Commonsense suggests, and academic studies agree, that an ameliorative business environment enables entrepreneurial activity and boosts enterprise performance. This paper examines the business environment in southeast Nigeria, using two separate but complementary studies. Defined in terms of infrastructure, access to credit, bureaucratic practices and regulatory policy, the business environment in southeast Nigeria is stressful, and so has the capacity to limit entrepreneurial activity. This stressful business environment, which is a nationwide phenomenon, poses obstacles to Nigeria's industrial development.

The majority of southern Africa's inhabitants are economically marginalised. Robert W. Cox's macro-theory of change suggests that the marginalised are a social force that could bring about political economic transformation from below. Other contemporary analysts also stress the importance of focusing on the marginalised as a source of social instability. The paper uses empirical data from the Afrobarometer (Round 1, 1999–2000) to investigate whether this expectation for the marginalised to act as a catalyst for change in seven southern African states is substantiated. The analysis shows that the political protest potential of the marginalised is lower than that of the economically integrated, that they are more tolerant of authoritarian political alternatives, and that they are not significantly more economically dissatisfied than other groups. They are also inclined to accord somewhat more legitimacy to the state than are the integrated. Societies where large parts of the population are poor and marginalised are thus not necessarily more prone to political instability in the form of protest actions (violent or non-violent). Those who are justly concerned about equity and greater inclusiveness must take cognisance of the need to access the profile of the marginalised.

Mauritius' position within the global division of labour has changed considerably since the country gained its independence from Britain in 1968. This reflects change in the country's employment structure and a re-articulation within global chains of production. In a transformation led by the state, the formerly plantation-based economy has become a predominantly service- and manufacturing-based one. Mauritius has since set its sights on becoming a ‘cyber-island’, a regional hub for computer-based service provision. In charting this developmental route, the Mauritian state has had recourse to favourable socio-historical conditions. By highlighting these cultural influences on the globalisation of the Mauritian economy, this study affirms the value of analysing new divisions of labour as an aspect of the centuries-old process of globalisation.

The ongoing dynastic dispute in the kingdom of Dagbon in northern Ghana, which led to the killing of the king in 2002, remains unresolved and perhaps unresolvable. This paper updates Staniland's account of Dagomba politics from 1880 to 1974, and elaborates on the contradictions inherent in the social pluralism of a post-colonial state.

Elite corruption in Uganda constitutes an essential means of consolidating the present government in power. Political leaders have therefore shown little commitment to act to curb practices that could affect their political support. Instead, anti-corruption institutions have been influenced and controlled whenever they threatened to expose the corrupt ways of Uganda's state elites. Donors have also for many years been reluctant to use their substantial economic assistance to press the government to confront wrongdoing by state elites. They have not wanted to undermine a government which they have held up as one of the most successful in Africa in carrying out donor-sponsored economic reforms. But by giving large amounts of aid to a corrupt and quasi-authoritarian government, as well as being reticent in their public criticism of abuse of power and corruption, donors have abetted the actions of Uganda's leaders in weakening those bodies that could hold them responsible for abusing their public positions.

This article examines the livelihoods, portfolios and degree of deagrarianisation of the peasantry in three villages in northern Ghana. It argues that deagrarianisation should be seen as a process embedded in social change, bearing in mind the reversibility between farm and non-farm livelihood strategies used by households (reagrarianisation?). A livelihoods research approach involving qualitative household interviews and quantitative surveys in three villages in the Kassena-Nankani district constitute primary data for this study. Contrary to the deagrarianisation thesis, this study found that livelihood adaptation, implying both a diversification to new or secondary livelihood activities and changing the form, nature and content of the farm sector, characterised rural livelihoods in the area. The adaptation process involves not just a move from the farm to the non-farm sector, but also an intensification of efforts in the farm sector with seasonal diversification into other livelihood activities. The supposedly ‘booming non-farm sector’ is not entirely real, for reasons of marginalisation and exclusion of the poor peasantry, resulting from spatial, capital, infrastructural and market limitations.