The cultivation of food crops within the overall boundaries of towns and cities is not new, but has been forgotten or ignored in the last 20 years, while urbanisation has, it is thought, absorbed a disproportionate share of national resources. Can, however, an alternative form of urban development, less greedy of financial and natural assets, capable of satisfying the basic needs of the population and of reducing the vulnerability of the poorest, be envisaged, and is the food and energy system an appropriate starting point?1 The first stage in studying any neglected area is to review existing evidence and policy, in order to reveal gaps and suggest avenues for future enquiry, policy formulation, and experiment.2 In this article, the evidence presented will be from Zambia, and it will be the task of further research to assess the relevance of these findings to other towns and cities in the region.

The impact of economic sanctions against countries engaging in objectionable behaviour tends to be minimised by seemingly dispassionate analysts but overrated by those committed to punishing the target. Governments often act to impose economic sanctions despite controversies regarding their utility, and this article will examine the variables that contribute to their success or failure, and their potential impact on South Africa, including a brief analysis of the various measures recently imposed by western industrialised nations.

Since the attainment of formal political independence in the early 1960s, African leaders have been grappling with the problem of how to manage domestic political conflicts in such a way that their resolution will facilitate, rather than undermine, the maintenance of incumbent régimes. This task, never easy in the best of circumstances, has become even more daunting in recent years as the ongoing economic crisis has deprived most African states of the resources necessary for the continued use of co-optation as the most effective technique for dealing with critics who have their own political aspirations. A further complication is that the ‘frustrations of independence’ have eroded the prestige and personal legitimacy that was once enjoyed by the generation of anti- colonial leaders partly as a result of what might be described as the ‘elder tradition’ in African political culture.1

In 1977 the member-states of the European Community (E.C.) adopted a collective strategy designed to and apartheid and to encourage the economic independence of South Africa's less-developed neigh-bours. The respective foreign-policy instruments used to achieve these goals were the Code of Conduct and the Lomé Convention, through which assistance was provided for the Frontline states. The scope of the Community's Southern African actions was enlarged in 1985 to include a range of sanctions against Pretoria similar to those adopted by other governments.

During mid-1985 a combined team of expatriate consultants and Swaziland experts examined in some detail the water-development options in the Komati river basin.1 This short article presents the abbreviated macro-economic ‘home’ that we constructed, because our policy and investment recommendations had to be consistent with the Government's overall development objectives. The incentive to publish our findings was prompted by the dearth of relevant data in the existing literature, and there may be others in a position similar to that in which we found ourselves – namely, that virtually nothing was readily available. Our 1986 draft was updated in 1988 to take advantage of the latest statistics.

Africa's dismal economic performance in recent years has spawned a rather vigorous debate over where to lay the blame for the contonuing crisis. The United Nations and assoviated agencies cite factors outside the control of indivedual fovernlents, and stress the detrimental inpact if the poor condition of the world economy, notably the decline in commodity prices and foreign aid. By way of contrast, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund favour the school of thought that lays blame more directly on internal policy-making. Here the actions taken by government to distort, for example, exchange rates and agricultural prices, and to expand unprofitable state enterprises, are seen as the main reasons for the continent's economic decline.

Since the 1979 oil shock and in the course of the subsequent world recession, many African governments have dramatically altered the orientation of their economic policies. States previously committed to various brands of ‘African socialism’ have been ending subsidies, reducing de facto taxes on agricultural producers, ‘privatising’ previously state-run activities, adopting more liberal exchange-rate policies, and implementing numerous other ‘market-oriented’ reforms.

In fact, What became Ake started out with me wanting to write a biography of an uncle, a very remarkable uncle of mine, who is mentioned here, Daodu, Rev Kuti. I think some of you have heard of Fela, the Nigerian musician. Daodu was his father and a very remarkable individual.

Wole Soyinka in Jo Gulledge (ed.), ‘Seminar on Ake with Wole Soyinka’, in The Southern Review (Baton Rouge), 23, 3, July 1987, p. 513.

The publication of Ake: the years of childhood (London, 1981) won Wole Soyinka admirers among those who had never read his poetry, novels, newspaper articles, or criticism, never seen his films or plays. In a seminar on Ake which he gave in Louisiana during March 1987, Soyinka said that the autobiography had started from a desire to write a biography. He went on to say that he had ‘received letters about the book from the strangest parts of the world’.1 The autobiography was widely and favourably reviewed, it was awarded prizes and contributed to the elevation of Soyinka's reputation throughout the world—including Sweden, where he was subsequently presented with the Nobel Prize for Literature.

One of the most pressing problems confronting development planners in Africa is how to increase local supplies of fuelwood. As explained in a donorcommissioned report at the begining of the current decade:

1. Not nearly enough trees are being planted to meet future rural and urban needs: during the next 20 years, ‘annual fuelwood planting will need to increase by about 15 times over current levels’, and even this assumes optimistically that ‘up to a fourth of future fuelwood demand will be met by conservation or… alternative fuels’. In fact, negligible resources are being devoted to establishing new ‘plantations of any significant size’.2

There is broad international agreement on Africa's need for enhanced external financing. The United Nations unanimously adopted an unprecedented Programme of Action for African Economic Recovery and Development in 1986, which entailed, on the African side, explicit recognition of significant responsibility for poor economic performance and of the need for policy reform, and on the Northern side, an acceptance of responsibility for greater funding.

Touts can be defined as free-lance workers at railway stations, airports, ferry points, and especially motor-parks, who undertake the self-imposed responsibility of recruiting and organising passengers who wish to travel by road, and for this work they receive a fee, or more appropriately, a ‘commission’, that is generally paid by the drivers of the vehicles just before their departure. All the owners are private entrepreneurs, who both compete and collaborate with one another to provide road transport for the public.

It was a basic assumption of many development theories and policies that the transfer of technology would resolve the problem of African underdevelopment. This did not turn out to be the case. In fact, mass urban and rural poverty are on the increase in many African countries. This result is in part responsible for the current view that technology transfer ‘must concentrate more than in the past on meeting the requirements of the small farmer, small scale rural industry, the informal sector producer’.1. This ‘basic needs’ approach is not universally accepted. It is feared that this strategy would keep African countries in a permanent state of technological dependence, thus creating the danger of neo-colonialism.2

The proposition that an independent press can play an extremely positive rôle in focusing attention on, and directing a response to, a food-crisis situation has been put forth by Amartya Sen, who has attempted to explain differential successes in preventing famines partly on this basis,1 supported convincingly in the Indian context by N. Ram,2 editor of the influential newspaper, The Hindu (Madras). As a contribution to the evidence in favour of this proposition, and its relevance to Africa, this article examines the contribution made by one newspaper during 1973–1974 in mediating the public and governmental response to the famine which struck the north of Nigeria.

The visit of Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir to Liberia, Cameroun, Côte d'Ivoire, and Togo in June 1987 confirmed that Israeli-African relations have entered a third phase that is more pragmatic and more limited than the first two. For Israel and Africa, this is an era of tachlis, or unadorned realism.2

It has been argued recently that implementing a laissez-faire approach to economic development faces serious difficulties in Africa.1 This article provides some empirical evidence on the question by comparing the recent efforts of two countries to move towards less interventionist policies. Both Zambia and Ghana attempted to reverse their deteriorating economic performance by introducing major reform measures during the mid-1980s. Their different experiences illustrate both the positive effects that laissez-faire policies can have when resource allocation has been constrained by extensive controls, and the difficulties of sustaining and financing a reform programme.

This short note provides one answer to an anomaly that has perplexed many an observer of rural development in sub-Saharan Africa: How is it possible that two deeply-rooted values in some African societies – the people's sense of individualism and their sense of community – have persisted through time when they seem to work against each other?