Historially two salient features characterized the educational system. It was racially segregated and education for the African majority was largely for exploitation. In this paper, I will review the main features of the educational system in colonial Zimbabwe; the legacy of that system and what the new African Government proposes to do to change it to fit the needs of the new Zimbabwe. The 1899 Education Ordinance had set up two separate systems of education, one for Whites and the other for Blacks. The Ordinance left African education entirely in the hands of Christian missionaries with the government giving small grants to mission schools, provided that these schools were kept open for a minimum of four hours a day, of which not less than two hours were to be devoted to industrial training.

The word “black,” referring to Africans and people of African descent, is essentially a social and political construction, historically articulated and contemporarily invented and reinvented. As a social and political category, the meaning of “black” varies through contestation over the term. Yet, in its dominant use in white American and European culture, “black” refers to a static set of trans-cultural and essentialized racial characteristics. What is “black” is “not white.” As Frantz Fanon reminds us, “For not only must the black man be black; he must be black in relation to the white man.” Thus, “black” in relation to “white” is made different.

This article examines the effects of the post-2002 sociopolitical crisis in Abidjan, Côte d'Ivoire, on urban and peri-urban agriculture. Based on the case study of Abidjan, it argues for a conceptualization of sustainability that includes social as well as environmental dimensions and focuses on coping strategies of producers and merchants. In Abidjan, these strategies included internal migration within the city and its periphery, the use of organic fertilizers, and changes in market structure. The study illustrates how such strategies allowed producers to continue to supply produce to the market, despite the difficulties of war.

Introduction

While independence negotiations in the Congo were succinct, decolonization was a long and tortuous process. Indeed, in some respects it continues today, at least in the eyes of many people in eastern Congo, who feel that the formal demands of the colonial state are reflected in the informal impositions of the current state—and of neighboring states. Certainly many Congolese today feel that they have no adequate state structure to address their collective needs as a people, or to represent them on an international stage, or even to protect them from invasion, extraction, and occupation. Lacking effective state structures to protect their interests is not new: the colonial state in the Congo was marked by its intrusive presence in mobilizing labor, requiring crop production, and imposing taxes, among many other demands. But the character of life in the Congo today does not reflect anyone's vision of what independence would bring. At best, the last fifty years can be seen as a process of an aborted decolonization, and in some ways the violence now present in the Congo can be seen as the result of the unfulfilled aspirations of decolonization—or as the deferred violence of a decolonization gone awry (see Newbury 2009).

Why does collective resistance to democratic backsliding emerge in some contexts and not others? The experience of Malawi in 2011–2012 offers an opportunity to explore this question. In the face of attacks on democratic rights and institutions, large-scale popular and civil society mobilization challenged the government’s authoritarian tendencies. Drawing on collective action theories and comparing Malawi’s experience to that of Zambia, VonDoepp argues that Malawi’s resistance arose in an environment that was favorable to its emergence. Economic conditions had generated grievances against government, polarization remained modest, and civil society organizations benefitted from credibility and the presence of allies that facilitated activism.

Mawazo Nakadhilu is a former refugee born to a Namibian father and a Tanzanian mother near Kongwa, Tanzania, in 1972. Her biography illuminates how people have made homes in Southern African exile and post-exile contexts. Williams traces Mawazo’s story from her Tanzanian childhood through her forced removal to SWAPO’s Nyango camp to her “repatriation” to Namibia. In so doing, he highlights tensions that have not previously been addressed between exiled liberation movements and their members over family situations. Moreover, he stresses the value of biographical work focused on aspects of refugees’ lives that tend to be overlooked in nationalist discourse.

While salsa dance is popularly, and now globally, understood to be a symbol and expression of Latin identity, its adoption in non-Latin contexts has produced new meanings and cultural configurations. This is particularly the case in West Africa, where salsa is not only catching on among urban youth, but is becoming understood and approached from an African perspective. This article explores the ways in which salsa dance in Ghana serves as an innovative, embodied expression of a contemporary, pan-African identity. This is seen in Ghanaian dancers’ ideological reinvigoration of salsa’s African history and in the physical incorporation of local styles and presentations. Salsa in Ghana is recast through global networks, which in turn contributes to its global character while refashioning it to better suit local motives and desires. Thus, rather than emphasizing salsa’s African roots alone, dancers in Ghana equally engage with the complex routes of the dance.

In their study of personal rule in black Africa, Robert H. Jackson and Carl G. Rosberg maintain that the most important factors shaping contemporary African politics are the political skills, orientations, and leadership styles of African heads of state. They assert that African nations as yet lack well-developed political institutions and hold that in the absence of such institutions, the politics of personal rule are much more decisive in shaping the character and continuity of African regimes than any economic, social, or cultural factors. As a logical outcome of these contentions, Jackson and Rosberg assert that, far from being aberrations, succession crises are an integral feature of personalistic politics. Because of the decisive influence of the leader’s abilities and orientations, his death or removal may very well bring about fundamental changes in the regime over which he presided.

In Mozambique and Cape Verde, writing in Portuguese by African women has directly engaged political reconstruction by denouncing colonial oppression and embracing national freedom. This article addresses the recent history of Lusophone African women's fiction, which has been pivotal in inscribing the intimate arena of sexuality and motherhood into power relations and has also revealed ways in which the domain of violence intersects with private lives. By focusing on two novels that exemplify this trend, this article demonstrates links between the political and the intimate. It also shows how Lusophone African authors contribute to healing social conflict through their narratives, and draws some conclusions about gender relations in the Lusophone African experience and across the continent.

In Médina, a crowded, working-class neighborhood in Dakar, disciples’ associations (dahiras) from the Murid Islamic Brotherhood turn city streets into spaces of participatory musical performance on a nightly basis. While the Brotherhood is frequently cited for its industriousness, scholars have generally focused on the agricultural and commercial aspects of Murid labor, rather than the creative aspect. This article examines how the Brotherhood’s valuing of creative activities as labor mitigates against the stigma that many young men in Médina face when they are expected to be productive members of society while largely being excluded from the prevailing global economic order.

It is an article of faith in many African countries that education is not only a principle motor for development, but also an important instrument in assuring a more equitable distribution of wealth. In the eyes of policy-makers and the public at large, education and training permit a new generation to develop its talents and acquire the characteristics with which to find a well-deserved niche in the employment structure and thus contribute to the country's development. A central focus is on technical and vocational skills which are considered crucial in making people employable or otherwise enabling them to create their own work. Differences in jobs, along with differences in material and social rewards, are attributed to variations in skill levels. Ultimately these differences are associated with variation in ability and effort.

A more critical analysis of actual linkages between education, the labor market, and the employment structure reveals that often skill characteristics are rewarded differently, less because of variations in quality than because of structural conditions in the labor market. On the one hand important differences exist between enterprises which, depending on their mode of production, have a preference for specific worker characteristics and associate these with particular training arrangements. Different occupational or work-positions thus arise which carry diverging rewards and career prospects, even though the actual work done is similar. On the other hand there is ample evidence that factors like race, gender, and class strongly influence access to jobs, so that different social groups find their effective choices in the labor market severely restricted.

The purpose of this paper is to put on the scale of history the recommendations of what is commonly, though unofficially, referred to as the Ashby Commission and to weigh the importance of the Commission in the light of educational developments in Nigeria since September 1960 when the Commission submitted its report to the Nigerian Government. The end of 1971 made proposals in the report more than ten years old; and it is perhaps time for the historian to hazard an evaluation.

An initial problem is how to ascertain the specific role which the Commission's recommendations have played or failed to play in the developments which have taken place in Nigeria's educational scene within the last decade. Obviously it cannot be argued that the Commission's recommendations were the only determinants for the features of Nigeria's educational growth since the past ten years even when such features bear resemblances to the recommendations. The very fact that the report of the Commission was accepted and acted upon by the Nigerian Government is evidence enough that ideas contained in it were shared in Nigeria at that time by a larger number of people than the nine members on the Commission. That a considerable number of the proposals in the report have been adopted as part of the basis for educational planning in the country, in my thinking, owes more to this popularity than to any assumption of extraordinary wisdom on the part of the Ashby Commissioners, whose recommendations have in certain respects been anticipated by actual developments.

In a review published almost two decades ago, Hopkins (1976, 29) observed that business history had “no following in African Studies.” A decade later, however, the situation had changed remarkably, though the important subject of the relationship between the State and the business community in colonial Africa still required further in-depth analysis based on case studies. Hence, Hopkins (1987, 131) stressed the “need to evaluate the precise balance of…[the] forces (which underpin this relationship) by placing them in the context of a particular colony at a specific historical moment.” He called for “additional research” in the form of case studies, such as is presented below, to shed light on the dimensions of business-government relations under colonial rule.

Although scholars acknowledge the centrality of the State in the colonies (Smith 1979; Cooper 1981), they differ on the characterization of its role in the contest between indigenous and expatriate economic interests in the colonies. The conventional view (Crowder 1968, 305; Hopkins 1975, 189) depicts the colonial state as the “Great White Empire” which limited itself to mediating between these competing interests. The opposing school of thought (Rodney 1972; Smith 1979; Lonsdale and Berman 1979; 1980) posits that the colonial state was interventionist; it collaborated with expatriate business groups to exploit the colonies in the imperial interest. The weight of empirical evidence clearly tips the scales in favor of the latter position but the relationship between these dominant actors in the colonial economies was much more complex than this. As Berman (1990) has shown in a Kenyan case study, it was characterized by crisis and contradictions.

A recurrent theme in most recent studies of the military regimes in developing countries has been that similarities rather than differences in performance constitute the main feature of comparison between civilian and military regimes (McKinlay and Cohan, 1975, 1976; Jackman, 1976). This paper will examine this theme in the Ghanaian context where civilian and military regimes have frequently alternated. Contrary to many current theories, it suggests that differences do occur between civilian and military regimes in the same country. Differences between civilian and military regimes become more apparent if one looks at the policy goals articulated by the different Ghanaian regimes instead of comparing the performance results of these same regimes.

Simply stated, the major hypothesis of this paper is that the articulated policies and goals of a civilian government in a developing nation will differ economically, socially, politically and in terms of leadership style from the articulated goals of a military government in the same country. Furthermore, clarification of these articulated differences is important for the understanding of how different regimes perceive diemselves and approach the process of governing.

Recent literature has overlooked regime differences because of the similarity in the performance results of both civilian and military regimes. This paper suggests that regime differences do affect policy decisions and that as regimes get stronger they may again begin to affect performance results as well. Ghana appeared to be a good testing ground for showing differences between military and civilian regimes because it had experienced two civilian and two military regimes between 1957 and 1975. At the same time, many conditions and variables remained constant.

The countries of West Africa are currently undergoing massive urbanward migration. The process of growth and development which these countries have experienced in the colonial and post-colonial periods has been characterized by what geographers term the process of areal differentiation. In a spatial sense, employment opportunities and developmental changes have been extremely concentrated in a few areas, especially the cities; the rural areas, which dominate both in terms of population numbers and areal extent, have either undergone little growth or have felt the backwash effects of development elsewhere (Hirshman, 1958; Myrdal, 1957). This pattern has been variously described by geographers in terms of a “core and dependent periphery” (Friedman, 1966), “islands of development” (Hance et al., 1961), and “modernization surfaces” (Gould, 1970; Riddell, 1970; Soja, 1968). The essential geographic characteristic has been a spatial imbalance in both economic and welfare opportunities within these countries; employment and income opportunities, schools, health facilities, and clean piped water all tend to be concentrated in urban places, especially in the dominant primate cities. In this context, people, by moving to urban centers are making very rational decisions in the face of sharp and mounting urban-rural differentials and strongly limited rural opportunities.

The result of this process may be seen in the major cities of the region; everywhere the primate cities are increasing in size at incredible rates, so incredible that employment growth has been far outstripped by the expansion in urban population numbers. The outcome is what a recent issue of New African (October, 1978: 77) has termed “the inexorable rise of the unemployed.”

One of the most attractive and stimulating features about research in African history has been its eclecticism. Grounded particularly in the extensive and fertile field of social anthropology, Africanists have explored the implications of cultural relativism and the techniques of structural-functional analysis. Now, when some of the basic assumptions which have undergirded social sciences are being questioned, historians might re-examine their own orientations toward the men and societies about which they write.

Claude Lévi-Strauss has suggested that Westerners have been taught to identify subjectively with the “we” of the West, in subconscious opposition to the “other” of the rest of the world. European historians have often encompassed basic contradictions within the Western heritage by opposing that heritage, as a package, to historical experience elsewhere (Lévi-Strauss 1967, p. 258 f.n.). Intensive studies in local history throughout the world, on the other hand, can contribute immensely to reaching a fuller understanding of various ways in which men have related to one another. According to Lévi-Strauss,