The end of the cold war and of the bi-polar world order that shaped international relations over the past 50 years is forcing the Government of the United States to make dramatic policy changes that affect all parts of the globe. In Africa, it is also confronted by significant new developments on local, regional, and continent-wide levels. Of particular concern to American leaders are increasing internal demands for political democracy, and the intensification of ethnic and other conflicts which call national integrity into question. And, as the decision to send up to 30,000 marines, infantrymen, and other troops to Somalia proves, the U.S. Administration will not hesitate to use military force if authorised by the United Nations.

As the news of President Moussa Traoré's overthrow spread through Mali in March 1991, large crowds of people poured into the streets of Bamako, Segu, Kati, and other towns to exact retribution, culminating weeks of popular unrest. They went after prominent officials, military officers, and members of the wealthy élite that had prospered during the 23 years of Traoré's authoritarian rule. Customs and tax offices, traditional centres of high-level corruption and embezzlement, were systematically burned, their files taken of scattered, their staff put to flight. Big merchants, accused of collaborating with the ousted régime and benefiting from state favours, saw their shops emptied and destroyed. Though disorganised and apparently beyond the control of any leadership, the crowds carefully spared vital economic installations — but not the Bamako offices of the Caisse centrale de coopération économique (C.C.C.E.), seemingly tainted by its rôle as the main channel for French financial aid to the Government.

At a time when radical reforms are being implemented not only in Eastern Europe and Russia, but also in a number of ex-socialist economies in Africa, a review of an earlier wave of relevant financial changes in the post-independence era can be instructive. Previously, currency and banking arrangements were largely equivalent to those of the colonial powers, but in or about 1960 for most states, and as late as 1975 for the ex-Portuguese territories, real choices had to be made, and the ruling régimes chose a variety of quite divergent paths.

Côte D'Ivoire retains a central place in discussions on the development of African capitalism. Dramatic increases in agricultural and industrial production in the post-colonial period, coupled with the régime's unequivocally liberal and pro-capitalist discourse, contributed to the image of the Ivoirian state as aggressively promoting the expansion of local and foreign capital. By the late 1970s, it was clear that a select stratum of Ivoirians had amassed private fortunes in the industrial sector, agro-industry, and real estate. Less clear is the significance of this fact for understanding the internal dynamics and development trajectory of Ivoirian capitalism. The idea that the Ivoirian bourgeoisie diversified from its base in agriculture to become one of the most dynamic and influential business classes in sub-Saharan Africa remains plausible, but it evokes no consensus among analysts. Indeed, students of Ivoirian capitalism have been more inclined to argue that the state itself remains the main source of private fortunes, that local capital is thoroughly subordinated to foreign capital, and that indigenous business interests are ensnared in the clientelistic networks of the régime.

Most discussions about development in the periphery during the 1950s to the 1980s tended to fall into two main camps. Those in the so-called ‘dependency school’ maintained that indigenous bourgeoisies, unlike their metropolitan counterparts, could not lead the accumulation and transformation process while in junior partnership with foreign capital, which entrenched a system that transferred resources to metropolitan economies through, for example, the repatriation of profits, loyalty payments, and other licencing schemes. In other words, ‘real’ capitalism in the periphery was improbable, if not impossible. On the other hand, orthodox Marxists, liberal scholars, and, subsequently, ‘modified’ dependentistas, held that foreign investments in the periphery need not forestall the emergence of transforming social forces, and that development was likely to be accelerated if/when some elements of the domestic bourgeoisie participated in joint ventures with international capital.

The pace of conflict-resolution in the Third World has been nothing short of astounding since 1990. A whole array of low-intensity wars have been terminated. Some, such as in Nicaragua and El Salvador, had occupied pride of place in the reinvigorated test of wills between Moscow and Washington during the 1980s. Others, as in Kampuchea, were fuelled by the parallel rivalry between Moscow and Beijing, which both fed off and had an impact on the key dispute between the United States and the Soviet Union. A few, such as the ‘bush war’ in Namibia and the fighting in the Western Sahara, never became serious testing-grounds for the superpowers.

Namibia gained independence on 21 March 1990 after 106 years of colonial rule, first under Germany and then for 76 years under South Africa. As a consequence, throughout the greater part of the twentieth century the South West Africa/Namibia issue has been a constant item on the political and legal agendas of the international community, primary because of its ‘double-victim’ status as unwilling host to both imperial conquest and apartheid. Not unnaturally the independence process when it finally came, was widely hailed as a triumph for the United Nations and the ‘new political thinking’ that signalled the end of the cold war and the tentative (no more than that) beginnings of a ‘new world order’. Thus, sub-Sahara's last colony was also the first to proceed to self-determination unsullied by the need to define its existence in terms of superpower bipolarity. At the systemic level at least, the new state began with a virtual blank sheet, as well as a great deal of international goodwill and bonhomie.

The African continent currently faces severe political and economic crises. Massive debts, unpopular structural adjustment programmes (S.A.P.s), spiralling population growth, democratisation, and régime transformation are all testing national cohesion. Externally, the rapidly changing global environment, marked by the demise of the cold war and the continuing difficulties being experienced in Europe and the Middle East, also provides immense challenges to African policy-makers.

The Congo constituted the largest peace-keeping operation in the history of the United Nations, at least until recently, being only exceeded in scale by current actions in Yugoslavia, Cambodia, and Somalia. It included, during 1960–4, not only civilian advisers who helped run the central règime in Lèopoldiville, but also an army which, at full strength, comprised 19,000 troops. They intervened extensively in the politics of the country, thereby not conforming to the popular image of a passive ‘peace-keeping’ force.