Despite strong empirical evidence of the influence of religious brokers on political mobilisation in Africa, we know very little about the individual-level relationship between religious association and political behaviour. Drawing upon an emerging comparative literature on the effect of social service provision on political participation, this article asks whether Malian consumers of Islamic schooling are as likely to seize new democratic opportunities for electoral participation as their peers who send their children to public schools. Using an original survey of 1,000 citizens, exit polling and interviews, this analysis demonstrates that parents who enrol their children in madrasas are less likely than other respondents to report voting. Conversely, parents who send their children to public schools are more likely to participate in electoral politics.

This article explores the role of perceptions in donor-African relations and the extent to which donor ‘images’ of African governments can be managed by these same governments to their advantage. The article focuses on donor views of ‘reliability’ in the Global War on Terror (GWOT) and compares differing international perceptions of Kenya and Uganda through this lens. Arguing that donors have an exaggerated sense of Ugandan ‘compliance’ or reliability and Kenyan unreliability in fighting terrorism, it explains this by examining the two governments’ international ‘image management’ strategies, or lack thereof. The analysis contends that Uganda's success at promoting itself as a major donor ally in the GWOT, compared with Kenya's general reluctance to do the same, has played a significant role in building and bolstering these differing donor perceptions. This, the article suggests, raises important questions about the nature of African agency in the international system.

This article is concerned with the rebellion in Darfur as a way to illustrate the politics of insurgency in the era of globalisation. We first show how the Darfur rebels have projected their struggle onto the world stage, before examining the effects that this has engendered. On the one hand, Darfur's global profile solidified the rebels' cause and co-opted international actors in support of it. This translated into real leverage for the rebels, and it constrained the Sudanese government by reducing its ability to use brute force. At the same time, internationalisation encouraged the Darfur rebels to make maximalist demands at the expense of articulating a broader political vision addressing the root causes of conflict. Moreover, the substitution of local legitimacy for international connections lowered the barriers of entry for new groups and thus promoted fragmentation. The combination of these effects makes for intractable conflict scenarios, the current situation in Darfur being a case in point.

Ghana's pursuit of socio-economic growth has necessitated joining the information communication technology (ICT) revolution, thus increasing the consumption and obsolescence rate of electrical and electronic equipment (EEE) and the creation of what is popularly called e-waste. The absence of legislation governing its importation and disposal, combined with the dynamics of Accra's urban economy, including neo-liberal policies and lack of formal job opportunities, has triggered people's ingenuity to engage in novel occupations such as e-waste recycling. Though a lucrative strategy, it comes with a price for those involved: environmental health risks, a fact well articulated by a burgeoning literature. Nevertheless, little empirical evidence exists relating to this perceived relationship. Using questionnaires, FGDs and in-depth interviews, this study fills the lacuna. The findings reveal that the mean daily income of an e-waste worker is GH¢30, far above the daily minimum wage of GH¢4·48. Despite the positives, the findings also show that the environment and health can be compromised.

In recent years over half of all African states have re-introduced some form of universal basic service provision, though many more have done so in education when compared with health. Most existing explanations of these developments have emphasised the importance of demand side factors associated with democratisation. This paper argues that while democratisation has been important in generating pressure for reform, alliances with actors outside the state – such as donors and non-state service providers – have been the critical enabling factor allowing weak states to overcome their capacity constraints and respond. Two illustrative case studies are used to show how variation in alliance opportunities has led to differences in outcomes both between social sectors and across countries. An inter-sector comparison of health and education policy in Tanzania shows how a difference in donor policy preferences between sectors – donors having converged behind the principle of universal primary education but not universal healthcare – has led to variation in alliance opportunities and hence policy outcomes. A ‘least likely’ case of healthcare reform in Lesotho shows how an alliance with a non-state provider has made difficult reforms possible.

A precondition for sustainable peace and democracy is the acceptance of new ways of solving political problems without resorting to arms. Post-war elections are an important point for testing the legitimacy of the new regime, highlighting the depth of micro-level support for democracy. In the case of Liberia, the most notable problem of the elections of 2005 related to the issue of legitimacy. The ex-combatants did not trust the results and felt abandoned after the elections. Such experiences stand in the way of further deepening democracy in Liberia and may offer the grounds for mobilising anew. Yet, it is only by repeated experiences with elections that a process of democratisation takes place. This article addresses how the second experience with elections has changed ex-combatants' relation with democracy and experience of legitimacy, through re-interviewing a number of ex-combatants concerning their electoral experience from 2005 and 2011.

Tanzania, along with several other African countries, is experiencing a national mining boom, which has prompted hundreds of thousands of men and women to migrate to mineral-rich locations. At these sites, relationships between the sexes defy the sexual norms of the surrounding countryside to embrace new relational amalgams of polygamy, monogamy and promiscuity. This article challenges the assumption that female prostitution is widespread. Using interview data with women migrants, we delineate six ‘wifestyles’, namely sexual-cum-conjugal relationships between men and women that vary in their degree of sexual and material commitment. In contrast to bridewealth payments, which involved elders formalising marriages through negotiations over reproductive access to women, sexual negotiations and relations in mining settlements involve men and women making liaisons and co-habitation arrangements directly between each other without third-party intervention. Economic interdependence may evolve thereafter with the possibility of women, as well as men, offering material support to their sex partners.

This paper deals with the gender aspects of urban livestock keeping in Eldoret, Kenya. It shows that men and women play different but complementary roles in livestock keeping. Men show greater preference for and are more involved – in terms of decision-making and responsibility taking – with large livestock and where income is the primary motive for livestock keeping, and perform tasks of an outdoor nature and/or which require considerable technical knowledge. On the other hand, women prefer and exercise greater control over small livestock, make the most decisions about consumption use of livestock products, and perform home-based routine tasks. However, there are instances where men and women cross gender boundaries, for instance where labour of the opposite gender is absent in the household, or as a strategy to control benefits accruing to the livestock. In terms of livelihood outcomes, women's role in livestock keeping is geared more towards improving household nutritional and food security status, while men's role is motivated more by personal benefits.

Community forest management is often advanced as a remedy for failing top-down approaches to nature conservation. Contingent on the property rights theory, it assumes that local participation in natural resource management results in sustainable structures. There is, however, insufficient empirical evidence on the intra-community dynamics – especially when households have unequal access to the local institutions managing the natural resource. This paper looks at the socio-cultural, economic and institutional situation of households with and without access to management institutions in communities around the Kilum-Ijim Mountain Forest in Cameroon and analyses whether livelihood differences are associated with variations in management patterns. The analysis reveals differences by household type and a mixed picture of the evolution of species in the community forests over time, questioning the role of the community in natural resource conservation. Furthermore, the paper discusses the potentials of wildlife domestication for livelihoods and conservation in forest communities. The results are important in the light of ongoing conservation efforts in natural resource hot-spots in sub-Saharan Africa.

In sub-Saharan Africa, commercial bioenergy production has been hailed as a new form of ‘green capitalism’ that will deliver ‘win-win’ outcomes and ‘pro poor’ development. Yet in an era of global economic recession and soaring food prices, biofuel ‘sustainability’ has been at the centre of controversy. This paper focuses on the case of post-war Sierra Leone, a country that has over the last decade been consistently ranked as one of the poorest in the world, facing food insecurity, high unemployment and entrenched poverty. Following a recent government strategy to secure foreign direct investment in biofuels production in agriculturally rich regions of the country, the largest foreign investment in Sierra Leone since the end of its civil war has been secured: a Swiss company is to invest US$368 million into a large-scale biofuels project over the course of 3 years, and promises to simultaneously stimulate an enabling environment for investment, provide job opportunities for youth and increase food production. For multiple actors involved in the project, the concept of ‘sustainability’ is crucial but accordingly there are varying interpretations of its meaning. Such differences in interpretation and the complex contradictions within discourses of sustainability are in turn framed by the various scales within which these actors are situated. While attempts have been made to manage these contradictions through global sustainability standards, the unequal power relations between different actors will ultimately determine the ways in which they are likely to be resolved. The paper concludes by reflecting on how these processes may be contributing to a changing governance landscape and wider global political economy within which bioenergy is being produced, processed and consumed.

From 1999 to 2008, delays in the adoption of a comprehensive treatment and prevention programme shortened the lives of people living with HIV/AIDS in South Africa. While the slow implementation of antiretroviral therapy has been attributed to a lack of institutional capacity, dissident views on HIV/AIDS and the effects of fiscal austerity, it was also an expression of power. This article analyses how the South African HIV/AIDS movement overcame this exercise of power by the AIDS dissident faction of the African National Congress (ANC) by building an alliance with the South African labour movement and moderate elements within the ruling party. The ANC's dissident faction responded to this by developing para-state partnerships with non-state organisations to support the AIDS dissident agenda. This study highlights the need to expand the para-state concept to take into account a wider range of social formations and the historically particular conditions under which they emerge.

During the era of President Abdoulaye Wade, a household waste crisis periodically held the streets of Dakar in its noxious grip. This paper analyses the crisis in light of waste management's role as a fundamental urban public service, key employment sector, and visceral symbol of the city's management. It examines how the institutional landscape of waste management took centre stage in a power struggle within the state that centred on reconfiguring the labour of ordering the city. At the same time, it reveals how the waste-workers' union emerged as one of the most visible and savvy labour movements in contemporary Senegal. Through the creative disorder unleashed by intentional acts of dirtying, workers and residents alike forged new claims to the city. Conclusions are drawn for the wider implications of the disorderly city for the urban question in Dakar and the landscape of citizenship in Senegal's contemporary period.

The family firm, DAL Group, is Sudan's largest and most diversified company. Its growth has concentrated on consumer goods, rather than on state concessions or exports. It has developed its own training programmes, construction units, transportation networks and market research departments to manage the unstable environment outside its business walls. This paper focuses on the company's recruitment policies, demonstrating how the firm relies on its own internal family structure and a transnational network of Sudanese professionals in order to grow and prosper. Such self-reliance contributes to growing political frustration among young unemployed people. Graduates from ‘marginal’ areas rely more heavily on public advertisements and on information obtained from state bodies, not the private channels of wasta (personal intermediation) that cut through contemporary business. The paper concludes by comparing DAL with similar business networks in Ethiopia and Rwanda, arguing that DAL is a unique and interesting form of ‘enclave economy’, shaped by a displaced transnational elite operating in a hostile political environment. Within the wider political context of Sudan, there is a limit to what similar businesses can achieve.

In a context of increased competition over natural resources, large-scale investors are showing renewed interest in eastern Congo's mineral resources. At the local level this is resulting in fierce disputes over access to land and to mining sites. This article offers an empirical study of access in Luhwindja, where a multinational mining company has recently begun to exploit gold. We first sketch the context, examining the overlapping legal fields and analysing how various actors gain and control access to the gold mines. Next we study how the arrival of Banro Corporation in Luhwindja has altered power relations at the local level. Looking more specifically at the displacement of artisanal miners and the resettlement of local communities, we demonstrate how the company, local elites and the local population have engaged in a complex struggle for access.

In this article, I trace the emergence of Pentecostal FBOs in the South African city of Cape Town. By focusing on their involvements in HIV/AIDS programmes, including practices such as health education, counselling and material support, I analyse the organisational dynamics and consequences ensuing from their activities. Pentecostal involvements in development work engender complex connections between two distinct processes: On the one hand, they offer Pentecostal communities new social spaces for promoting their faith and moral agendas. On the other hand, development work urges Pentecostal communities to recast their activities in the logic of formal organisation and accountability (proposals–grants–projects). On the ground, these logics are constantly subverted as beneficiaries construe FBOs as patrons and deploy Pentecostal identities for mediating access to FBOs and the resources they command. My argument is that Pentecostal faith works to mediate the entire set of social relationships, expectations, imageries and practices that structure FBO work on the ground. More than belief and ritual, it is Pentecostal belonging that links organisations, people, opportunities and resources.

While much recent research has focused on the Productive Safety Net Programme (PSNP), this is by no means the only social protection policy in rural Ethiopia. Drawing on a very different rationale to the PSNP, the Ethiopian government also justifies state land ownership as a form of social protection for smallholders. This paper examines the links between these policies through a case study of an extremely food-insecure site. The paper concludes that while the PSNP and land policy together provide minimal security for landholders, land shortages and the problematic nature of agricultural production are such that there is little chance that the PSNP and its complementary programmes can achieve food security. As a result, the PSNP is used to support failing agricultural policies, limiting urban migration in the interests of political stability. These findings highlight the importance of situating safety net programmes within the socioeconomic context which generates insecurity.

This article critically reflects on what impact a supported and formalized artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM) sector could have in Northern Ghana, where poverty is deeply rooted, the outcome of decades of government neglect. Since independence in 1957, numerous attempts have been made to improve the living standards of the populations in the country's North but deteriorated human resource bases and shortages of infrastructure have limited their effectiveness. A recent upsurge in ASM activity, however, has catapulted the region on to another – previously unimaginable – growth trajectory entirely. As findings from research carried out in the township of Kui in Bole District of the country's Northern Region illustrate, ASM has injected considerable wealth into many of Ghana's Northern localities, in the process helping to stabilise their economies and alleviate the hardships of tens of thousands of farm-dependent families. The intensification of support to, and the formalisation of, ASM, could prove to be an important step toward eradicating a poverty problem that has plagued this region of sub-Saharan Africa for more than a century.

One of the most striking voting patterns in many African elections is the marked difference between urban and rural voters in their willingness to support the incumbent. In many countries, incumbents receive their worst electoral scores in the cities, whereas the countryside votes overwhelmingly for them. This pattern is puzzling because there is no evidence that rural areas benefit more from government policies. On the contrary, most governments in Africa exhibit a pro-urban policy bias. Why then do rural voters support incumbents at higher rates? Using evidence from original interviews with politicians in Senegal, coupled with media coverage from several elections, I contend that incumbents enjoy higher success in rural vis-à-vis urban areas because rural voters are more susceptible to clientelism. Tight social structure, cohesion and the prominent role of local patrons facilitate the acquisition of entire blocs of rural voters for the incumbent. These findings are independent of ethnic, religious or party identity.

Green-grabbing has recently been suggested as a label for describing processes of dispossessions undertaken in the name of conservation in sub-Saharan Africa. For the case examined here, the Dukuduku forest and the Mfolozi flats in northern KwaZulu-Natal, we will argue that the label obscures more than it helps illuminate the complex processes leading up to the present-day struggle over land rights. The land in question has been subjected to a number of different land uses in the past: hunting, conservation, commercial agriculture and small-scale agriculture. We show how contestation over desirable future land use options lies at the heart of the problems raised by an ongoing land claim to the forest.

This article examines the problems of elite capture in community-driven development (CDD). Drawing on two case studies of non-governmental organisation (NGO) intervention in rural Mozambique, the authors consider two important variables – (1) the diverse and complex contributions of local elites to CDD in different locations and (2) the roles that non-elites play in monitoring and controlling leader activities – to argue that donors should be cautious about automatically assuming the prevalence of malevolent patrimonialism and its ill-effects in their projects. This is because the ‘checks and balances’ on elite behaviour that exist within locally defined and historically rooted forms of community-based governance are likely to be more effective than those introduced by the external intervener.