The rôle of agriculture in the theory of economic development is equivocal. Not that anyone would dispute the need for expanding the supply of food in the course of economic development, especially during the early stages characterised by high income elasticities of demand. Quite the contrary, existing theories fully recognise this need, while noting, however, its frequent conflict with any programme of rapid capital accumulation in a situation of low savings rates.1 It therefore follows, so the argument runs, that the demand for food should be met as much as possible from domestic sources, while confining the export of scarce savings to the needs of industry: i.e. for importing manufacturing skills and techniques, with their higher productivities, linkages, and externalities.

Few of the new nations of Africa lack, as part of their colonial heritage, their potential Biafras—hence the reluctance of most African states to recognise the secessionist Eastern Region of Nigeria. This article is concerned with one of them, the Barotse Province of Zambia, and attempts to illuminate the historical background of the situation, the motives of the Lozi ruling class in demanding secession, and the methods by which successive colonial and independent governments have met this challenge.

Existing literature argues that the tactics of Cameroon foreign policy have been conservative, weak and timid. This study refutes that perspective. Based on extensive and previously unused primary sources obtained from Cameroon's Ministry of External Relations and from the nation's archives in Buea and Yaoundé, this study argues that Cameroon's foreign policy was neither timid nor makeshift. Its strategy was one of pragmatism. By examining the nation's policy toward Nigeria in the reunification of Cameroon, the Nigerian civil war, the Bakassi Peninsula crisis and Boko Haram, the study maintains that, while the nation's policy was cautious, its leaders focused on the objectives and as a result scored major victories. The study concludes by suggesting that President Paul Biya invokes the same skills he used in foreign policy to address the ongoing Anglophone problem, a problem that threatens to unravel much of what the country has accomplished.

As towns, industries, agricultural developments, and the green revolution come to Africa, social theorists are beginning to write about the emergence of a peasant class. In addition, they are relating the concept of a peasantry to the growing patterns of capitalism and socialism which are to be found throughout the continent, albeit for the most part asserting that contemporary social systems are built on tribal rather than feudal foundations. What is remarkable from this perspective is that as Africanists turn their attention to these issues, and discuss rigorous conceptual problems regarding the terms ‘peasant’ and ‘feudal’, they continue to be almost unaware of Ethiopia.

Although it has long been realised that ‘developing’ countries do not have to follow the example of ‘developed’ nations, the mere use of the terms ‘nation-building’ and ‘national integration’ implies a straight line of ‘progress’ from dispersed sub-national communities towards the integrated entity of the nation-state. Add the eagerness of political leaders in the Third World to exert effective control over the population in the absence of established institutions, if possible by becoming the focus of popular solidarity, and the reasons for this emphasis on the notion of national integration become more apparent.

The article addresses possibilities and barriers to economic activity and development in the Oshana region of Northern Namibia. The focus is on the role of local embeddedness of economic activities in attaining economic development. A network perspective, based on theories of value chains that are embedded both in social relations and spatially, is selected as the analytical framework. The value chains of local black entrepreneurs in the study area are short. Moreover, the analysis reveals that social obligations may impede economic development, but that such practices are diminishing. The economic dominance and competition from South Africa is the main impediment to economic development in Northern Namibia. Local political embeddedness is shallow and political measures have not significantly reduced the implications of this dominance.

The end of the Cold War freed donors' aid policies from the co-ordinate system of East/West competition around the world. As a result, it was no longer necessary for the United States and its allies to continue providing aid on ideological grounds and/or geo-strategic needs. In the post-Cold War era, it became necessary for donor countries to evolve new rationales to convince their sceptical publics of the continued necessity for aid. One such new rationale was the imperative of promoting democracy and good governance as a way of guaranteeing international peace and security. This article examines the Japanese response to this development by identifying the factors that led to the inauguration of the ODA Charter. Thereafter, the content and intent of the Charter is examined and its application in Sub-Saharan Africa is analysed to highlight the changing objectives of Japanese aid policy in the continent.

Rising competition and conflict over land in rural sub-Saharan Africa continues to attract the attention of researchers. Recent work has especially focused on land governance, post-conflict restructuring of tenure relations, and large-scale land acquisitions. A less researched topic as of late, though one deserving of greater consideration, pertains to how social differentiation on the local-level shapes relations to land, and how these processes are rooted in specific historical developments. Drawing on fieldwork conducted in Teso sub-region of eastern Uganda, this paper analyses three specific land conflicts and situates them within a broad historical trajectory. I show how each dispute illuminates changes in class relations in Teso since the early 1990s. I argue that this current period of socioeconomic transformation, which includes the formation of a more clearly defined sub-regional middle class and elite, constitutes the most prominent period of social differentiation in Teso since the early 20th century.

Artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM) plays a significant socio-economic role in the alleviation of poverty. In Ghana, the increase in and persistence of illegal ASM (galamsey) can be explained by unemployment, cumbersome and costly registration, lack of land, corruption and Chinese engagement. Traditionally, Ghanaian governments have neglected to address ASM activities by means of policy, while publicly emphasizing its negative impacts. In 2017, the media campaign #StopGalamsey became a culmination of this process. This study represents a qualitative content analysis of #StopGalamsey media discourses. It aims to understand how galamsey was framed in the media during the first two years of the campaign. Based on an analysis of 176 articles from the Daily Graphic newspaper, four dominant frames were identified – environmental menace, criminal activity, complex menace and corruption and collusion. Galamsey was portrayed in an overwhelmingly negative way, miners were dehumanised and criminalised, conflicting perspectives marginalised, and non-traditional perception emphasised via Chinese engagement.

This article highlights the importance of studying the politics of time in the copper and cobalt mining sector of south-eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, where a tense coexistence can be observed between artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM) and large-scale mining (LSM). It is argued that inequality in ASM-LSM settings not only manifests itself spatially but also temporally. Faced with an uncertain future, ASM and LSM actors do not have the same capacity to control time and plan their futures. Drawing on data from several rounds of ethnographic fieldwork in Katanga's mining areas between 2005 and 2022, the article advocates an approach which pays more attention to issues of time and temporality in places where large-scale forms of mineral extraction clash with small-scale ones.

The first third of the 1960's was marked by growing concern over the inadequacies of the international economic system and a series of ambitious initiatives for its reform. The Kennedy Round of negotiations conducted through G.A.T.T. (General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs) was launched with the avowed aim of ending protective tariffs and related obstacles to world trade. Almost all governments, central banks, and international monetary organisations supported—in one form or another—international liquidity reform in order to break the artificial dependence of trade expansion on gold mining and on United States and United Kingdom payments deficits, and to replace these variables by a managed system, based on an international reserve unit. Both the World Bank and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (O.E.C.D.) argued the case for expanded, longer- period, development assistance on easier terms and with fewer ties to purchase the exports of lender or donor countries. Spokesmen not only of developing but also of industrial economies appeared to endorse this line of argument. Regional economic integration among developing economies moved out of the realm of academic speculation and vague speeches and into the category of political-economic programmes for early implementation.

For most organisations, a tenth anniversary session is a time for dwelling on the significance of past achievements while resolutely insisting that the best is yet to come in terms of new initiatives. The United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (E.C.A.) proved to be no exception when it met in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, during late January and early February 1969. Yet, behind the formal façade of celebration, one sensed an anxious attempt to overstate the results of past efforts in order to enlist support for a dynamic future which seems highly improbable. Because E.C.A. as an institution faces a serious crisis of confidence, its secretariat and its supporters seemed to seize on the tenth anniversary celebrations almost as if this were the last chance to change radically the Commission's role and image in the eyes of both Africa and the world. Indeed, the 1969 Commission session marked the culmination of an attempt by Robert K. A. Gardiner – the Commission's able Executive Secretary – and his associates to reverse the downward trend of E.C.A.'s influence and prestige since those halcyon early days of 1958–9 when Africans had such great hopes for their Commission.

In less-developed countries generally, and Africa in particular, centralised forms of political and economic organisation were until recently the norm. But over the past 15 years, this form of government has come under attack, and excessive centralisation is now viewed as a primary contributor to prevailing high levels of inefficiency and ineffectiveness. Various forms of decentralisation – the shifting of responsibilities and resources from central to sub-national units and actors – have been proposed as the necessary corrective mechanisms. Algeria, Kenya, the Sudan, Tanzania, Tunisia, and Zambia have been among the African countries which have implemented programmes aimed at strengthening the personnel, finances, and freedom of manoeuvre of non-central agencies and governments.

This extract from an editorial in The Times, which followed the capture of a Soviet warrant officer by invading South African forces in southern Angola in September 1981, sums up well the attitude in many western quarters, including most governments, towards Soviet involvement in the continent, particularly Southern Africa. It was widely assumed that the victory of the Movimento Popular de Libertação de Angola led by Agostinho Neto, achieved with substantial Soviet and Cuban aid, would lead to the use of Angola as a springboard for communist intervention in Zimbabwe, Namibia, and South Africa. Those who supported this premise believed that Moscow's leaders wished to be in a position to control the sea-lanes off the South African coast, and that

Solutions to old problems are sometimes found in new paradigms and models which provide alternative means of approach and analysis. It is suggested here that South Africa's socio-economic and political problems, stemming from the country's multi-ethnic structure, may be viewed within a conceptual framework that emphasises the spatial dimensions of the associated conflict. A model suitable for understanding this will stress the many disparities and tensions between the white core élites and those black counter-élites – including the leaders in the Homelands – who are emerging from the subdominant peripheral groups. Moreover, an analysis of the interaction between core and periphery will highlight the transformation necessary to reduce and resolve the conflict between whites and blacks in the South African spatial system and so promote their more equitable development?

This article has pointed out the increasing importance of the arms trade in the contemporary international system, and has reviewed critically the essential scholarly works devoted to this topic. Arguing that most of the existing literature is either descriptive or only very partially explanatory, I have suggested a set of five requirements for a satisfactory understanding. Following an analysis of the relationships between these ideal criteria and segments of the theoretically oriented literature, I have outlined an original, though preliminary, model for a systematic analysis of arms supply as an international political phenomenon

With the demise of the Soviet Union and the fall of many authoritarian régimes, some observers suggest that we are in the midst of what can be called a worldwide democratic revolution. Although questions remain as to the durability of these changes, particularly in Africa, it is clear that we are at a cross-roads. Nations are considering what kinds of political institutions they want to replace those they are trying to dismantle. What, at this historical moment, is the special appeal of democracy in the non-Western world? Is it the promise of individual freedom? or popular elections designed to give all citizens a say in who governs? or the prospect of guaranteed individual and group rights?

Ethiopia has long been regarded as the only African state, along with Liberia, to have escaped the ravages of European colonialism, the epitome of African independence and self-determination.1 It was also considered a stable, relatively integrated, and viable political community amidst a continent of new states characterised by chronic instability.2 But by 1974, most if not all of these myths were in the process of being broken, as Ethiopia struggled for its very existence against pressures from within and without that threatened to dismember the Empire.

The Liberian civil war was the major issue in US–Guinea relations between 1990 and 2003. During the first half of this period, the US sought with limited success to secure Guinea's cooperation in finding a diplomatic solution. President Conté viewed Charles Taylor as Guinea's implacable enemy and authorised arms support for anti-Taylor factions, while the US pressed for a negotiated peace. The Guinean leader's negative reaction to US criticism of the flawed 1993 presidential elections halted most dialogue on Liberia for the next two years. When Taylor continued supporting civil war in Sierra Leone after 1997, and fighters allied to him assaulted Guinea border posts in 1999, the US strengthened its engagement with Guinea. Providing military training and non-lethal equipment, it sought to counter the threat that Guinea would succumb to the destabilisation which had afflicted Liberia and Sierra Leone. The US appears positioned to play a positive role in Guinea's political and economic transition after the departure from the scene of the seriously ill Guinean president.

There are a wide variety of relationships binding together the states of the modern international community. They are all, to a greater or lesser extent, dependent upon the exchange of various kinds of resources between themselves. These resources include merchandise goods, capital, technology, labour and information. Such exchanges imply a certain amount of reciprocal influence.