The post-colonial evolution of the Tanzanian economy has been strongly influenced by public policy, notably since the adoption of the Arusha Declaration in 1967,1 which established the following guidelines:

1. Self-reliance, albeit not self-sufficiency or autarky, since, at least in theory, selected foreign assistance may be the catalyst rather than the basis of development.

2. General social equality, aimed at regional, inter-personal, and rural—urban equity.

3. Socialist and co-operative economic activities, emphasising priority for rural development per se, with a bias towards co-operative work through communal ujamaa villages.

4. Public ownership and control of the ‘commanding heights’ of the economy.

On 21 March 1985, the twenty-fifth anniversary of the infamous Sharpevile incident, South African police, without provocation or warning, killed 20 unarmed black marchers at Langa in the Eastern Cape. Most were shot in the back. The outnumbered contingent of white and black police with two armoured vehicles, felt that the blacks, on their way to a funeral, would threaten the white township.

The repetition of this crudest form of state violence against politicised youngsters and workers, threatened by recession after two-and-a-half decades of anti-apartheid opposition, suggests that little has changed in the repression by a minority ré. The rulers command the guns and the subordinates are left wiht no alternative but to submit or perish.

The major problem of agriculture in Africa has been the low productivity of the traditional sector. The general thrust of development strategies to this point has been towards providing opportunities to small-holders and ‘encouraging agricultural development within existing peasant production units’. This essentially laissez-faire approach has emphasised the need to improve producer incentives and the necessary infrastructure, as well as to provide new crop varieties and modern agricultural inputs in general. Social scientists, in turn, have studied the general question of how farmers respond to changes in incentives and, especially, to the availability of technological innovations.

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.

When Zambia introduced weekly foreign-exchange auctions in October 1985 in order to determine the value of the kwacha vis-à-vis the dollar, together with other measures aiming at liberalising external and internal trade and at restructuring the pattern of production, they were widely acclaimed as a model for reforms elsewhere in the continent. The Economist praised Zambia for ‘taking one of the bravest economic gambles that any African country has taken’,1 implying that even in the view of liberal commentators the Government ran a considerable risk in trying to implement this reform programme. The new measures enabled Zambia to reach a fresh stand-by agreement with the International Monetary Fund in early 1986, the previous one having broken down in 1985 because the authorities failed to meet the I.M.F.'s economic targets.

The destructive impacts of oil exploitation on the natural environment, which the inhabitants of the Niger Delta depend on for their livelihood, pose major threats to food security. Environmental damage alienates the local people from their ancestral lands and erodes their sources of livelihood. This study examines the effect of oil exploitation on the local people's access to sufficient, safe and culturally acceptable food. The study is based on data collected through interviews with key informants and Focus Group Discussions in the oil communities in Bayelsa, Delta and Rivers States. Environmental and livelihood sustainability are intricately interconnected. They have significant implications for food security of people in the oil-rich region. Nutritional adequacy is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for food security because cultural acceptability is also required. This study addresses the interplay between these factors and their implications for household food security in the Niger Delta.

The article investigates the role of the International Organization for Migration (IOM) in the global migration regime against the backdrop of the European Union (EU) border externalisation process in Niger. Over the last few years, UN agencies have been considered an essential component of the EU strategy to prevent irregular migrants from reaching Europe. Drawing on qualitative research and ethnographic fieldwork, combining empirical observation with critical analysis, we explore the ‘humanitarian–security nexus’ by focusing on the IOM's ‘humanitarian borderwork’ under the financial umbrella of the Emergency Trust Fund for Africa (ETFA). While the results of purely securitarian measures in Niger may have been ‘disappointing’, the outsourcing of migration management through IOM balances the interests of the Nigerien government and the EU. By focusing on IOM humanitarian operations and assisted voluntary returns and reintegration (AVRR) programmes, the article shows the further expansion of European humanitarian borders into the heart of the Sahel, highlighting new interdiction practices, hidden forms of deportation, side effects and contestation from below.

Following the adoption of the Senegalese Law on Parity and the subsequent influx of women to the National Assembly, we saw a strong gendered polarisation of attitudes towards women as political leaders among the Senegalese population. This study explores whether similar attitudinal changes are found among political elites in the Senegalese National Assembly. Theory suggests that an increase in the number of women elected to legislatures (‘descriptive representation’) will challenge people's perceptions of politics as a male domain and strengthen belief in women's ability to govern (‘symbolic representation’). Although the effects of gender quotas on women's representation has received considerable scholarly attention, the field of symbolic representation remains under-studied. A case study of the effects of the Senegalese parity law addresses this knowledge gap, contributing with new empirical insights. This study also develops indicators that can help measure potential developments in the symbolic representation of women. Parity appears to have contributed to slightly more acceptance towards women as political leaders within the National Assembly. The findings are discussed in the last section.

In the years that have elapsed since the ending of colonial rule, the newly independent states of Africa have been understandably preoccupied with a general resolve to achieve rapid and sustained economic growth. Certain countries have attached especial importance to investment in agriculture, others have devoted high proportions of their resources to material infrastructure, to the exploitation of minerals, or to education and training; whatever the immediate policy pursued, however, there has been general unanimity that at the far end of the development process each African state hopes to possess a growing number of economically viable manufacturing industries.1 Apart from the material benefits that industrialisation can bring there is a general belief, as Pierre Moussa has put it, that ‘the factory chimney has mythical value; it expresses a people's success on earth, their ability to cope with the modern world’.2

‘In the national interest we have decided to take 51% of the shares of the Standard Bank and Barclays Bank.’

It is generally recognised that governments and methods of controlling them can exist without formal opposition parties—as in a one-party state.1 At the same time, the first flush of enthusiasm for one-party states in Africa is dying away and people are beginning to question whether a monolithic party structure is the best or the only way to achieve political stability and economic development, two driving forces behind much of African politics today. At this juncture, Tanzania presents a peculiarly apt case study, for here is a state which has moved through successive constitutional changes since independence from a Westminster model to a dejure one-party state—and in this, constitutional forms have reflected political reality—yet at the same time has endeavoured to ensure that opportunities for control and criticism have remained open.

Writing in 1962, Professor Roland Young of Northwestern University observed, with reference to both rural and urban Africa, ‘In carrying on research in African politics an area which compels attention is the local community, defined however one wishes: tribal cluster, village, or adrninistrative district. One might wish that political scientists had become interested at an earlier date in the study of small political systems indigenous to Africa.’1 There should be little doubt that local government is important in Africa because its operations are more or less coterminous with the rural areas in which the majority of Africans live. Indigenous Africa does not lie in the westernised cities but in the rural areas, where central governments appear remote, impersonal, and incomprehensibly awesome. Because of its closeness to the community, local government is one of the most realistic agencies for the transformation of rural Africa. Local governments are thus strategically placed to playa crucial role in the politics of development.

Of the rising tide of refugees in the world, the greatest number originate from Ethiopia. The largest continent consists of those from the Ogaden who have fled to Somalia, followed by Eritreans who have sought refuge in the Sudan. Out of a total of 520,000 refugees in the Sudan at the end of 1981, approximately 425,000 are Ethiopians or Eritreans, with the much larger number being Eritreans. The Eritreans have fled their homes to escape the prolonged warfare between the Ethiopian forces and the Eritrean liberation movements, a conflict which dates back to 1962.

As one of the 25 countries listed as ‘least developed’ by the United Nations, considerable thought is at present being given in many quarters to various aspects of development in Lesotho. Agricultural schemes involving millions of dollars have been initiated, and experts in different disciplines are employed by the Government to help solve some of the seemingly intractable problems of this small country surrounded by the Republic of South Africa.

Political analysts often tend to focus upon periods of high-level diplomatic tension or ‘crises’ when examining and attempting to draw conclusions about foreign policy. Since these critical and highly visible episodes generally bring to the foreground the underlying combinations of geo-political, strategic, economic, ideological, and bureaucratic elements, as well as individual styles of leadership which affect interstate relations, this attraction to political drama is understandable. But in adopting a ‘crisis’ approach for determining when and what events merit serious exploration, consequential changes may be overlooked, or recognised belatedly, which have subtly crept into a particular government-to-government relationship during relatively uneventful times. The need for scholars to look to the past with more discerning eyes, as well as for foreign policy decision-makers to keep abreast with the day-to-day non-crisis international affairs of state, can be illustrated by the long-term impact of fundamental changes which occurred in the policy of the United States towards the Horn of Africa during the relative calm of the mid-1960s.

In the years since the April Revolution of 1974 and the subsequent process of decolonisation, Portugal's relations with its former African colonies have undergone considerable strains, and on occasion have been marked by deep suspicion and acrimony. Yet, over the period, the general tendency has been one of accelerating rapprochement. The pace and depth of this re-engagement has, for numerous reasons, varied between the states involved. More or less cordial relations were established with Guiné-Bissau, for example, even before formal independence, whereas those with Mozambique were fraught with difficulties until the 1980s, and can still occasionally give way to mistrust and hostility. But, given the legacy of the wars of liberation and a world recession which developed simultaneously with the new relationships, the achievements have been considerable.

An ideological orientation on the part of a government is an important impetus to social change in many of the countries of the under-developed world. As Clifford Geertz has pointed out, an ideology is a model for the ideal arrangement of all aspects of life, and the active propagation of such a view of the world by those in positions of power and authority in a society is bound to have an effect on the normal processes of social change.1 In so far as this model is successfully turned into an effective programme for directed social change, we may observe the exciting spectacle of a people carrying out changes which they are convinced are necessary, and modernising themselves in an atmosphere of enthusiasm and progress. This process usually amounts to a social revolution. But there are many pitfalls, and it is easy for proposed programmes of social change to get bogged down in the intricate networks of political relations between leaders and people, or to founder on hard economic realities.

Population mobility in its various forms has long been recognised as a major determinant of social and economic policies in many transitional, which is the stage in a country's economic development that has been defined by W. W. Rostow as the ‘transitional era when a society prepares itself – or is prepared by external forces – for sustained growth’1 Although much has been published about population migration in Africa, little research has been conducted into the nature and frequency of periodic visits by rural inhabitants to the main urban centres. These journeys are of particular interest to those who are engaged in the physical planning of rural settlements as they provide a clue to the identification of those amenities and services that may be required in the future, as well as the level of demands upon the local transportation system.

When the details of the ‘Kissinger proposals for the transition to majority rule in Zimbabwe were made public in October 1976, containing generous proposals for the compensation of white Rhodesian settlers, a chord was struck among observers of African politics that the history of decolonisation in Kenya was about to repeat itself. There the British Government and international monetary agencies lent funds to the new African Government to compensate white settlers for the expropriation of their farms in the highland regions. The similarity between the Kenyan and Rhodesian colonial situations goes far deeper than the willingness of the western powers to bail out white settlers in a time of adversity. External financial assistance in Kenya ensured a smooth transition to a neo-colonial economy in which international capital was permitted expanded access to the resources and markets of Kenya and the East African region. Similarly the sudden concern of the western bloc for majority rule in Rhodesia and for the establishment of a ‘Zimbabwe Development Fund’ has been motivated by the prospect of the removal from the western sphere of economic control of the rich resources and markets of Southern Africa.