Equity is complementary to the pursuit of long-term prosperity. Greater equity is doubly good for poverty reduction. It tends to favour sustained overall development, and it delivers increased opportunities to the poorest groups in a society. (François Bourguignon, speech at the launching of the World Development Report, 2006)

This paper studies the Rwandan case to address some of the challenges and pitfalls in defining pro-poor strategies. The paper first looks at the danger of a purely growth-led development focus (as in Rwanda's first PRSP), and evaluates the extent to which the agricultural sector has been a pro-poor growth engine. It then studies Rwanda's current rural policies, which aim to modernise and ‘professionalise’ the rural sector. There is a high risk that these rural policy measures will be at the expense of the large mass of small-scale peasants. This paper stresses that the real challenge to transform the rural sector into a true pro-poor growth engine will be to value and incorporate the capacity and potential of small-scale ‘non-professional’ peasants into the core strategies for rural development. The lessons drawn from the Rwandan case should inspire policy makers and international donors worldwide to shift their focus away from a purely output-led logic towards distribution-oriented rural development policies. In other words, the challenge is to reconcile efficiency in creating economic growth with equity, and perhaps, to put equity first.

Liberian ex-combatants are generally seen as uprooted urban youths with a history of unemployment, underemployment and idleness. The data that form the basis of this article suggest another picture. What caused the Liberian youth to fight were mainly security concerns, suggesting that the effects of ‘idleness’ and ‘unemployment’ are overstated with regards to people joining armed groups. They went to school, worked and lived with parents or close relatives prior to the war. They are not Mkandawire's (2002) uprooted urban youths or Abdullah's (1998) ‘lumpens’. They lived quite ordinary Liberian lives, and based their decision on whether to join an armed group on the security predicament that they believed that they and their families were facing. This suggest that disarmament, demobilisation, reintegration and rehabilitation approaches are in need of re-thinking that links them more directly to social cohesion and societal security.

During the last years the DRC has made itself known in the world for terrible acts of violence committed by armed men – militia and the regular army – against the civilian population. The voices of the soldiers and combatants have so far been absent in the accounts of this violence. This silence is problematic, both because it makes it harder to understand such violence, but also because it reinforces stereotypes of African warriors as primitive and anarchic, driven by innate violence and tribal hatred. Enquiry into the particular discursive as well as material circumstances of the armed conflict in the DRC, which might better redress the complex and interrelated context in which ‘people in uniforms’ commit violence, is consequently impeded. The story we recount here emerges from soldiers within the main perpetrator of violence in the DRC today: the Integrated Armed Forces. The soldiers' interview texts challenge the dominant representation of soldiers and combatants in the DRC. The soldiers made sense of the prevalence of violence (in which they too had participated) in several interrelated ways, none of which reflected any expression of ‘natural’ (if dormant) violent tendencies, hatred or vengefulness for the enemy.

This article addresses the topic of the recent boom in mobile phones in Burkina Faso. Mobile phones are placed in the theoretical framework of domestication and, more particularly, of cultural appropriation. They are therefore regarded not only as devices to communicate, but also as material objects which cause economic problems and may affect social relations through the uneven disposition over such objects. As in many other African countries, the growth of mobile phone usage in Burkina Faso is higher than in Western countries, reflecting the particular appreciation of these devices. This development contrasts sharply with the difficult economic situation of many of the users. This context may explain some particular patterns of usage, and is discussed against the background of the communication principles ruling in societies still adequately described as ‘oral societies’. Domestication leads to a partial usage of the devices' technical possibilities. Nevertheless, it transforms mobile phones into socially meaningful means of communication.

In this article Eritrea is discussed as a developmental state based on biopolitics. Taking the example of higher education, it is shown how the biopolitical project as applied to education policies and human resource development at first succeeded in terms of reinforcing personal nationalism, while at the same time opening up spaces for the fulfilment of personal aspirations. Of late, however, the biopolitical project has turned ‘pernicious’ and has become a tool of oppression. These developments, if they are to continue, will not only jeopardise the state's developmental agenda but may lead to the Eritrean polity in its present form becoming unviable.

Major institutional reforms are currently under way to improve the performance of the public water sector in Kenya. However, a historical perspective is needed in order to achieve sustainable improvements that will also benefit the urban poor. This article seeks to provide such a perspective, applying a cross-disciplinary and socio-technical approach to urban water supply over the last century, in which institutions, organisations and technology are seen to interact with political, economic and demographic processes. Despite a series of reforms over the years, the socio-technical structure of the urban water sector in Kenya has shown a remarkable stability since the 1920s, and into the 1980s. However, the sustainability of the public service systems has been eroded since independence, due to changes in the institutional framework surrounding the systems, while exclusive standards and technological choices have essentially been preserved from the colonial era. Current sector reform must create incentives for addressing technology choices and service standards in order to provide public water services also for the urban poor.