Conservation non-governmental organisations (NGOs) have excited a great deal of comment and debate, generally quite divided, in diverse journals. Some advocate them as forces for good, others decry their clumsy dealings with rural peoples and the impoverishment their activities can cause. The debate suffers in two ways. First, it ignores a large parallel literature about the work of development NGOs. Second, there is a paucity of general knowledge about the state of the conservation NGO sector. We do not know where it works, what the main players are doing, or much at all about the extent or activities of the smaller conservation organisations. We do not know how much money the sector spends. In this paper we first briefly outline why work on development NGOs should be applied to conservation NGOs, and then offer an overview of the sector's activities based on a survey of over 280 organisations. We describe some of the basic contours of these activities, and reflect on the implications of our findings for existing writings about conservation NGOs and future research.

This paper examines the evolution of the Ethiopian cut flower industry, illustrating how rapidly a potential comparative advantage can be realised. But the question is to what extent a country benefits from this in the long run, if foreign direct investment is the principal driving force. Will the new industry become an enclave, or will it be accompanied by a process of building local capabilities, a process which we denominate endogenisation? A value chain framework is used to analyse the industry and to develop a number of indicators on the development direction. The cut flower industry in Ethiopia is characterised by a dominant role of Dutch foreign investors, Dutch trade auctions which dominate the export trade, and the Dutch development cooperation which plays an important role in the development of the sector. This raises the question to what extent this triple role of the Dutch contributes to endogenisation or to enclave formation.

We conclude that endogenisation is a two-way process. It depends both on the degree to which FDI has an interest to draw on domestic firms, enter into relationships and share technologies; and on the interest and ability of domestic firms to take up such opportunities, and on the creation of supporting institutions and infrastructures to make this take-up possible. The latter rests largely with government. Endogenisation is taking place to some extent and at a very incipient stage. Dutch FDI has little direct interest to share technologies, but there is joint collective action on non-core activities, notably transport, which constitutes the largest item in the total cost. Dutch cooperative flower auctions are an open and vital trade channel giving Ethiopian flower growers access to international markets. The Ethiopian government has promoted the industry, making available land and low cost finance; and with the assistance of Dutch bilateral cooperation it is creating trade standards and supporting knowledge institutions to train skilled staff. The main challenge is Ethiopian entrepreneurship: many are attracted by the high growth and profitability of the industry and can run a business in Ethiopia, but lack the technical competence to meet growing competition in the industry.

This paper examines Ghana's struggle to create a pluralistic nationality that guarantees universal rights to all citizens, including people of foreign origin. A major recipient of colonial labour migrants who considered themselves citizens of Ghana at the time of independence, Ghana provides an excellent case study for exploring the ambiguities and malleability of post-colonial citizenship. Analysing the various ways in which Ghanaian politicians have struggled to redefine the nationality status of descendants of migrants from other parts of West Africa since independence, I argue that the politicisation of Ghana's post-colonial citizenship stems not only from the country's colonial legacy, but also from struggles over diminishing economic resources between the late 1960s and early 1980s that led some indigenous Ghanaians to declare the non-autochthonous population as ‘aliens’ who should be excluded from the benefits of citizenship. Constitutional provisions that recognised citizenship by birth were contested by popular perceptions that only the autochthonous are ‘true’ citizens and are thus the only legitimate beneficiaries of political and economic rights.

Ghana's 2008 election has been hailed by national and international observers as a model for Africa. The perception of success has prevailed despite persistent concerns about an inflated voters' register and electoral fraud perpetrated by the two major parties, the NPP and NDC, in their strongholds in the Ashanti and Volta Regions respectively. Electoral malpractice in Ghana's virtual two-party system could acquire a decisive importance as a ‘third force’, representing an even more important factor than the smaller opposition parties. Unfortunate diplomatic and technocratic biases in election monitoring, combined with a reluctance on the part of the responsible authorities to investigate what appears to be a long history of fraudulent voting, amounts to a dangerous time bomb of unresolved conflict which could detonate in future elections.

How African politicians, especially legislators, behave on a daily basis is still largely unknown. This article gives a unique empirical account of the daily accountability pressures and the strategies that Members of Parliament (MPs) in Ghana employ in responding to the demands that they face. While literature on political clientelism focuses on explanatory factors like lack of political credibility, political machines capable of effective monitoring, autonomy of brokers, high levels of poverty, and political competiveness, the role of institutions has been overlooked. While the existing literature suggests that political clientelism is an optimal strategy in the context of weak institutions, the present analysis finds that the institution of the office of Member of Parliament in Ghana is strong, but shaped by informal norms in ways that favour the provision of private goods in clientelistic networks. The analysis also points to theoretical lessons on how political clientelism can endogenously undermine the conditions for its own existence.

This article examines the role of bilateral donors and conditional aid in Mozambique's successful post-war peace process. The literature on peacebuilding has tended to privilege the role of UN missions in explaining the outcomes of post-civil war peace processes. The important role that bilateral donors may play in determining these outcomes has not been thoroughly studied. In Mozambique, donors with country experience, knowledge of domestic political actors and constraints, and a shared commitment to a successful outcome, were indispensable to the success of the peace process. The article details this engagement, arguing that it was not UNOMOZ alone, but UNOMOZ as supported by the flexible responses of these donors, that provided an effective third-party guarantee of the peace agreement in Mozambique. It briefly discusses the broader implications of this finding for understanding international peacebuilding efforts.