The Sahel and Sudan zones are the “harsh lands” of West Africa. These arid and semi-arid lands include parts of present day Senegal, Mali, Northern Ghana, Mauritania, Niger, Northern Benin, Upper Volta, Chad, and Northern Nigeria (Map 1). “Harsh lands” denotes a region of extreme environmental uncertainty, but one in which man has learned to survive by exploiting their inherent qualities and the productive capability of their micro-environments, by forming cooperative relations with people of contrasting, but complementary life styles, and by constructing biologically enriched habitats in which select plants can grow. These survival techniques are commonly employed by farmers and nomads throughout West Africa, and while they may not be highly productive by western standards, they are highly dependable.

The people of these harsh lands never depend entirely on the resource endowment of their region for survival. Inter-ethnic exchange, both within and between territories, is a fundamental strategy for aquiring supplementary food in poor harvest years. Self-sufficiency is a concept foreign to the economic history of West Africans.

Nevertheless, the harsh lands of West Africa are deteriorating at an alarming rate. Rescue and restoration efforts must involve the reinstatement of ancient, but improved, land use practices that stress biological regeneration of the plant cover, and interregional exchange must be expanded to a scale that far exceeds that commonly known to have existed in the past. The purpose of this article is to show how land use practices deliberately employed by West Africans to combine local environmental conditions, and the selection of plants and animals to construct an enriched habitat in which the latter can grow, have been altered in the last 60 years and to analyze the impact of that alteration on the arable land of West Africa. It concludes by arguing for an ecobiological approach to full restoration of the harsh lands of West Africa.

When Haile Selassie returned to Ethiopia he used the Italians to insure his own survival. During the war period the Ethiopians began to appreciate the Italians. They demonstrated this attitude by not taking revenge for the crimes committed during Rudolfo Graziani's 1936–1937 administration. Instead, they aided the Italians to escape to safety when pursued by the occupying British military authorities. The Ethiopians even went so far as to espouse the Italian underground movement against the British, in a strange form of Italo-Ethiopian collaboration (Wingate, 1973: 206). For Haile Selassie the battle of El Alamein was the turning point in the relations with both the British and the Italians. Until this time, he was concerned with securing his own position, something he could not do until he had a clear reading of who would ultimately win the war.

Italy's colonial efforts in Ethiopia from 1936–1941 failed for lack of organization, incompetent colonial personnel, and high costs. Yet, the most important hindrance to Italy's progress in East Africa derived from the Patriots and the hostility of the Ethiopian farmers. Italy was neither able to obtain adequate food supplies in Ethiopia, nor obtain enough land for demographic colonization. Nevertheless the success of new agricultural methods and modern forms of government could not be accomplished in Ethiopia in a short time. Therefore when Italy entered the Second World War, on 10 June 1940, the Italians in Ethiopia were in the midst of experimentation, and the Ethiopian people had barely begun a period of transformation in their lives.

Wọle Ṣoyinka in his recent Myth, Literature and the African World (1976) attempts to divest himself of the reputation that some of his earlier pronouncements have earned him as a denier of the existence of a distinctive Africanity, and to shake off the foreign sympathizers who have unfairly, he claims, exploited those early positions to bolster their racist denial of an “African world.” His intention in this book is to demonstrate his belief in the “African world,” to show how it is “self-apprehended” by the true African, and to “call attention to it in living works of the imagination, placing them in the context of primal systems of apprehension of the race” (ibid.: xi-xii). The first illustration he uses for this “apprehension of the race” is “The Imprisonment of Obatala,” a play by Obotunde Ijimere (1966). This choice is startling and baffling because Obotunde Ijimere is actually Ulli Beier, a German who was actively involved with Nigerian and especially Yoruba culture from 1950 until 1967.

First Ṣoyinka's use of the play to illustrate the Yoruba world-view will be summarized. The myth of Obàtálá (the creator arch-divinity) is that while he was engaged in the creative task entrusted to him by the Supreme Deity, Olódùmarè, he became thirsty and drank some palm wine to slake his thirst. Unfortunately the effect of the wine put him to sleep. The Supreme Deity, observing the cessation in the creative process, sent Odùduwà (the ancestor of the Yoruba) to complete the task. Odùduwà did and, before Obàtálá woke up, he installed himself on the throne as the ruler of the people. Obàtálá did not forgive Odùduwà for supplanting him. Therefore, both he and his progency engaged Odùduwà and his progeny in a long contest aimed at regaining the ascendency (see Idowu, 1963: 71 ff; Adedeji, 1972). The annual observance of Obàtálá's festival at Ẹdẹ includes a mock battle recreating an aspect of Obàtálá's contest with Odùduwà, and in which the former is captured, incarcerated, and later released after the payment of a ransom (Beier, 1956; Rotimi, 1968).

In 1970, drought and famine began to afflict Ethiopia (Shepherd, 1975: ix; U.S.Depart. of State, 1974: 41; Wiseburg, 1975: 299). By 1974, almost 8 percent of Ethiopia's people had experienced starvation (Shepherd, 1975: 39) and more than two hundred thousand Ethiopians had perished in the famine's wake. The famine captured an exceptionally high level of public and media attention throughout the world. Considerable public concern arose within Ethiopia and abroad over the vast dimensions of human suffering involved and in reaction to the government's callous attempt to conceal rather than alleviate the consequences of the disaster. Eventually, the famine and unmasking of the moral bankruptcy of the government's response to it became important precipitating factors in the deposition of Emperor Haile Selassie I and termination of monarchical rule by military coup d'etat in 1974.

The central purposes of this article are to show how the pre-coup legal order created conditions which left Ethiopian peasants vulnerable to famine, to describe pertinent changes in the legal order introduced by the Provisional Military Administrative Council (PMAC), and to explore the short- and long-term impact of such changes on food production and famine prospects in Ethiopia.

When Britain's foreign secretary on 3 August 1914 ruefully observed that the lamps were going out all over Europe, he had not yet fully grasped the dimensions of the war about to begin. Within three days, however, Sir Edward Grey was attending a cabinet meeting in which he and his fellow members sketched a war strategy against Germany which was global in context. Whatever prewar British respect had existed for German empire-builders (Stengers, 1967: 345), the new War Sub-Committee of Britain's cabinet decided to seize as soon as possible all of Germany's overseas possessions. The initial motive was to secure the sealanes by occupying German overseas ports that could serve commerce raiding German cruisers and by destroying the German wireless stations which would serve those cruisers. Even then, however, Colonial Secretary Lewis Harcourt entertained the notion of British annexation of the whole German colonial empire (Louis, 1967: 36-37).

As Winston Churchill described that session,

Prime Minister Asquith, once a Gladstonian minister, later remembered, almost apologetically, “we looked more like a gang of Elizabethan buccaneers than a meek collection of black coated Liberal Ministers” (Asquith, 1928: II, 31). Since the principal German territories were in Africa, it was here that the major impact of Whitehall's action would be felt, and, indeed, an abundant literature on Africa in the First World War describes what happened.

Ghanaians not only have good reason to be extremely cynical about politics and politicians in their country, but also to keep considerable distance from the current debate about the proposals for a civilianized “Union Government” that would follow the retirement of the country's military government. Ghanaians have seen enough political upheaval in 20 years to make them extremely suspicious of what may in fact turn out to be yet another purely symbolic exercise in popular consultation. Militaries ceding power to, and then taking it back from, civilian regimes has become a fairly frequent exercise in recent years; Ghanaians obviously remember the Busia interregnum of 1969–72, and the examples of similar unsuccessful experiments in Upper Volta (1971–74), Dahomey (1964–65, 1970–72), Zaire (1961–65), and the Sudan (1964–69) provide little comfort to the optimistic. Besides, none of the Ghanaian governments since 1957 can be said to have been unqualified successes. To be sure, the Nkrumah regime enjoyed massive popular support during its first few years; yet, when it fell to the February 1966 National Liberation Council (NLC) coup, few except the privileged CPP elite mourned its passing. The NLC managed to accumulate a few good marks during its three years of rule, but its departure was also accompanied by sighs of relief. It was said with all sincerity that nothing so became the NLC as its departure, and given its relative inability to repair the economic damage done by its predecessor, its passing was more welcomed than deplored. The Busia regime fell victim as much to its own ineptness as to Colonel Acheampong's soldiers, and the current military regime's poor showing in the economic realm has certainly not endeared it to Ghana's restive middle class, to say nothing of the peasants victimized by rampant inflation, capricious and corrupt bureaucrats, and such disasters as crop disease, drought, and famine. Even the high price of cocoa has failed to benefit anyone except those who can smuggle their crops to illicit and licit markets outside the country, or who can rake off high percentages from internal transfer.

Ghana, the first sub-Saharan African country to achieve independence after World War II, has experienced several diverse forms of government, including a Westminster-style parliamentary democracy, a socialist single-party republic, and two military regimes following coups d'etat in 1966 and 1972. Like most of the developing states of West Africa, Ghana has been plagued by post-independence political instability. In fact, the search for a permanent and viable solution to what appears almost as a persistent governmental crisis—a crisis of political legitimacy, of credibility, confidence and trust in existing political institutions—seems to be the dominant public preoccupation in most West African nations today.

In a recent, perceptive review of three major works on contemporary Ghanaian politics, Paul Ladouceur concludes that “the ‘political kingdom’ has come to mean, not to govern, or to govern wisely, but rather to win by election or by a coup. Ghana has entered a period of political stagnation parallel to the economic stagnation of the last decade or two. Hopefully it will nonetheless find its way to a representative and a stable form of government, perhaps different from what it might be expected” (1977: 348) [emphasis added].

Toward the end of 1976 the ruling Supreme Military Council (SMC) headed by General I. K. Acheampong initiated an historic proposal for a Union Government, a plan designed to provide a real solution to Ghana's quest for a stable and representative government.

A sense of well-being has been associated in the literature with a wide variety of political phenomena, attitudes, and behavior including stability (Gurr, 1970: 148-54), optimism about future development (Gallup, 1976), satisfaction with government (Hayward, 1974: 184-85), political power (Owusu, 1970: 325-31), and participation (Ross, 1975: 119). Low levels of well-being have been associated with conflict and instability (Gurr, 1970: ch. 2), hostility toward government (Templeton, 1966), and cynicism (Schatzberg, 1977: ch. 4). This paper explores the relationship between sense of well-being and a number of such political phenomena in Ghana in 1970 and 1975. Although there is a sizeable literature on well-being in western nations, there has been very little research on this subject elsewhere. Most of what we know or think is known about well-being and politics in Africa is based on extrapolations from studies of western political systems or on conventional wisdom about the role of well-being in African politics. This study is designed to investigate well-being as perceived by the individual in Ghana. The distribution of perceptions of well-being within the sample population will be looked at, views about the relationship of national government to well-being will be explored, and its relationship to political attitudes, attachments, behavior, and evaluation of government will be examined.

The study is based on two systematic surveys carried out by the author in 1970 and 1975 in six Ghanaian communities (see Appendix for description of the sample). The two surveys are based on random samples carried out in the same sample areas. Although this was not a national survey, a number of characteristics of the sample populations approximate that shown in the national census allowing cautious speculation about the Ghanaian populace. The major focus of this paper is on change over time and in this sense the data are comparable, randomly selected, and based on identical interview schedules (with a few exceptions which are noted). This is, sadly, one of the few cases of replication and of longitudinal analysis in Africa.

The link between resource scarcity and group demands is apparent to many observers. Thus, David Easton (1957: 387) remarks: “The reason why a political system emerges in a society at all … is that demands are being made by persons or groups in the society that cannot all be fully satisfied. In all societies one fact dominates political life: scarcity prevails with regard to most of the valued things.” In modern Ghana, not only are desired resources in short supply generally, but the inherited subregional inequalities add a further dimension to collective demands for the allocation of goods and services by central government authorities. Longstanding subregional inequalities in amenities and services heighten and complicate competition over scarce resources. The resulting demands on the part of the relatively disadvantaged subregions therefore emerge as a dynamic aspect in the process of determining public policy.

Ten years after the exile of Kwame Nkrumah from Ghana, Ghanaians find themselves celebrating a renaissance of Nkrumahism. This is happening after flirtations with two military regimes, an intervening civilian regime, and a current interest in constructing a future Union Government allowing for more political participation by including more civilian groups into the decisional process. There are few programmatic indications that Nkrumah's notions of “scientific socialism” have been incorporated by recent regimes. Yet Nkrumah himself is revered as a hero in Ghanaian culture.

For ten years following Ghana's independence in 1957, Ghanaians were subject to Nkrumah's prolific verbal output concerning “scientific socialism,” consciencism, and Pan-Africanism. The meanings attached to these concepts by Nkrumah, and by his followers, however, remain somewhat ambiguous. This ambiguity is understandable given the fact that Nkrumah's often contradictory writings on the subject of socialism were devoid of the rigor which scholars often associate with the ideology. As derived from Engels, socialism is scientific in the sense that there are laws of history which move the proletariat to challenge the bourgeois order and instigate a successful revolution. Moreover, the forces of production and distribution should ultimately rest with the state which orders the economy in such a way that the profits of industrial enterprise are reinvested in state enterprises, and do not accrue to individuals.

One of the stated aims of the coup of 13 January 1972 was the restoration of a consultative democracy responsive to the needs of the people of Ghana. Thus the NRC (and later the SMC) government led by Colonel (now General) I. K. Acheampong from its inception was committed to a return to some form of democratic government at an unspecified future date. Demands for a return to civilian government started being voiced again in 1974 when it became apparent that, despite its initial appearance of decisive action (particularly in the matter of foreign debts), the NRC government was no more able to solve pressing economic problems than any other post-independence government had been. In the face of demands from the professional sector that civilian rule be restored by 1 July 1977, in January 1977, General Acheampong established a council to discuss what form a new civilian government should take. On 1 July 1977, faced with a strike by several professional groups, General Acheampong pledged to return Ghana to civilian rule on 1 July 1979, the format of civilian government to be determined on the basis of a referendum fixed for 30 March 1978, to be followed by a constitutional commission that would work out the details of the constitutional form chosen by the people in the referendum.

It hardly came as a surprise that Ghana's Supreme Military Council obtained, or at least claimed that it had received, the result it wanted at the 30 March 1978 referendum: endorsement of its proposal for Union Government (see Appendix B). In Ghana's unpredictable political climate, the SMC had spared no effort to make the outcome of the referendum as predictable as possible.

The July 1977 decision to call a national referendum was the result of pressures brought to bear on the SMC during the fall of 1976 and the spring of 1977. Widespread dissatisfaction with the management of the economy, coupled with indications that the military intended to remain in power for an indeterminate period led to student strikes which culminated in the 23 June 1977 demand by the Association of Recognized Professional Bodies (ARPB) that the government resign immediately (Resolution …). The ARPB's ultimatum was rejected out of hand by General Acheampong in his dawn broadcast of 1 July 1977. The ensuing general strike of lawyers, doctors, engineers, and other professionals almost paralyzed the country, and the SMC was virtually forced to announce a schedule for the return to civilian rule (see Appendix B). The first phase of the process was to culminate in the March 1978 referendum.

Undoubtedly, the SMC would have preferred a quiet, carefully controlled plebiscite, or more simply, a constitution octroyee which outlawed political parties and permitted, if the SMC thought it necessary, a reversion to full military control. As previous Ghanaian regimes have discovered to their peril, however, it is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to prevent Ghanaians from openly and forcefully expressing themselves on important political issues. Thus, it was also not surprising that the decision to conduct a referendum released forces pent-up since the NRC took power in 1972.

An interest in the spatial organization of society has long been the province of geographers. Recently, scholars in other fields have been applying geographical models and concepts in their own studies. (See, for example, Howard (1976) on the usefulness of spatial analysis in African economic history.) The books under review indicate various ways in which geographical concepts of space and region are currendy being used. That by geographers Obudho and Waller represents an application of the concept of region to the problems of development planning. The two volumes edited by Smith, on the other hand, utilize spatial frameworks in a very broad way to examine many aspects of social and economic systems.

Smith's book indicates the current directions of a group of scholars—mainly anthropologists—who began by studying periodic marketing systems as spatial systems and who have now moved on to the examination of other aspects of social systems from a spatial perspective. Much of their work was stimulated by Skinner's (1964–65) work on marketing systems in China; Skinner's work in turn was based on models from economic geography, primarily central-place models. The first of the volumes, Economic Systems, is primarily concerned with marketing systems, while the second, Social Systems, considers institutions such as political, religious, and kinship systems.