This paper challenges existing analyses of party cleavages in Sub-Saharan Africa which over-emphasise the centrality of ethnicity. Parties express ideological positions that reflect the socio-economic interests of specific regions, which, especially in Zambia, coincide with particular ethnic groups. We demonstrate this through an examination of party manifestos, policy documents and semi-structured interviews with members of two political parties in Zambia – the Patriotic Front and the United Party for National Development. These parties express clear normative ideas about social welfare, especially the role of the state in providing social assistance to the poorest. These ideological positions reflect the socio-economic interests of the ethnic groups and regions where support for each party is dominant. These are shaped by the ways in which these regions were historically incorporated into the colonial economy. In order to gain a better understanding of African politics, ethnicity must be conceptualised as a socio-cultural construct and situated historically.

Building on 15 months of ethnographic fieldwork, this article draws from military sociology to revisit past portrayals of Liberian former combatant networks and assesses four central assumptions connected to them: that formal wartime command structures continue as informal networks long after the end of the war; that former combatants are united by a wartime identity and form a community to an extent separated from the surrounding society; that wartime experiences have had a major disciplining effect on former combatants; and that former combatants are both good mobilisers and easy to mobilise in elections and armed conflict alike. Finding limited evidence close to two decades after the end of war to support these assumptions, I ultimately ask whether it would be more productive to both theory and Liberians alike to widen investigation from former combatants to structural issues that affect many more in the country.

It would seem that one of Africa's few growth industries in recent years has been the stampede of scholarship attempting to account for the failure of the state to generate meaningful economic development. While academics argue over whether the primary culprits are kleptocratic governing élites, Western imperialist forces, or unfair market conditions in the global economy, the realities of African political life show an increasing reactionary trend away from the political integration of the state. Some criticise the integrity of state structures as being Western inventions that have little capacity to respond to African needs, and note the rise of pre-colonial traditional structures organised around ethnic or tribal considerations. Some argue that capitalism in the African context is not able to generate capital accumulation sufficient to improve living standards. Still others suggest that anti-democratic patriarchal forces prevent capitalism from effectively generating maximum growth.

Far out in the Indian Ocean, stretched like a string of pearls between the Grand Ile of Madagascar and the coast of East Africa, lies one of the world's most beautiful groups of islands, one of its most intriguing civilisations, and one of its most puzzling territories: the Comoro Islands. The archipelago is altogether one-quarter the size of Corsica. The four main islands—Mayotte, Anjouan, Mohéli, and Grande Comore, surrounded by numerous smaller isles and coral reefs—between them cover an area of only 852 square miles (2,336 sq. km.). The total population at the time of the most recent census in 1958 amounted to 183,133, with 90,790 on Grande Comore, 61,815 on Anjouan, 23,364 on Mayotte, and 7,164 on Moheli. The latest estimate, for 1963, gives a total of about 200,000. Tiny as they are, apparently unaffected by the wind of change, and isolated from the main tide of the world events, the islands still present a microcosm of the problems encountered by the developing countries on the mainland. They too are undergoing the difficult transition from a colonial system to independence, and have to reckon with the strong traditional structures of a civilisation left largely untouched by French administration, which still influences the lives of the mass of the population.

A University must grow from seed. It cannot be transplanted from England or Germany in full leaf and bearing … When the American University appears, it will not be a copy of foreign institutions but the slow and natural outgrowth of American social and political habits.

This quotation from C. W. Eliot, who was President of Harvard University nearly 100 years ago, provided Sir Eric Ashby with the starting text for his recent Godkin Lectures at Harvard, which have since been published under the title African Universities and Western Tradition. Ashby is concerned with the process through which the universities in Africa, still very much western transplantations, will develop into genuine national universities. He seeks to extend Eliot's prophecy to the universities of Africa, to test there its applicability and its implications.

It would be naïve to suppose that any one variable could ensure the success of planned change. The factors contributing to failure and success are numerous, and the possible interrelations between them immensely complex. The acceptability of the innovator is therefore no more than a small part of the success of a development project. But, if the analysis of one specific example of this single factor allows a better understanding of one necessary condition of change, it will also increase the possibility of control over one potential area of failure.

Faced with declining earnings from the export of agricultural products, with rising population, and with an urgent need for accelerated economic growth and structural change, many African countries are today searching for new channels through which they can supplement their foreign-exchange earnings. One source of rapidly growing importance is tourism, which already plays a decisive role in the economic development of some countries.

By 1967, when the water level reaches its maximum, the Volta dam will have created one of the largest man-made lakes in the world, thereby completing a scheme which has fascinated government officials, business men, and politicians since the early years of the century. The purpose of the symposium, which was sponsored jointly by the Volta River Authority and the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, was to consider the progress made so far on one aspect of this complex project, namely the resettlement programme. Building the Volta dam has meant flooding some 3,275 square miles, or approximately 4 per cent of Ghana's land surface. In human terms it has meant disrupting the lives of more than 80,000 people, whose homes are being flooded by the rising waters of the Volta lake. The Volta River Authority has been charged with the responsibility of resettling these displaced persons, taking as its guiding principle the ruling laid down by President Nkrumah that ‘nobody should be worse off than before’. Ultimately, of course, the hope is that living standards will be improved very considerably.

Bang in the middle of a dialogue now going on about African culture—its roots, its contemporary values and relevance, and its future—Chemchemi Creative Centre has been born. This has come into our midst as a sister to the three Mbari writers' and artists' clubs in Nigeria; it will be inspired by the same aims, although the methods of achieving them will obviously be guided by local national conditions.

The concern with the impact of industrial property legislation and practices on the developing countries, at both the national and international levels, has so far been confined almost entirely to patents and patent-related transactions. This focus on the protection of knowledge concerning production processes reflects, on the one hand, a preoccupation with the terms and conditions which owners of technology may be able to obtain for its sale or lease, when their proprietary position is reinforced by legal instruments; and on the other hand, a recognition that unless the developing countries can themselves control the generation of a significant proportion of the technology they employ, it is unlikely either that appropriate technology will be produced, or that good use will be made of what is already available and relevant.

In September 1966, possibly for the first time in history, large numbers of Jews paid homage to a man with a notorious anti-Semitic past—Dr Hendrik F. Verwoerd, the late Prime Minister of South Africa, assassinated while he sat in his parliamentary seat. London's Jewish Chronicle reported that in Johannesburg overflow crowds attended memorial services in the city's Great Synagogue and Temple Israel. Verwoerd was eulogised by a rabbi as ‘one of the greatest Prime Ministers, if not the greatest’ that South Africa had ever had; and in Cape Town, the chief rabbi stated that Verwoerd had been the first man to give apartheid a ‘moral basis’1