The visit of Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir to Liberia, Cameroun, Côte d'Ivoire, and Togo in June 1987 confirmed that Israeli-African relations have entered a third phase that is more pragmatic and more limited than the first two. For Israel and Africa, this is an era of tachlis, or unadorned realism.2

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.

Few observers reckon that the white citadel will fall overnight, yet the days of racial minority rule in South Africa are now widely assumed to be running out. But the future can rarely be tamed in advance, and many of the more optimistic scenarios and hopes concerning a transition to a non-racial form of state may well prove to be hopelessly misplaced. Even so, to the extent that it is considered that history is now finally on the move, debate about the nature of opportunities available to, and constraints upon a post-apartheid state becomes not only more legitimate but more urgent. The ambition of this article is to provide a framework for consideration of whether a non-racial South Africa could or will be socialist.

Like its counterparts elsewhere, the small business sector of the Nigerian economy is extremely volatile. A corollary of this volatility is the dearth of long-established firms. One issue that can help to account for the scarcity of long-established firms and also contribute to our understanding of the sector's volatility is succession, the ease with which ownership changes from one hand to another. This paper explores the issue of succession in privately incorporated small firms in south-eastern Nigeria. The finding that nearly half of the closures are attributable to the succession problem has implications for research on the small business sector, and on the development expectations of the sector.

African regimes commonly use strategies of balanced ethnic representation to build support. Decentralisation reforms, often promoted in order to improve political representation and state access, can undermine such strategies. In this article we use the example of the DR Congo to show the extent to which the multiplication of decentralised provinces is upending a political system largely based until now upon collective ethnic representation in the state. Not only are Congo's new provinces more ethnically homogeneous than their predecessors, but many of them have also witnessed political takeover and monopolisation by the province's dominant ethnic group. In addition, the increased number of Congolese who now find themselves non-autochthonous to their province of residence heightens their vulnerability and the potential for local conflict. Decentralisation, whose intent was proximity to governance, might well end up excluding more Congolese from the benefits of political representation. The article uses original empirical evidence on provincial ethnic distributions to support its claims.

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.

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.

One of the major objectives sought by the New International Economic Order is to secure favourable conditions for the transfer of resources to the Third World, and to ensure that they are fully utilised for the development of the countries concerned.1 However, the unprecedented growth of the global economy since World War II has not been equitably distributed between the rich and poor nations. Unfortunately, within this international scenario, the increasing external indebtedness of the latter has had, and still has, wide-ranging domestic implications that have rocked the foundations on which many African economies stand.

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.

In the literature of both comparative politics and international relations there exist two broad theoretical orientations towards the concept of development: capitalist and Marxist or neo-Marxist. The first emphasises the nation as the basic unit of analysis, and assumes that development is a matter of accepting and implementing western forms of political and economic organisation, and of the masses internalising ‘modern’ attitudes and values.1 The second identifies world capitalism as the key unit of analysis, and is convinced that underdevelopment is both created and maintained by this international economic system.2

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.

The establishment of independent commissions in Nigeria since 1931 to review wage structures, gradings, and relativities in the public sector would seem to suggest either a continuing belief in their efficacy for determining remuneration and job classification, or else that this method has become ‘inevitable’ for reasons that remain to be discovered.

Zaïre has been open to external penetration from its earliest days as the Congo Independent State of King Léopold II, but unlike most other weak and vulnerable African states it has experienced repeated military interventions. When President Mobutu Sese Seko addressed the U.N. General Assembly in October 1973 he formally thanked the world organisation for preserving his country during the early 1960s:

If a small minority of member countries of this organisation had refused to participate in the Congo operation, at the time, the vast majority had, however, spontaneously put troops at its disposition or intervened in favour of this operation. This permitted the maintenance of peace, unity, and the integrity of the national territory.

Of all the instances of European conquest, indignant world opinion views the legalised racism of white settlers in South Africa as the worst case. As the last remnant of traditional colonialism, the inevitable doom of the whites is predicted, and only the time span of an outdated racial domination is in question. The main reason for this outcome of a polarising racial confrontation is seen in the intransigence of prejudiced settlers who stubbornly refuse to share their immense privileges with one of the most exploited and oppressed populations in the world. Socialised in a traditional ‘frontier mentality’ of cultural isolation and religiously-sanctioned racial superiority, South African whites are considered typical fascists, who use a vast police force to crush all opposition, and enforce a battery of outrageous laws to ensure a cheap labour force as the basis of their huge profits and accumulated wealth.

The universities often may seem remote from rural communities, but they continue to draw a proportion of their students from the villages and small towns and, increasingly, a concern for the welfare of the rural inhabitants informs and directs the teaching, applied research, and theoretical debates of many members of staff.

The Transcription Centre opened in January 1962 with the primary object of designing and making cultural programmes on tape for African radio stations. It was started by Dennis Duerden because he felt that there was room for a new kind of radio service in which there would be greater opportunity for the contact and interchange of ideas between artists, writers, musicians, actors, and critics than is usually afforded by the large broadcasting organisations. It set out to be a cultural centre with a reading room and an informal atmosphere for discussion, to which recording studios were subordinate. From the beginning it worked closely with the Institute of Contemporary Arts (I.C.A.), cultural bodies, and art galleries in Britain and Africa, and was stimulated by constant visitors bringing new ideas and information from many parts of the world. It is a non-profit-making organisation supported by a direct grant from the Farfield Foundation.

The International Monetary Fund has established itself as the most important economic actor among the many international agencies of our day. Indeed, the most powerful market-economy governments and banks now look to it for leadership in assessing and resolving the key difficulties of world finance. But the I.M.F. has yet to resolve the major problem that it faces as an institution and that its most influential members refuse to recognise as they try to fashion a world economic order: dominated politically, legally, and institutionally by the market élite, the Fund has yet to make the cultural and political leap necessary to understand and work with, rather than against, the majority of its members who are in the Third World. Until the I.M.F. does so, it will continue to be harshly criticised and distrusted by the less-developed countries (L.D.C.s), and it will never achieve either its economic and political potential as a major international agency, or its supposed goal of ordered world economic prosperity.

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.