In the 1980s, a financial crisis engulfed Southern Africa. Widespread evidence exposed the way that inherited institutional structures and technologies – reinforced by International Monetary Fund (I.M.F.) conditionality – had reproduced the region's poverty and vulnerability.1 To overcome the crisis requires an alternative strategy built on theoretical foundations fundamentally different from the neo-classical models that underpin the ‘restructuring’ programmes of the I.M.F. and World Bank. The state must play a positive interventionist rôle.

The Approach of the Reagan Administration towards the Third World was criticised as too simply anti-communist: a growing ‘predisposition toward globalism’,1 so it was claimed, led to a ‘Sovietcentric orientation’,2 an ‘obsession with the Soviet Union’,3 which obscured regional complexities.4 But American decisions about what actions to take in Southern Africa during the 1980s were part of a surprisingly effective strategy that often ignored Reagan's doctrine of aid to anti-communist resistance. That strategy was shaped by several hands, and the President's were not even the most important.

Over the last decade or so scholars in the social sciences have been reassessing works on the rise of nationalism in Africa published in the 1960s and early 1970s. These earlier studies, written during the euphoria following independence and the spread of liberation ideology, regarded the transfer of power to the African élite as signalling the end of subjugation to European control and the emergence of modern African states.1 This revision focused on the post-colonial state and its rôle as a mediator between competing groups for power and the allocation of resources.2 Since then, the trend has generated a revival in understanding ethnicity which is again seen as a major force in most of the crises which have troubled Africa.

After Many years of exhortations, it is now widely claimed that African governments are beginning to implement the reforms needed to fundamentally alter their economies.1 Zimbabwe, after achieving independence 15 years later than most of the continent, has been singled out as a country that immdiately recognised the lessons of African economic failures and therefore adopted more rational policies.2 However, efforts to rationalise the public sector have often proceeded much slower than other reforms designed to reverse ‘the trend of chronic economic decline’, notably by reducing over-valued currencies, increasing agricultural prices, and lowering real urban wages.3 Even Zimbabwe, despite its record of relatively good economic management, has not been able to adopt a package of policies which would resolve the severe problems of its parastatals, namely those companies/corporations/other organisations owned by the state that operate outside the formal governmental apparatus. In Zimbabwe specifically and in Africa generally, the political imperatives of leaders have often prevented the adoption, let alone the implementation of comprehensive public-sector reforms.

While most African states are struggling hard to correct the severe imbalances in their economies that have been created, in part, by declining agricultural exports and rising food imports, recent evidence from Zimbabwe suggests that growth is being fuelled by the strong performance of the agricultural sector. In September 1988, it was expected that the value of crop production for 1988–9 would rise by 40 per cent over the previous year, contributing strongly to a real increase in the gross domestic product (G.D.P) of 5–6 per cent.1 The great foreign-exchange earners, tobacco and cotton, broke previous output records and achieved very favourable prices on the world market as well, and the maize harvest also improved significantly.

Shortly after assuming office as Head of State in August 1985, President Ibrahim Babangida inaugurated a 17-member Political Bureau, headed by Professor Sylvanus Cookey, whose terms of reference included ‘The review of Nigeria's political history, identifying the basic problems which led to failure in the past and suggesting ways of resolving and coping with these problems’.1 One of the most controversial of the Bureau's proposals was that the number of political parties should be limited to two in order to ensure that Nigeria's future politics would be based on principles and not ethnicity.2 The Government accepted this recommendation as part of the programme for a return to civilian rule in 1992, and has decided that two parties will be registered in 1989.3

This short article examines the present land transport situation in tropical Africa, and discusses the severe economic constraints facing continuation of even the present low levels of vehicular activity. In addition, some new approaches to both passengers and freight are suggested in line with existing difficulties.

As defined here, tropical Africa includes all the countries in the continent except Morocco, Algeria, Libya, Tunisia, and Egypt, as well as South Africa and Namibia. In 1984, the population was just over 400 million, but is expected to reach about 650 million by the year 2000.1 Overall, the region is characterised by low levels of income per head, a high proportion of the workforce employed in agriculture (over 50 per cent everywhere), and correspondingly low levels of urbanisation. Given the great differences between the region and the industralised countries, it is possinle that transport policies appropriate to the West may not be particularly relevent.

The fact that Sierra Leone is one of Africa's little-known states is an acknowledgement of its marginalisation and reversal of fortunes since independence from Britain in 1961. But this observation is also a reminder that under colonial rule, Sierra Leone had received considerable notoriety for several reasons: an important naval base, commercial centre, and seaport; a hot-bed of political agitation and perennial challenge to British authority; and a centre of education – the so-called ‘Athens of West Africa’.1 In more recent times, however, Sierra Leone jas not caught the attention of international commentators and the world press. It has not achieved the strategic or international political significance of such major African states as Algeria, Côte d'Ivoire, Egypt, Nigeria, Zambia, or Zimbabwe. And looking back to the 1950s and 1960s, it was not led to independence by the charismatic persona of a Kwame Nkrumah, who hoped to achieve the rapid transformation of Ghana to a modern industrial economy and society, ot by a romantic like Julius Nyerere, who hoped to turn Tanzanian peasants into citizens of modern communes.

During a visit to Kenya in June 1987, Yitzhak Shamir defended Israel's relations with Pretoria by claiming that everyone knows ‘our only interest in ties with South Africa is the existence there of a large Jewish community’. Although most analysts might claim that pragmatism and realpolitik are the sole foundations for Israeli–South African ties, the Prime Minister's explanation is in line with similar authoritative statements made in the past, namely: that Israel's national concerns in its relations with South Africa have been influenced by the collective interests of the latter's Jewish population.