The 1980s has been described as Africa's “lost decade.” After the largely positive economic and social developments of the 1960s and 1970s, Africa began to lose ground in the 1980s: economic progress turned into economic decline; social development into social decay. The assumption in leading circles has been that this downturn was necessary because of the costs incurred by a largely state-centered approach to development. Economic liberalization would help bring back growth. Few tangible improvements, however, were recorded in the 1980s. Since 1990, calls for political democratization have been added to the armory of policy prescriptions for Africa. Faith in the significance of democratization among Africans and friends of Africa alike provided the continent with new breathing-space but half way through the 1990s, there is little evidence that Africa has begun turning a corner.

Although per capita GNP income is in itself a measure of neither economic welfare nor success in development and measures for countries with a balmy climate always are lower than those for colder countries —something that the World Bank is the first to admit—the statistical trend for African economies that can be gleaned from studying its World Development Report for the past ten years indicates that in comparison with the rest of the world Africa continues losing ground. Although quite a few countries have registered at least a modest economic recovery in the 1990s, the number of African countries that have dropped into the bottom category of least developed countries has increased. In 1980, the number of African low-income countries (under $700 GNP per capita) was eighteen. In 1995 it had gone up to 27 or half of those listed in this category (World Development Report 1995, 162). The debt burden continues to plague the continent. Although total debt service as percentage of exports has improved for some African countries since 1980, repayment obligations are still beyond what African governments can typically afford. The result is that African countries find themselves locked out from international credit other than that provided by the publicly owned international finance institutions. The little private capital that comes to Africa is usually provided by individuals or companies interested only in a “quick buck.”

The New Directions Papers is a new series of the Joint Committee on African Studies (JCAS) of the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) and the Social Science Research Council (SSRC). The purpose of New Directions is to open or re-open a field of African studies which has been neglected or in which not enough new work has been done. Thus, it is intended as a forum for challenging rather than surveying research agendas and received wisdoms that have shaped understandings about Africa. The Committee seeks papers that are empirically-based but methodologically- or theoretically-minded. For example, a case study would be viewed as an opportunity to show how a new perspective on African realities can be achieved through an innovative approach. In general, the Committee favors papers that can help colleagues who work in Africa to renew their practice of the field. The series will appear jointly in the African Studies Review and Cahiers d'etudes africaines, published simultaneously in English and French.

Citizen influence on the modern democratic state most often occurs through social organizations demanding government responsiveness to member concerns. These organizations and their interaction with government constitute the core of modern civil society. The presence of organized groups does not in itself mean that a civil society exists. Such groups may engage in other activities such as producing collective goods for their members or controlling their members on behalf of the ruling elite. Civil society grows in a state as more and more groups engage in activities designed to maintain or change government policies.

Outside of Africa, civil society development has often preceded democratization and provided the impetus for establishing elections, as well as the leadership and resources for political parties contesting these elections. With the exception of South Africa and possibly Zimbabwe, the emergence of civil society has thus far been minimal in Africa. Social organizations are too weak to bring down authoritarian regimes, let alone shape their replacements. However, the recent democratizations are providing new opportunities for group influence relative to the state. The result is that civil society is coming into existence at the same time as the holding of elections, the organization of competitive political parties and the reforming of legislative assemblies. In effect, the development of civil society and democracy are occurring in much of Africa as parallel and related processes.

In Nigeria, state creation was originally conceived as a solution to the problems of ethnic minority groups.

Louis Wirth (Hepburn 1978, 1) defined an ethnic minority group as a group of people who because of their physical or cultural characteristics, “are singled out from the others in the society in which they live for differential and unequal treatment and who therefore regard themselves as objects of collective discrimination.” Stavenhagen (1983, 122) pointed out that the exploitative relationship, which often characterize the interaction between the minority and the dominant group can take the form of “unequal regional development (when ethnic groups are geographically localized) or of differential access to positions of privilege or power, or different forms of segregation and discrimination in social, economic and political life.” The inferior status imputed to ethnic minority groups explains the conflict potential in minority/dominant relationship.

The experience of ethnic minorities world wide has shown that several approaches can be adopted to eliminate or reduce minority situations. They include assimilation, ethnocide, genocide, constitutional safeguards, reversal of status and territorial solution.

Assimilation permits ethnic minorities to adopt the values of the dominant group at their own pace. This policy could be adopted where the minority situation resulted from immigration and where the minorities accept the authority of the dominant groups as legitimate. The approach has been adopted to some advantage in the United States.

Taking the Oromo as historical actors, the emergent Oromo studies identify some deficiencies of “Ethiopian studies” that primarily focus on the Amhara and Tigray ethnic groups and their rulers, and ignore the history of the Oromo people. Many Ethiopian and Ethiopianist scholars do not recognize the positive cultural achievements of this people. As Shack (1994, 642) notes, “The lack of critical scholarship has inadvertently distorted the human achievements of conquered peoples like the Oromo, including transformations of their social, cultural, and political institutions.” Although the Oromo have no political power, they are the largest ethnonation in the Ethiopian Empire, comprising about half of the 52 million Ethiopian population. Ethiopia (former Abyssinia), with the help of the European colonial powers, colonized and annexed the Oromo people during the last decades of the 19th century, when Africa was partitioned among the European colonial powers (Jalata 1995a). Since then they have been treated as colonial subjects and second-class citizens. With their colonization and incorporation into Ethiopia (Jalata 1991, 1993a; Holcomb and Ibssa 1990), the Oromo could not develop independent institutions that would allow them to produce and disseminate their historical knowledge freely. Currently, they are fighting for national self-determination: to regain their political freedom and rebuild independent institutions.

The Ethiopian knowledge elites have treated the Oromo as historical objects or have ignored them because of their subordination and powerlessness. Current publications on Oromo cultural and social history challenge a top-down paradigm to historiography and make the Oromo subjects rather than objects of history. Studying people as subjects or agents helps scholars avoid producing false knowledge. As Haraway (1991, 198) expounds, “Situated knowledges require that the object of knowledge be pictured as an actor and agent, not a screen or a ground or a resource, never finally as slave to the master that closes off the dialectic in his unique agency and authorship of ‘Objective’ knowledge.” The emergent Oromo studies attempt to replace colonial history by a history of liberation, and to refute historical myths that have been produced to justify Ethiopian colonialism. This essay explores how the emergent Oromo studies have identified some deficiencies of Ethiopian studies, and how many Ethiopian and Ethiopianist knowledge elites have reacted to these fields of study.

It is from that perspective that I wish to examine a case study of Hausa law in the Yoruba city of Ibadan, Oyo State, Nigeria. I argue that the Sarkin Sabo and his representatives, including the Waziri, in dispensing justice and governing Sabo provide just such a ritual manifestation of a “symbolic intercom between the level of cultural thought and complex cultural meanings, on the one hand, and that of social action and immediate event, on the other” to which Munn refers. Following Kiernan (1981, 6), moreover, I hold that a concept is needed to tie the sacred and secular together without slighting either one. In an article that aids in that task, Lubeck (1981, 70) reminds us that:

In his classic study of the Hausa Sabon Gari (new town) in Ibadan, Abner Cohen (1969; 1974) described a logical consequence of the amalgam of sacred and secular in an African society, the Hausa, as well as the manner in which Sabo was linked through the Hausa-British alliance with the capitalist world economy. Moreover, this study seeks to extend Cohen's work to the post-colonial period and note some ways in which that Hausa alliance to the colonial state served to establish an affiliation with the post-colonial state in Nigeria. It does so by focusing on a court case involving the Waziri of Sabo. A brief presentation of the history of Sabo further clarifies the case and enables contextual examination of the relevant social and cultural factors involved. Sabo, after all, must be understood as a consequence of the extension of British colonial power in Nigeria. The extension of that power enabled the Hausa to found dispersed trading centers throughout Nigeria and, indeed, British West Africa. Their power, however, rested on their ability to control those in their constituency. Appropriate analysis of the nexus of historical, political, social and cultural factors in this process will further the understanding of that unifying concept for interpenetration of the sacred and secular which Kiernan seeks.

Throughout the history of Liberia, the Mandingo have stood at the margins of citizenship-always taken to be “something more” than the other indigenous groups of Liberia but “something less” than the full citizens the Settlers consider themselves to be. In the shifting definitions of Liberian citizenship, Mandingo marginality has always played a curiously ambivalent role, an ambivalence that reflects the ambiguities of the state's self-conception.

While the question of “who are the real citizens of Liberia” has been debated for many years by the various ethnic groups, no group has been more impacted by the debate than the Mandingo. Against this historical background, this paper seeks to address the issue of citizenship which is currently being discussed as Liberia attempts to reestablish itself as a nation state following its recent civil war.