A series of murders of albinos in Tanzania's north-west mining frontier has been shrouded in a discourse of primitivism by the international and national press, sidestepping the significance of the contextual circumstances of an artisanal mining boom firmly embedded in a global commodity chain and local profit maximisation. The murders are connected to gold and diamond miners' efforts to secure lucky charms for finding minerals and protection against danger while mining. Through the concept of fetish creation, this article interrogates the agency of those involved in the murders: the miners who purchase the albino charms, the waganga healers renowned for their healing, divination and sorcery skills who prescribe and sell the charms, and the albino murder victims. The agrarian background, miners' ambitions and a clash of values comprise our starting point for understanding the victimisation of albinos.

As part of on-going multidimensional foreign policy changes in recent years, there has been since 1998 a revival in Turkey's relations with Africa. Initially rather passive, after 2005 this became a massive effort to develop relations with the whole continent. However, Turkey's Africa policy is unique in Turkish foreign policy, since for the first time it is driven and complemented by the activities of civil society organisations in and about Africa. Conceptualisation of Africa in Turkish society has changed dramatically in less than a decade, and the recent Turkey–Africa Cooperation Summit should be seen as part of this trend. Turkey's opening to Africa is not a short-term inclination, but is likely to develop and deepen in coming years.

Ethiopia's Productive Safety Net Programme (PSNP) is an attempt to bring food security to 5 million people by providing them with social security to close the yearly hunger gap, coupled with development projects to lift them permanently out of poverty. The programme is an example of the new policy arrangements that aim to link relief to social security and development. This paper analyses the early implementation of the PSNP in two villages of the Amhara Region. The paper shows how the programme was in practice interpreted and used by local authorities to realise a related programme of voluntary resettlement, and how this locally changed the objective from helping the most vulnerable people, to reserving the benefits of the programme for the more affluent and economically potent households. It shows how local responses to food security policies were informed by institutional patterns, discourses about food insecurity and the articulation of policy with adjacent or past policy practices.

Conservation non-governmental organisations (NGOs) have excited a great deal of comment and debate, generally quite divided, in diverse journals. Some advocate them as forces for good, others decry their clumsy dealings with rural peoples and the impoverishment their activities can cause. The debate suffers in two ways. First, it ignores a large parallel literature about the work of development NGOs. Second, there is a paucity of general knowledge about the state of the conservation NGO sector. We do not know where it works, what the main players are doing, or much at all about the extent or activities of the smaller conservation organisations. We do not know how much money the sector spends. In this paper we first briefly outline why work on development NGOs should be applied to conservation NGOs, and then offer an overview of the sector's activities based on a survey of over 280 organisations. We describe some of the basic contours of these activities, and reflect on the implications of our findings for existing writings about conservation NGOs and future research.

This article tests the theory of advocates who celebrate the potential of civil society to promote and deepen democracy in Africa, by examining whether the human rights ministry of a Catholic parish in Kibera slum in Nairobi, Kenya was able to consolidate democracy through a civic education programme during 2002–5. It concludes, from an analysis of the social, economic and political environment in Kibera, that parishioners who participated in the programme demonstrated an observable improvement in their democratic values and behaviour at a localised level within their own parish groups. However, civic education did not stimulate most participants to increase their involvement in advocacy and lobbying efforts to hold government officials to account for their abuse of power in Kibera. Parishioners were inhibited from promoting their rights primarily due to fears of violent retaliation by local government officials and politically sponsored youth wingers. Other factors such as apathy, ethnic divisions, limited resources and restrictive church protocols further curtailed parishioners' actions.

In 2004, a long-awaited piece of post-apartheid legislation, the Communal Land Rights Act – to reform the land tenure of those living in the former ‘homelands’ of South Africa – was passed into law unanimously by parliament. This unanimity, however, conceals the extent to which the process towards this moment was deeply contested. Exploring the efforts by land sector NGOs to secure legitimacy in their engagements with this process reveals the extent to which wider power relations and contestations have determined their positioning. Those within the non-governmental land sector who opposed the legislation pitted themselves against African National Congress politicians and high-profile traditional leaders. However, the adoption of a Mamdani-inspired discourse to contest such politics and oppose the proposed legislation contributed to reinscribing narrow readings of knowledge considered to be legitimate. Their engagements were also shaped by changes in the NGO sector. Reduced funding for land sector NGOs and an increasingly ambivalent relationship between them and government contributed to contestations between NGOs and among people working within them. Their strategic engagements in such wider and internal politics influenced both the frames within which such policy change could be debated and the ways in which individuals working for NGOs consequently positioned themselves in relation to their constituents.

This paper draws on the recent experience of Kenya and Zimbabwe to demonstrate how power-sharing has played out in Africa. Although the two cases share some superficial similarities, variation in the strength and disposition of key veto players generated radically different contexts that shaped the feasibility and impact of unity government. Explaining the number and attitude of veto players requires a comparative analysis of the evolution of civil–military and intra-elite relations. In Zimbabwe, the exclusionary use of violence and rhetoric, together with the militarisation of politics, created far greater barriers to genuine power-sharing, resulting in the politics of continuity. These veto players were less significant in the Kenyan case, giving rise to a more cohesive outcome in the form of the politics of collusion. However, we find that neither mode of power-sharing creates the conditions for effective reform, which leads to a more general conclusion: unity government serves to postpone conflict, rather than to resolve it.

This paper examines the evolution of the Ethiopian cut flower industry, illustrating how rapidly a potential comparative advantage can be realised. But the question is to what extent a country benefits from this in the long run, if foreign direct investment is the principal driving force. Will the new industry become an enclave, or will it be accompanied by a process of building local capabilities, a process which we denominate endogenisation? A value chain framework is used to analyse the industry and to develop a number of indicators on the development direction. The cut flower industry in Ethiopia is characterised by a dominant role of Dutch foreign investors, Dutch trade auctions which dominate the export trade, and the Dutch development cooperation which plays an important role in the development of the sector. This raises the question to what extent this triple role of the Dutch contributes to endogenisation or to enclave formation.

We conclude that endogenisation is a two-way process. It depends both on the degree to which FDI has an interest to draw on domestic firms, enter into relationships and share technologies; and on the interest and ability of domestic firms to take up such opportunities, and on the creation of supporting institutions and infrastructures to make this take-up possible. The latter rests largely with government. Endogenisation is taking place to some extent and at a very incipient stage. Dutch FDI has little direct interest to share technologies, but there is joint collective action on non-core activities, notably transport, which constitutes the largest item in the total cost. Dutch cooperative flower auctions are an open and vital trade channel giving Ethiopian flower growers access to international markets. The Ethiopian government has promoted the industry, making available land and low cost finance; and with the assistance of Dutch bilateral cooperation it is creating trade standards and supporting knowledge institutions to train skilled staff. The main challenge is Ethiopian entrepreneurship: many are attracted by the high growth and profitability of the industry and can run a business in Ethiopia, but lack the technical competence to meet growing competition in the industry.

This paper examines Ghana's struggle to create a pluralistic nationality that guarantees universal rights to all citizens, including people of foreign origin. A major recipient of colonial labour migrants who considered themselves citizens of Ghana at the time of independence, Ghana provides an excellent case study for exploring the ambiguities and malleability of post-colonial citizenship. Analysing the various ways in which Ghanaian politicians have struggled to redefine the nationality status of descendants of migrants from other parts of West Africa since independence, I argue that the politicisation of Ghana's post-colonial citizenship stems not only from the country's colonial legacy, but also from struggles over diminishing economic resources between the late 1960s and early 1980s that led some indigenous Ghanaians to declare the non-autochthonous population as ‘aliens’ who should be excluded from the benefits of citizenship. Constitutional provisions that recognised citizenship by birth were contested by popular perceptions that only the autochthonous are ‘true’ citizens and are thus the only legitimate beneficiaries of political and economic rights.

Evidence of political instability in Kenya emerged through the organised and spontaneous violence following the 2007 elections. Understanding the underlying reasons for popular contestations of power and involvement in violence depends on understanding Kenyans' perceptions of existing and desirable political institutions. By analysing recommendations made in the Constitution of Kenya Review Commission public hearings in each province in 2002, this article explores the viewpoints of those outside high politics in Kenya, teasing out the continuities and divergences in popular thought about political relations in Kenya at the end of the Moi years, and thus providing insights into how Kenyans understand their relationship with those in power, revealing that amidst diverse experiences, disillusionment pervades Kenyans' perceptions of political relations.

In Africa, as elsewhere, ports are a telling indicator of the tenor of political power and the contests and shifting fortunes among ruling groups. Glaringly evident in the long era of imperial expansion, this is equally true in the present period of late-capitalist commercial acceleration and consolidation. With a focus on Ghana's port of Tema, a leading edge of containerised trade serving a vast swath of the West African sub-region, this essay examines the struggles between state agencies, indigenous capital, and the world's leading multinational shipping and logistics firms invested in port expansion. Rather than the predicted triumph of multinational concerns, the case of Tema reveals the persistent grip of Ghana's national port authority. Deftly capitalising on its claims over land, labour and legislation, this state body also mobilises preferential access to development assistance and financial aid. The result is a port defined by the aspirations and autonomous capacities of what may be described as a neo-developmental state. Both grounded in historical precedent and fragile in its configuration of multiplex and competing interests, Tema lays bare the complex forces at stake in the revitalisation of maritime frontiers now occurring across the African continent.

Political violence in sub-Saharan Africa is down. The number of military dictatorships and one-party states is also down. Are the two trends related? Conventional democratic peace theory says the answer is yes, because the relationship between democracy and peace is linear and positive. A revisionist view, however, raises questions. The majority of Africa's new regimes are not full democracies but mixed regimes that some studies find to have the greatest propensity to violent behaviour. Using statistical analysis of a trichotomous classification of African regimes from 1960 to 2008, this article suggests that neither argument fits the facts. Autocracies and partial democracies in this region appear to have similar exposure to conflict, with both types of systems suffering more conflict than full democracies. Variables other than regime type appear to be the driving forces behind these trends.

Most of the reports about the reaction of the Ethiopian regime to the blow that it suffered in the 2005 elections focus on its institutional evolution, and conclude that it took a turn towards even stronger authoritarianism. Observations made in a rural community in south-east Amhara State reveal that it reacted first, until the end of 2009, by a whole range of the deepest reforms since its takeover in 1991. These combined a stronger grip of the ruling party in all areas with a ‘liberalisation’ of the rural development strategy and first steps towards local ‘good governance’. They were embodied in the rise of the traditional rural elite which had been ostracised for years, as if the regime was trying to build its new constituency on it. But at the end of 2009 the local authorities suddenly returned to the all-encompassing authoritarian attitude characteristic of the pre-2005 period. This ‘liberalisation’ could thus be seen as merely a tactical interlude, conceded by a ruling party still driven by its Leninist legacy and the Abyssinian ‘culture of power’.

In August 2006 the chief of Udo, a small town in Edo State, Nigeria, was deposed and the town taken over by the ‘youth’. This event presents the classic fall of a ‘big man’ who had lost support, but also involved long-standing chieftaincy rivalries, electoral competition in the run up to the 2007 elections, and conflict over a nearby oil palm and rubber plantation. Through an examination of Udo's crisis, this paper engages with three key questions concerning contemporary communal politics in southern Nigeria: the manifestations of patrimonial power and resistance to it; the meaning and role of ‘youth’; and the impact of expatriate capital.

Ghana's 2008 election has been hailed by national and international observers as a model for Africa. The perception of success has prevailed despite persistent concerns about an inflated voters' register and electoral fraud perpetrated by the two major parties, the NPP and NDC, in their strongholds in the Ashanti and Volta Regions respectively. Electoral malpractice in Ghana's virtual two-party system could acquire a decisive importance as a ‘third force’, representing an even more important factor than the smaller opposition parties. Unfortunate diplomatic and technocratic biases in election monitoring, combined with a reluctance on the part of the responsible authorities to investigate what appears to be a long history of fraudulent voting, amounts to a dangerous time bomb of unresolved conflict which could detonate in future elections.

This paper looks at the policy and practice of cross-subsidisation in the water sector, focusing on the Zambian experience. Setting a price for water services is a sensitive and controversial issue. Pricing water services below cost recovery can threaten the sustainability of the service and human welfare in the long term, while water pricing at full cost recovery often restricts access to water services for poor households, compromising their well-being. This paper looks at one of the approaches that policy makers use in an attempt to balance the trade-offs – cross-subsidisation. Lessons from the experience of implementing the cross-subsidy policy in Zambia are identified and discussed. This paper argues that while the objectives behind the cross-subsidisation policy are clear, the results from the implementation of this policy are, at best, unclear. The Zambian experience shows that for an indirect subsidy, such as cross-subsidisation (as opposed to a direct subsidy), to generate positive results, a careful consideration of the actual context in which the policy is to be implemented must be a precondition to its implementation.

Santa Clara, on Angola's southern border with Namibia, is now a very dynamic urban hub, both economically and socially. It stands out in the remote province of Cunene, recording greater growth in the last five years than the provincial capital, Ondjiva. Its recent transformation into a thriving trading centre was mostly due to massive migration and an intensification of trade between Angola and Namibia at the beginning of this century, although the region's history in the last hundred years is a very different one. While local traders and entrepreneurs have developed their own strategies within this context, national and local administrative structures of the recently pacified country are trying to regulate trading and settlement. These forces in action produce both more sustainable and organised urban growth and at the same time influence social and economic development in the region. The main boom seems to be over, due to relatively successful regulation, which makes the region less attractive to business activity. Traders and entrepreneurs operating locally now have to find new strategies and opportunities. This article, based on empirical research and combined surveys, conducts an analysis of these dynamics and contributes to an understanding of regulation impacts, the way in which local traders cope with them, and the strategies they have developed.

How African politicians, especially legislators, behave on a daily basis is still largely unknown. This article gives a unique empirical account of the daily accountability pressures and the strategies that Members of Parliament (MPs) in Ghana employ in responding to the demands that they face. While literature on political clientelism focuses on explanatory factors like lack of political credibility, political machines capable of effective monitoring, autonomy of brokers, high levels of poverty, and political competiveness, the role of institutions has been overlooked. While the existing literature suggests that political clientelism is an optimal strategy in the context of weak institutions, the present analysis finds that the institution of the office of Member of Parliament in Ghana is strong, but shaped by informal norms in ways that favour the provision of private goods in clientelistic networks. The analysis also points to theoretical lessons on how political clientelism can endogenously undermine the conditions for its own existence.

On 10 July 2003, a civilian coup was attempted in Anambra state in South-east Nigeria. Barely two months after Chris Ngige was sworn in as the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) governor of Anambra, a team of armed policemen disarmed his security detail and took him into custody. The governor's attempted ousting made public the breakdown of his relationship with his political godfather, Chief Chris Uba, and sparked a debate on godfather politics in Nigeria. Using the case of Anambra, this article investigates the complex network of personalised relationships that holders of state power maintain with their national and local clientelistic constituencies. It explores the political underpinnings of the crisis and its links to national-level power dynamics, particularly within the ruling party and the Obasanjo presidency.

The brutal, eleven-year long civil war in Sierra Leone has been understood by many scholarly observers as ‘a crisis of youth’. The national elections of 2007 were notable for an explosion of popular music by young people directly addressing some of the central issues of the election: corruption of the ruling party and lack of opportunities for youth advancement. Though produced by youth and understood locally as youth music, the sounds were inescapable in public transport, markets, and parties. The musical style is a combination of local idioms and West African hip-hop. The lyrics present a young people's moral universe in stark contrast to that of their elders. This paper addresses the themes of these election-focused songs as well as the emerging subaltern youth identity discernible in supposedly less political songs.