There was a close and continuing relationship between the press and nationalist politics in colonial British West Africa which acquired a new dynamic towards the end of World War II. As the imperial impluse faltered, a younger, more radical African leadership appeared which saw newspapers as a means of carrying their message to a wider political class than that addressed by the relatively conservative pioneers. It had for some time been true that ‘The spontaneous expression of grievances, against this tax or that bureaucratic decision, was built up by a handful of…journalists into a generalized protest against the fact of British authority.’1 Now movers and shakers like Nnamdi Azikiwe in Nigeria and Kwame Nkrumah in the Gold Coast began to use the press in a frontal assault on their colonial régimes. Couched in terms ‘verging on joyful vituperation’, newspapers reached out beyond the elite of the cities to rural opinion leaders and the urban poor.2

The brutal civil war that engulfed Liberia, following Charles Taylor's invasion in December 1989, has left an indelible mark in the history of this West African state. The six-year old struggle led to the collapse of what was already an embattled economy; to the almost complete destruction of physical infrastructure built over a century and half of enterprise and oligarchic rule; to the killing, maiming, and displacement of more than 50 per cent of the country's estimated pre-war population of 2·5 million; and to an unprecedented regional initiative to help resolve the crisis. Five years after the Economic Community of West African States (Ecowas) intervened with a Cease-fire Monitoring Group (Ecomog), an agreement that was quickly hailed as the best chance for peace in Liberia was signed in August 1995 in the Nigeriancapital, Abuja.

A Major thrust of structural adjustment in Ghana, as elsewhere in sub-Saharan Africa, is the promotion of the private sector coupled with the diminution of state-owned enterprises (SOEs).1 However, while these are sometimes undermined, as when shares are sold to private buyers or assets liquidated, their complete demise in the course of market reform is not always so clear cut. This is the case when SOEs are themselves restructured in order to become more market-oriented, or when they are charged with overseeing private sector development. In such a situation, state-based companies may lose a share of the market as they are forced to compete with private firms, while at the same time extending their purview as a regulator of a diversifying economic sector. The parastatals involved in Ghana's shea economy are characterised by this sort of ambivalent status.

Southern Africa has been at war since the 1960s. Following the capitulation of Ian Smith's Rhodesian Front and the acceptance of majority rule in Zimbabwe in 1980, the widely acknowledged root of most of the regional conflict has been South Africa. In defending apartheid, the régime in Pretoria engaged in a systematic campaign of destabilisation designed to bring its neighbours to heel. Military invasions, raids, sabotage, support of dissident groups, and assassinations were all part of the National Party (NP) Government's ‘total strategy’ that employed violence as a key element in its regional policy to achieve economic, military, and political hegemony. P. W. Botha during his tenure as Prime Minister and President, 1978–89, ‘politically modified the role’ of the South African Defence Force (SADF), as explained by Herbert Howe, and ‘created the military-dominated State Security Council, which effectively replaced the Cabinet and became the centre of national decision-making and official power in the 1980s’.1 The result was the militarisation of South African society and a swath of destruction across the southern part of the continent.

South African sports officials recently agreed to retain the Springbok as the emblem and sobriquet of the national rugby team. The decision, which followed protracted debate, raises important questions about the construction of national identity in the post-apartheid era. Why has this traditional symbol of white racial superiority been reprieved? And can Springbok rugby help mould all South Africa's peoples into a nation…with common feelings of loyalty and belonging to each other?

In July 1994, the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) and its armed wing, the Rwandan Patriotic Army (RPA),1 entered Kigali after routing the former régime and putting an end to months of genocide in which upwards of 500,000 had lost their lives. By August, another one to two million had fled from Rwanda. All in all, nearly half of the population had been killed, displaced inside the country, or was in exile.

The signing in Mauritius on 4 November 1995 of the amended fourth Lomé Convention, the aid and trade co-operation agreement between the European Union (EU) and the ACP Group of 70 African, Caribbean, and Pacific countries, brought the Mid-Term Review to its formal completion after protracted negotiations. Established in 1975, Lomé has long been the centre-piece of EU development assistance. In quantitative terms, the European Development Fund, the financial instrument of Lomé, has comprised the largest single portion of EU aid, averaging almost 45 per cent of all disbursements in recent years.1 Qualitatively, Lomé has been regarded as a model of North—South cooperation, mainly due to three special features: it was founded on the principles of equality, mutual respect, and interdependence; it is a legally binding contract negotiated between two sets of countries; and it involves ongoing dialogue through three joint institutions, the ACP—EU Council of Ministers, the Committee of Ambassadors, and the ‘parliamentary’ Joint Assembly.