This paper provides an ethnographic perspective on the street-level deliberations of Kenya's opposition supporters between the 2013 and 2017 elections, arguing that rather than appeals to ethnicity what defines its discourse are broader, inclusive notions of political membership. A civic nationalism is enunciated by opposition supporters that congeals support between multiple ethnic groups through its emphasis on universal values – democracy, due process, equality, adherence to the constitution. However, when such civic ideas are used in political campaigning and mobilising rhetoric, describing a resurgent Kenyan ‘people’ that has been systematically disenfranchised, they take on an exclusionary character. As ‘good constitutionalists’, opposition supporters contrast themselves with ‘bad nationalists’ associated with the government, portrayed as mobilising particularistic ethnic loyalties at the expense of a majority of Kenyans. In practice, their civic ideas remain only potentially inclusive.

This article investigates how the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front's (EPRDF) attempt to build a developmental state influenced and shaped its relationships with the Ethiopian private sector. Through a case study of the chambers of commerce system in Ethiopia, the research reveals that the EPRDF's relationship to the private sector was characterised by the twin objectives of (1) curbing the private sector's power to prevent challenges to the EPRDF rule and (2) mobilising the private sector as part of the ruling coalition's developmental state programme. However, these twin objectives, were, in several cases, perceived as mutually exclusive by the EPRDF which, at times, led to a focus on control at the expense of developmental objectives. The ensuing lack of embeddedness posed problems for the operationalisation of the developmental state policies, reducing the EPRDF's ability to institutionalise collaborative relationships with the private sector.

This paper discusses the principal findings of a new integrated dataset of transnational armed conflict in Africa. Existing Africa conflict datasets have systematically under-represented the extent of cross-border state support to belligerent parties in internal armed conflicts as well as the number of incidents of covert cross-border armed intervention and incidents of using armed force to threaten a neighbouring state. Based on the method of ‘redescribing’ datapoints in existing datasets, notably the Uppsala Conflict Data Project, the Transnational Conflict in Africa (TCA) data include numerous missing incidents of transnational armed conflict and reclassify many more. The data indicate that (i) trans-nationality is a major feature of armed conflict in Africa, (ii) most so-called ‘civil wars’ are internationalised and (iii) the dominant definitions of ‘interstate conflict’ and ‘civil war’ are too narrow to capture the particularities of Africa's wars. While conventional interstate war remains rare, interstate rivalry using military means is common. The dataset opens up a research agenda for studying the drivers, patterns and instruments of African interstate rivalries. These findings have important implications for conflict prevention, management and resolution policies.

Switzerland is usually not looked upon as a substantial economic actor in Africa. Taking Zambian copper as a case study, we show how important Swiss companies have become in the global commodities trade and the services it depends on. While big Swiss trading firms such as Glencore and Trafigura have generated increasing scholarly and public interest, a multitude of Swiss companies is involved in logistics and transport of Zambian copper. Swiss extractivism, we argue, is a model case for trends in today's global capitalism. We highlight that servicification, a crucial element of African mining regimes today, creates new and more flexible opportunities for international companies to capture value in global production networks. These opportunities partly rely on business-friendly regulation and tax regimes in Northern countries, a fact which makes companies potentially vulnerable to reputation risks and offers opportunities to civil society actors criticising their role. New and different Swiss–Zambian connections emerge from civil society networks organising around companies’ economic activities.

This article aims to rekindle the debate on the politics of aid in the increasingly common – yet still under-studied – authoritarian and low-intensity conflict settings, detailing the case of Ethiopia in 2016, when a 50-year drought coincided with a wave of protests and a state of emergency. During four months of qualitative fieldwork in 2017, state, civil society, Ethiopian and international actors were approached – from humanitarian headquarters to communities in the Amhara, Oromiya and Somali regions. Research participants relayed stark discrepancies between the humanitarian theatre's ‘frontstage’, where disaster responders showcase an exemplary response, and its ‘backstage’, where they remove their frontstage masks and reflect on the information, the decision-making monopoly of the state and the intrusion of conflict dynamics into the humanitarian response. In humanitarian research and in policy, a collective conversation is necessary on where to draw the line between respect for governments’ sovereignty and the intrusion of humanitarian principles.

Scholars of ethnic riots disagree on which are more susceptible to collective violence between ethnically segregated and diverse socio-spatial settings. Studies of riot-prone cities have produced contradictory conclusions. This article proposes that the ambivalence stems in part from disregarding the mobile nature of armed mobs and conflating their origins with their locations of violence. Drawing upon extensive ethnographic fieldwork involving mobile interviews, in-depth discussions and visual documentation, the article maps the footsteps of armed mobs from their origins to sites of confrontation during the 2008 Christian–Muslim riots in Jos, Nigeria. Findings suggest both segregated and mixed settlements contributed to violence. While armed mobs were likelier to originate from segregated neighbourhoods, mixed settlements, especially those sandwiched between segregated ones, served as frontiers for fighting; armed mobs preferred narrow alleys inaccessible to security forces. These findings' implications can advance the understanding and management of ethnic riots in urban areas.

Land law reform through registration and titling is often viewed as a technocratic, good-governance step toward building market economies and depoliticising land transactions. In actual practice, however, land registration and titling programmes can be highly partisan, bitterly contentious, and carried forward by political logics that diverge strongly from the market-enhancing vision. This paper uses evidence from Côte d'Ivoire to support and develop this claim. In Côte d'Ivoire after 1990, multiple, opposing political logics drove land law reform as it was pursued by successive governments representing rival coalitions of the national electorate. Between the mid-1990s and 2016, different logics – alternatively privileging user rights, the ethnic land rights of autochthones, and finally a state-building logic – prevailed in succession as national government crafted and then sought to implement the new 1998 land law. The case underscores the extent to which deeply political questions are implicated in land registration and titling policies.

Measures of poverty based on consumption suggest that recent economic growth in many African countries has not been inclusive, particularly in rural areas. We argue that measures of poverty using assets may provide a different picture. We present data based on recent re-surveys of Tanzanian households first visited in the early 1990s. These demonstrate a marked increase in prosperity from high levels of poverty. It does not, however, follow that these improvements derive from GDP growth. We consider the implications of this research for further explorations of the relationship between economic growth and agricultural policy in rural areas.

Influential discourses present Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) as essential for agricultural development in Africa; a parallel, critical debate on ‘land rushes’ has denounced Land Grabs, demanding increased accountability in FDI-based land deals. This article explores an initiative located in central Mozambique, the Beira Agricultural Growth Corridor (BAGC). It shows how the international fertiliser company Yara set out to enrol actors at different levels in business, governance and agricultural development into BAGC as a public-private partnership to promote commercial agriculture. Very soon, however, Yara made shifts in its engagement and market strategy, leaving the BAGC initiative to supporting donors and local producers. The analysis presented here shows how the tension between ‘patient-capital’ requirements, high risks and low immediate returns have shaped this case over time – in a context of a national political economy framed by extractive-resource dynamics.

Transnational medical research has become a common feature in many parts of Africa. This paper explores the contribution such activity makes to the social and economic lives of those involved, including both trial subjects and local staff. By considering the value of the ‘exposure’ that involvement brings to staff and research participants, we reflect on the conversion of scientific knowledge into practical knowledge and its value to sustaining precarious livelihoods in an economically fragile city. We consider the interplay between science and sociality and argue for a need to take seriously the circulation of scientific knowledge beyond the confines of expert spaces.

This paper assesses the role of the non-farm sector in rural development in Lesotho. Evidence from studies in developing countries indicates that agriculture was formerly used as the main source of livelihood for many people in poor countries. However, due to the decline in agricultural productivity (which results in poverty and food insecurity) caused by unfavourable agro-climatic conditions, many people are turning to non-farm activities as a means of making a living. Therefore, non-farm incomes are used to provide the means of sustenance for many people. However, little attention has hitherto been paid to improving the rural non-farm sector as an alternative or complementary rural development strategy in Lesotho. This research paper uses quantitative research methods to analyse the available data. The main research findings suggest that many people make a living out of non-farm incomes. As a result, this paper proposes that the rural non-farm sector should be given more priority by the government in rural development in Lesotho.

Kenya's March 2013 elections ushered in a popular system of devolved government that represented the country's biggest political transformation since independence. Yet within months there were public calls for a referendum to significantly revise the new arrangements. This article analyses the campaign that was led by the newly elected governors in order to understand the ongoing disputes over the introduction of decentralisation in Kenya, and what they tell us about the potential for devolution to check the power of central government and to diffuse political and ethnic tensions. Drawing on Putnam's theory of two-level games, we suggest that Kenya's new governors have proved willing and capable of acting in concert to protect their own positions because the pressure that governors are placed under at the local level to defend county interests has made it politically dangerous for them to be co-opted by the centre. As a result, the Kenyan experience cannot be read as a case of ‘recentralisation’ by the national government, or as one of the capture of sub-national units by ‘local elites’ or ‘notables’. Rather, decentralisation in Kenya has generated a political system with a more robust set of checks and balances, but at the expense of fostering a new set of local controversies that have the potential to exacerbate corruption and fuel local ethnic tensions in some parts of the country.