Growth-friendly egalitarian distribution of land and smallholder farming notwithstanding, rural Ethiopia continues to face an ever-deepening livelihoods crisis. This paper synthesises the theoretical and empirical literature on Ethiopian and other comparable land institutions, in search of a coherent economic framework for pinpointing the roots of the problem and a menu for sensible policy options. It argues that land privatisation, as an integral part of a second agrarian reform, is necessary for attaining optimal farm sizes, thicker markets and robust industrialisation. A sordid history of political marginalisation of the peasantry makes freehold a superior alternative to more secure state leasehold. For a thoroughgoing agricultural transformation, however, sufficiency entails substantial increases in public investment that are designed to crowd-in private investment. Ethiopia's market-led agricultural development strategy must focus on boosting sustainable growth while ensuring subsistence for all.

The recent food crisis in Malawi has drawn stark attention to the failures of development policies over the last forty years to create wealth and develop a robust economy or the markets on which such an economy must depend. Current market liberalisation policies have achieved at best mixed success in addressing the generic problems inhibiting smallholder agricultural development: low returns to farmers' and service providers' investments, with high risks from natural shocks, price variations, coordination failure and opportunistic behaviour. Post-independence institutional mechanisms in Malawi were more successful in addressing some of these problems, in particular those of coordination risk, although external and internal difficulties led to increasing costs and declining effectiveness of these mechanisms, and to their collapse. They do provide, however, important lessons about the different failures of both market intervention and market liberalisation policies. We suggest and discuss a set of critical elements needed for economic development and wealth creation in poor rural areas, and propose four basic principles to guide the search for, and design and implementation of, effective rural development strategies and policies.

As elsewhere in the world, Africa has experienced a rise in litigation against transnational corporations for adverse environmental and social impact. Cape plc and RTZ have been sued in British courts for environmental damage and for breach of employment rights in Africa. Companies which sold products to South Africa's former apartheid regime, such as Fujitsu and IBM, are now being sued in US courts. Shell and Chevron are being sued in US courts for human rights abuses in Nigeria. At the same time, foreign firms have been successfully sued in African courts for social and environmental damage. This article outlines the main relevant court cases and attempts to assess the significance of this litigation. The discussion of litigation in this article is divided into three parts: court cases filed in English, American and African (mainly Nigerian) courts. This is followed by an explanation of the triggers of legal change, a discussion of the impact of litigation and the conclusion.

New leaders are often assumed to be better able to push for policy and sector reform because they are less tied in by established patronage networks. The article discusses this assumption by examining public sector reform in three East African countries under different leaders. It finds that while neo-patrimonialism is an important reason why public sector reform is often blocked, this paradigm cannot explain why some public sector reforms are actually implemented. New leaders are not always new brooms, and whether they are so depends as much on formal conditions, such as the existence of a political coalition, as on informal neo-patrimonial factors. The article also finds that in some cases, old brooms can sweep too. When succession is institutionalised, as the Tanzanian case shows, even a relatively weak leader can carry out reform effectively in his second term because he does not have to consider re-election.

Colonial processes continue to dominate many indigenous peoples' development programmes in countries around the world. This paper examines some of the underlying factors that contribute to continued failure in the implementation of the Remote Area Development Programme (RADP) in Botswana. It argues that the problem is not just failed implementation, but a more fundamental problem found in its philosophy, which suggests relentless colonialism. This paper is based on the empirical findings of a recent study in one Basarwa settlement in Botswana and draws on the practical experience of the author. Case examples from this study are used to unravel and illustrate embedded colonial practices of the RADP. Recommendations from the findings argue for the development of a ‘decolonising approach to development practice’ that may respond effectively to problems that resulted from relentless colonialism.

The Mano River basin area has become a conflict zone, in which state failure and violence in Liberia has spread to Sierra Leone and the forest region of Guinea. This article traces the origins of the conflicts to governance failures in all three states, and analyses their incorporation into a single conflict system, orchestrated especially through the entrepreneurial abilities and ambitions of Charles Taylor. Peace settlements negotiated to end the violence in Liberia and Sierra Leone failed, both because of the misconceived power-sharing formula that they embodied, and because they failed to take account of the complex linkages between conflicts across the basin area. The way forward lies in a multilevel basin-wide approach, which seeks to move beyond the failed formula of attempting to reconstitute state power, in favour of constructing institutions of accountable democratic governance at multiple levels from the local level to the regional level and beyond.