The political openings that took place in the early 1990s, followed by a wave of elections across Africa, were widely interpreted as the beginning of a transition to democracy. Few persons knowledgeable about the continent assumed that this process would be easy. The obstacles, it was recognised, were legion, ranging from the nature of the existing régimes to the difficult economic circumstances confronted by virtually all countries. Nevertheless, the overall assessment remained optimistic. Slowly, imperfectly, with set-backs, Africa would move in the direction of democracy, and western liberal democracy at that.

It is time to reassess the validity of such expectations, not least since much of what has happened in Africa on the political front during the past five years could easily be interpreted as indicating the persistence of authoritarianism, the spread of ethnic conflict, or the continuation of a process of state disintegration. Indeed, there is a real danger that attempts to analyse how close African countries are coming to democracy, or how far away they remain, may in the end blind us to the real significance of the available data. Hence the need to re-examine why the idea that Africa is experiencing a democratic transition, however, imperfect, gained ground.

Non-governmental organisations (NGOs) have a long history of promoting grass-roots membership organisations, but have made few attempts to document this experience in ways that are accessible to external audiences. Academic analysis has partially filled this gap by identifying the characteristics of strong organisations, but has had relatively little to say about how they develop, or the specific rôle which NGOs might play in helping them to emerge. This issue has recently assumed greater importance in the light both of donor wishes to strengthen civil society, and the more specific concerns of NGOs to scale-up their activities by helping the organisations with which they work to become more self-sufficient.

This article is drawn from a wider study which explores the strategies employed by NGOs in promoting membership organisations, and asks whether this can be done in ways which are both broadly equitable and reasonably cost-effective. It describes a programme mounted by the pan-African NGO consortium known as ACORD (Agency for Co-operation and Research in Development) to initiate a process of institutional development in the Nebbi District of Uganda. The case is of particular interest as an example of an attempt to introduce new institutions into a highly volatile environment, and provides a basis for arriving at a number of more general propositions about good practice.

Water is scarce yet vital in Botswana's desert climate. As one of only two perennial surface sources, the Okavango Delta has often been seen by the Government and international donors as under-utilised and ripe for development. Hence the major project proposed in the early 1980s by the Department of Water Affairs (DWA), albeit suspended, nearly a decade later, after both local and global protests. This article examines how a small group of state bureaucrats was able to control the decision-making process, and discusses the implications of this hegemony. It is based on research undertaken in Botswana during 1991–3 that included over 150 interviews with the members of a wide range of organisations in the public, parastatal, and private sectors.

It has become increasingly evident that a conceptual framework of ethnicity is being employed by analysts for understanding the continent as the discrediting of African nationalism proceeds apace. Indeed, it has become a commonplace to assert that part of this project's failure can be put down to its notorious disregard for indigenous awareness. ‘In order to overcome ethnic differences exploited by colonial powers’, according to Alan Fowler, ‘many African governments systematically negated traditional social organisations in the belief that they ‘reinforced an unwanted ethnic awareness and, through their values and practices, acted as barriers to rapid growth and modernisation’. The conversion to a positive view of tribalism by Basil Davidson has served as something of a watershed. In 1992 he wrote that while modern African nationalism amounted to a western imposition, ‘The history of precolonial tribalism ... was in every objective sense a history of nationalism’.

After a 14-year struggle the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF) took control of the entire northern Ethiopian province of Tigray in 1989. But it was not until two years later, when the TPLF-led Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) captured power in Addis Ababa, that plans to rehabilitate and develop the badly weakened provincial economy could proceed in an environment of peace. This meant that the TPLF in Tigray could for the first time begin to utilise the resources of the central state for its programmes. Since 1991 the post-revolutionary régime has been attempting to stabilise the rural economy, repair and strengthen the province's infrastructure, create a climate in which private investment can flourish, and begin the process of establishing an industrial base to meet the rising demands of off-farm labour.

This article largely contrasts conditions observed in Tigray during the first half of 1993 and those existing in December 1995 and 1996, when my primary objectives were to update my doctoral study of the history of the Tigrayan revolution for publication, and to gauge – with the help of subsequent interviews in Ethiopia – some of the changes that had taken place in the province during that three-year interval.

Soon after midnight in early January 1994, an Air Afrique cargo jet took off from the airport of Bobo-Dioulasso in Burkina Faso. It roared north over the sleeping city carrying 15 tons of première-qualité, extra-fine green beans bound for Paris. Within several hours, the beans would be unloaded and trucked to the sprawling wholesale docks of Rungis, on the outskirts of the French capital, and put up for sale to restaurant and supermarket buyers from throughout Europe. The jet's blast marked the first time in over a decade that a cargo flight had carried the region's garden produce overseas. It represented, perhaps, the opening of an isolated and stagnant economy, the linking of local producers to the global market. It was exactly the kind of ‘take-off’ the World Bank hoped for from this poor but deadly earnest country when it began a structural adjustment loan programme in Burkina Faso in 1991.

The months of negotiations and labour preceding this landmark flight, however, had hardly gone as smoothly as the lift-off from the darkened savannah runway. Indeed, the whole enterprise was so fraught with mishap that simply the arrival of that first shipment in Europe mattered more, especially to those who initiated the ‘green bean scheme’, than the fact that it made no money.

In the flourish of literature now attempting to explain transitions to democracy in sub-Saharan Africa a curious consensus has emerged concerning the relative importance of internal and external causes. It is almost uniformly maintained that the real causes were internal, and that international factors were merely supportive. Accordingly, John Wiseman claims in the introduction to his recently edited volume on democratic reform that changes in the global political environment ‘made things marginally less difficult for those in Africa seeking to democratise their political systems and marginally more difficult for those (mainly incumbent authoritarian elites) who sought to prevent them from doing so’, emphasis added.

This article takes issue with such reductionism of politics to the domestic level. Internal and external causes are interlinked and intertwined in such complex ways that what at first glance appears to be internal may on closer inspection reveal strong external influences. The attempt to determine the relative importance of each is thus deemed futile and prone to ideological bias. The assertion that exogenous factors are only inspirational and supportive implies that the international financial institutions (IFIs) and bilateral donors are neutral and disinterested observers of current events, rather than active and ideologically motivated participants in global and national debates and developments.

Le Hasard et l':histoire: entretiens avec Belaïd Abdesselam, Vols. I and II, by Mahfoud Bennoune and Ali El-Kenz Réghaïa, ENAG/Éditions, 1990. Pp. 471 & 409. Dinars 120 & 115 paperback.

Stratégies de développement pour l'Algérie: défis et enjeux by Abdelhamid Brahimi Paris, Éditions économica, 1991. Pp. 425. Also published by Éditions Dahlab, 1991, as the 2nd. edn. of L'Economie algerienne.

Inflation, dévaluation, marginalisation by Mourad Benachenhou Algiers, Dar Ech'rifa, 1993. Pp. 155.

Algérie: la libération inachevée by Ghazi Hidouci Paris, La Découverte, 1995. Pp. 303. FF155 paperback.

Le Mal algérien: économie politique d'une transition inachevée by Smail Goumeziane Paris, Fayard, 1994. Pp. 307. FF130 paperback.