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.

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.

The Setting

The rumble of military jeeps throughout the continent has obscured the fact that there are still a few places where lively elections are held from time to time. Before the rash of coups, and even in several countries with a dominant party, there were local opportunities for intensive competition. Where electoral politics still exist today, groups which might not carry much national weight have the chance to win a slice of the political system at the local level. Such a case was the 1975 election of the chief or seyfo for the Lower Saloum District which is part of the McCarthy Island Division on the north bank of the Gambia River. The three largest ethnic groups here are the Olof, the Mandinka, and the Fula.

This article provides insights into particular aspects of contemporary Islamic reformism in Ethiopia, focusing on what we have labelled the Intellectualist movement. Analysing the trajectory and the ideological underpinnings of the movement from the early 1990s to the present, the study interrogates the assertion that Ethiopian Islam has moved in a radical direction and argues that the Intellectualist movement has been a significant force moderating the domestic political-religious discourses. We demonstrate that it contributed to the production of political awareness among generations of young Ethiopian Muslims, which rather than contesting the existing political system, moved in a direction of a strengthened belief in secularism and democratic values. What is important here is that this took place in an increasingly constraining political environment, which, as often assumed, did not trigger any reaction of radicalization, but rather reinforced the adherence to a moderating discourse.

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

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.

Within a period of just a year during the late 1980s, the Ethiopian Revolutionary or ‘Red’ Army suffered serious defeat in both Eritrea and Tigray. Although numerically and technically superior to its opponents, dissension in the army's ranks, political meddling from Addis Ababa, loss of will, and the remarkable skill and determination of its opponents prevented it from achieving victory. Two years after its humiliating defeat in Tigray, the army collapsed, and the military regime it had sustained disappeared. Eritrea succeeded in declaring its independence and the Tigrayan rebels seized power in Ethiopia. This article demonstrates that the Eritrean and Tigrayan forces ultimately won because they had grass-roots support and because they were able to back each other militarily and politically. In the meantime, the dictatorship in Addis Ababa was losing popular support as its ‘citizens’ were no longer willing to make the sacrifices that were necessary to continue the struggle. Only by considering these points can we appreciate why Africa's second-largest army was annihilated or, conversely, why the insurgents triumphed, for their success was not inevitable.

This article presents a spatial approach to the recent history of conflict and confrontation between the Ethiopian Government and Ethiopian Muslim Communities in Addis Ababa. Based on original ethnographic data and inspired by existing academic studies on political-religious relationships in Addis Ababa, this study takes a closer look at the significance of the urban public landscape in power-struggles between the EPRDF and the Muslim communities. The article argues that political-religious struggle in Addis Ababa shapes the current urban landscape, as use of and control over urban public space and place forms a crucial element in the strategies of public authority of all involved actors.

Does Zimbabwe provide the model for the likely transformation of white minority rule in the industrial heart of Southern Africa? With their morale boosted, the expectations of many black South Africans have been raised. Likewise many outside commentators predict the inevitable downfall of the white bastion along similar lines of escalating military confrontation after the last buffer state but Namibia has gone. Even Nationalist newspapers draw the lessons by admonishing the Government to pay attention to the ‘real leaders’ of the subordinates instead of unrepresentative collaborators. The Afrikaner political leadership uses the Rhodesian example to drum home its message of ‘adapt or die’ to a bewildered electorate.

Interest in the real potential of small-scale enterprise dates from the early 1970s, when it was gradually realised that the industrialisation policies pursed by many developing countries would not be able to create enough employment. It was observed, moreover, that a large part of the active population was engaged in petty trade and crafts, particularly in urban centres. Thus, in addition to the modern, ‘formal’ type of economic activity, an ‘informal’ sector was identified with the following distinctive features: (1) The production processes are labour-intensive, based on simple technology. (2) The smallness of the various industries enables their owners to work as managers as well as producers, and to have direct contact with their employees, while some relationships may be based on non-economic considerations. (3) The enterprises often break the law — that is, they seldom adhere to legally fixed minimum wages, they frequently neglect to observe safety and other regulations, and they tend to evade registration and tax obligations.

Great-Power rivalry in Africa is among the legacies left by European statesmen who, a century ago in Berlin, carved up the continent and whole nations within it into tidy colonial compartments, several with frontiers still in dispute. Russians and Americans attended that inglorious conference but stayed out of the scramble for territories that followed. It is one of history's ironies that Moscow and Washington emerged, with proxies to help them, as leading contestants in the contemporary struggle for position, presence and power in Africa.

Knowledge of what actually transpires in African economies is soft. This is particularly true of the vitally important agricultural sector, where statistics are especially weak. Given the paucity and unreliability of the data, analysts often make inferences on the basis of surrogate figures, a process which multiplies the probability of mistakes. This note shows that such an error has been made in the interpretation of African food-import data, and that its correction casts doubt on a widely accepted nation concering African food Production.

As numerous review articles attest, approaches to the study of military interventions in African politics have varied widely in their methodology and foci of concern.1 Over the last decade, a good deal of runing has been made by quantitatively-inclined political scientists, such as Alan Wells, Roberta McKown, Ruth Collier, and especially Robert Jackman, whose particular path towards the understanding of military interventions has Iain through aggregate-data analysis of structural fratures of African states.2 This line of approach has recently been brought to a high level of sophistication in two major articles: Thomas H. Johnson, Robert O. Slater, and Pat McGowan, ‘Explaining African Military Coups d'Etat, 1960–1982’, in The American Political Science Review (Washington, D.C.), 78, 3, September 1984, pp. 622–40, and Pat McGowan and Thomas H. Johnson, ‘African Military Coups d'Etat and Underdevelopment: a quantitative historical analysis’, in this Journal, 22, 4, December 1984, pp. 633–66. The A.P.S.R. article is described by the authors as ‘only the latest and not the last word on these matters’ (p. 637), and it has already fulfilled this implicit prophecy by generating debate among those who have adopted a similar methodology.3

The performance of Africa's external sector during the 1970s has been described in a number of important publications. According to the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa, the continent's share of world exports declined from 3·9 per cent in 1970 to 3·4 per cent in 1979. The performance of the region's export sector had been sluggish throughout this period, growing at an annual rate of only 0·6 per cent in volume compared to 6 per cent during the last five years of the previous decade. The World Bank report on sub-Saharan Africa described the 1970s as having been characterised by growing balance-of-payments deficits, attributable partly to external factors — notably the two large oil-price shocks, the slow growth in world trade in primary commodities, and the persistently rising price of imported manufactured goods — but partly caused also by domestic factors. Even within the group of developing countries, Africa's share of non-fuel exports is estimated to have declined from over 18 per cent in 1970 to about 9 per cent in 1978. During this decade the volume of imports expanded by an estimated 58 per cent annually — although for the sub-Saharan region the growth rate was only 3 per cent — while the terms of trade worsened significantly. Official development assistance rose substantially as a whole, but offset only a part of the growing deficit.

Relations between the United States of America and Africa have important historical, economic, and political dimensions which are by no means confined to the United Nations. The historical ties predate the creation of international organisations, but it was the emergence of the United Nations from the ashes of World War II that provided the greatest opportunity for close bonds by creating an institutional framework within which the common goals and interests of Americans and Africans could be pursued.

In a recent study of 90 developing countries by the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organisation, 52 of them were found to have more than 15 per cent of their populations undernourished. This figure was determined using the F.A.O. minimum intake of 1,600 calories per day, only about half of that of the average diet of citizens in the ‘First World’. In Black Africa, 29 of the 33 independent nations included in the F.A.O. study fall into the category of undernourished. Contributions of aid in the form of food and food-production technology are therefore extremely important to this region. Obtaining an adequate supply of food for their people must be high on the priority list for governments in sub-Saharan Africa, and is the focus of this article.