and will are rendered invisible and he is presented as a victim. I call this rhetorical topos ‘great mishap’. It resonates with stories I have heard from other migrants. I interpret it as an expression of compunction, of social responsibility weighing on the actor for abandoning close others in favour of an individual quest for self-realisation.

In this short article I suggest that the current styles of most African leaders relate to a number of significant changes in the political environment as regards (i) their rôles and the structures within which they are imbedded, (ii) their audiences/followerships and expectations, and (iii) the salience and valence of important symbols. My analysis will also involve making comparisons between political styles adopted before and after independence, as well as examining the meaning of leadership rôle-images projected during both periods.

It has become increasingly evident that a conceptual framework of ethnicity is being employed by analysts for understanding the continent as the discrediting of African nationalism proceeds apace. Indeed, it has become a commonplace to assert that part of this project's failure can be put down to its notorious disregard for indigenous awareness. ‘In order to overcome ethnic differences exploited by colonial powers’, according to Alan Fowler, ‘many African governments systematically negated traditional social organisations in the belief that they ‘reinforced an unwanted ethnic awareness and, through their values and practices, acted as barriers to rapid growth and modernisation’. The conversion to a positive view of tribalism by Basil Davidson has served as something of a watershed. In 1992 he wrote that while modern African nationalism amounted to a western imposition, ‘The history of precolonial tribalism ... was in every objective sense a history of nationalism’.

Over the first U.N. development decade the Third World has made rather faster progress, as measured by the growth in national incomes, than had been expected. Nevertheless, though the average income per capita has risen by about 50 per cent since 1960 (with total income having almost doubled), these increases have been very unequally distributed both between and within countries. This has led to the conclusion, now widely held, that growth-oriented development strataegies are alone unlidely to solve the problem of poverty. Similarly, there has been a move away from the confidence placed upon the growth of national income per capita as an effective index of social welfare. There has therefore been a quickening interest, particularly on the part of multilateral and bilataeral donor agencies – notably the World Bank, I.L.O., O.D.M., and S.I.D.A. – in promoting changes in domestic policies within the Third World which would focus more upon increasing the welfare of the poorest groups.

It is widely believed that old soldiers are a problem. At least since the beginning of this century, western governments have been concerned with the issue of ‘helping’ veterans to readjust to civilian life upon their return from campaigning. It is assumed that these men would, if left to their own devices, find it difficult or impossible to ‘pick up from where they had left off’, and might, therefore, become a subversive element in the general population. Hence, one of the largest bureaucracies in the United States is the Veterans Administration which is charged with fitting ex-soldiers back into society. To a certain extent the concerns over whether they would be satisfied after their demobilisation have proved to be justified. The dislocations experienced by returned American servicemen after World War II were illustrated by popular films like ‘The Best Years of Our Lives’. More recently, the American press paid considerable attention to the rôle of the black veterans of Vietnam in the violence which destroyed much of Newark, Detroit, and Watts in the late 1960s.

The National Peacekeeping Force (NPKF) was designed to meet a serious security challenge anticipated in the run-up to South Africa's first democratic elections in April 1994. Its establishment was an imaginative and constructive, but ultimately disastrous initiative. Its failure – however inevitable in retrospect – constituted a major tragedy, less as it proved for the free and fair conduct of the elections than for the longer-term prospects of forging a truly national army. This study seeks to explore: (i) the genesis and evolution of the concept of an integrated South African peacekeeping force; (ii) its character, composition, command structure, and cohesion; and (iii) the causes and consequences of its fateful deployment on the volatile East Rand.