This paper reviews empirical evidence concerning government errors of commission and omission in Africa. Seen in the context of international comparisons, how do African states measure up in the defensive functions of avoiding government excess? And how do they rate in the constructive functions of supplying public goods in response to demands from society? Regarding errors of commission, African states do not stand out as singularly prone to spend large shares of GNP, to employ high ratios of the population in bureaucratic jobs, or to own extensive state-owned enterprises. The data on errors of omission are more equivocal. African states do too little to prevent corruption, to protect civil and political rights, and to secure the legal environment for business. Yet, other developing regions display many of the same deficiencies. Overall, there is little empirical evidence of a sui generis African state.

This article provides an empirical test of a set of common theoretical assumptions concerning the relationship between political liberalisation, democratisation and ethnic conflict in Africa. The theory in question posits that liberalisation will result in short-term increases in ethnic conflict and that democratisation will be followed by a decrease in ethnic conflict. The article employs a cross-national and time sensitive data set to test this hypothesis in the context of contemporary sub-Saharan Africa. A compelling benefit of this methodology is that it allows for an explanation of variation in ethnic conflict both across states and over time.

The results indicate that the relationship between political liberalisation and ethnic conflict is the reverse of what the common assumptions would predict. Liberalisation has had an inverse relationship to ethnic conflict in sub-Saharan Africa between 1988 and 1997. Democratisation does not have the hypothesised effect even when lagged variables are employed. Structural variables as represented by GDP per capita and infant mortality rates are also systematically related to ethnic conflict. The author concludes that policy makers and analysts should continue to pursue both liberalisation and democratisation but should not neglect the central role of an adequate resource base in reducing ethnic conflict in Africa. Political liberalisation and democratic institutions, while providing some measure of relief, are by no means silver bullets for the difficult challenges posed by ethnic conflict in Africa.

The HIV/AIDS epidemic in South Africa is rapidly escalating, and its demographic and social impact is beginning to be felt. Although the damage to the macro-economy is projected to be slight, the consequences for affected households will be dire, and social indicators such as life expectancy will deteriorate dramatically. A large majority of South Africans are affiliated to Christian Churches, but this has not prevented the types of sexual behaviour that promote the epidemic. Based on research in a KwaZulu township, this article presents evidence on the level of extra- and pre-marital sex (EPMS) among members of different church types. It is argued that only Pentecostal churches significantly reduce EPMS among members; and that they achieve this by maintaining high levels of four crucial variables: indoctrination, religious experience, exclusion and socialisation.

The oil boom that lasted from the early 1970s until about 1983 spawned a phenomenal expansion of the Nigerian economy. Within a few years, oil revenues rose from 1·4 billion naira in 1973 to 12·86 billion naira by 1980. The oil boom led to the assigning of substantial sums of money to the cocoa industry of southwestern Nigeria. In spite of these investments, the cocoa industry stagnated during the oil boom years. Using oral interviews and archival documents, this paper examines structural change in the cocoa industry before the oil boom, and analyses the failure of government rehabilitation programmes during the oil boom years.

Policy discourses urging environmental rehabilitation, and rapid agricultural intensification for food self-sufficiency are firmly entrenched in Ethiopia. This paper examines the actor-networks and key policy spaces associated with the establishment of these discourses, taking natural resource management policies, and institutionalisation of the SG-2000 extension programme as case studies. An emergent, and potentially challenging, participatory natural resource management discourse is also identified. Contrasting the regions of Tigray and the Southern Nations, Nationalities and Peoples' Region (SNNPR), the paper concludes by arguing that, with decentralisation, differences between regional administrative and political cultures are key to policy processes, affecting the degree to which central policies reflect local concerns.

This comment is a reaction to an article dealing with farmer–herder relationships in Burkina Faso. It was argued that the relationship between Mossi and Fulbe is not deteriorating as has often been described in the so-called mainstream literature, and that the apparent open animosity between the two ethnic groups can partly be explained as a frontstage discourse with the aim of concealing personal wealth. The comment questions the use of historical data and the extent of secrecy in relation to personal wealth, and criticises the way in which the authors use terms like orthodoxy and mainstream to portray a broad set of ideas and theories.

Peter Oksen's comments on our paper about farmer–herdsman relations in Burkina Faso raise some interesting issues, notably regarding problems of interpretation of oral and archival sources and regarding the broader relevance of insights gained from an in-depth case study. Before answering straightforwardly to his objections, it is useful to clarify the misunderstanding which appears to exist about the meaning we attribute to ‘symbiosis’ and ‘symbiotic relations’. In our article we restricted the use of these terms to the way in which past relations between farmers and herdsmen, depicted as undifferentiated groups, are often represented. In discussions about the change of these relations, the emphasis is on progressive deterioration, again without attention paid to the possible existence of intra-group differentiation or of heterogeneity of relations across group boundaries. In this regard, it is remarkable that from colonial documents the interests of farmers and herdsmen emerge as equally irreconcilable as they are often considered today, and that, just as at present, competition over scarce natural resources constituted a major factor in inter-group relations. If we therefore reject ‘symbiosis’ as a correct description of formerly existing inter-group relations, we do not intend to imply that complementary links – such as those we describe for present-day relations between Mossi and Fulbe – did not exist in the past. A major aspect of our argument is that inter-group relations, whether past or present, cannot be subsumed under simplifying labels such as ‘symbiosis’. Neither can changes in these relations be understood in terms of uni-directionally processes of deterioration. Hence, present-day ‘complementary’ links across the ethnic boundary – established by certain, but not all, Mossi and Fulbe actors – are but a manifestation of the continued presence of diversity of relations, not of ‘symbiosis’. They point to mutual interests between certain actors belonging to different ethnic groups, not between the groups as such.