Do Nigerian political parties take left/right ideological positions? Perspectives in comparative politics see party competition in Africa's ‘third wave’ democracies as devoid of disagreement on class or economic grounds – and thus as ‘absent’ of left/right ideology. Yet, a dearth of disagreement among governing parties can also suggest ideological agreement or ‘convergence’. This article maps the development of the left/right cleavage in Nigeria's party system, examining the evolution of economic pledges in the manifestos of parties that took power across Nigeria's four attempts at electoral democracy. It finds that relative to the deeper levels of economic disagreement voiced in earlier periods, the governing parties of Nigeria's Fourth Republic are now largely unanimous in the enunciation of their economic visions. Evidence of such convergence troubles a strict insistence on either the polarisation or ‘absence’ of economic ideology among governing parties in Africa's largest electoral democracy.

This article analyses the philanthropic practices of wealthy businessmen in West and Central Africa and how they are rooted in different political economies. Current debates on African philanthropy focus on horizontal gifting as a form of solidarity. Drawing on observations, interviews and original data on the activities of corporations and foundations, we identify three types of philanthropic practices that support different forms of economic accumulation and social reproduction. They also promote new forms of governance and transnational networks. First, gifts to parties and governments contribute to neo-patrimonial dynamics. Second, in the wake of democratisation processes, some business elites started to use grants and partnerships with civil societies and international organisations to promote the rule of law and constrain prebendalism. A third type of practices comprise venture philanthropy, seed funding and incubators claims to ‘Africanise’ capital flows. It positions finance professionals as intermediaries between the offshore world and the new leaders they support.

Are residents of developing countries willing to support economic development despite environmental damage and conflict risks? To examine this question, we conducted a survey experiment in Turkana County, home to an economically and politically marginalised pastoral community in Kenya but newly impacted by a large-scale infrastructure development project, namely, the Lamu Port–South Sudan–Ethiopia Transport (LAPSSET) corridor project, which will generate economic development at the expense of significant environmental degradation and intensified conflict risks. We found that the majority of our respondents in Turkana support LAPSSET regardless of the expected environmental damages and conflict risks. Although concerns about unequal distribution of economic opportunities and cross-border ethnic conflicts decreased support for LAPSSET, the decreases in support were substantively small and only found conditionally based on certain sub-groups. Our results align with earlier literature findings that residents of developing countries are willing to tolerate negative consequences while prioritising economic development.

Understanding why citizens are willing to finance public goods is central to development and state capacity. Taxation can contribute to the common good, yet particularly in developing contexts, citizens may not benefit – or contribute – equally from such resources or across their lifetimes. How do taxpayers link solidarity to the practice of paying taxes? Taxation makes solidarity visible, but taxation practices also produce and shape solidarity. To enable further scrutiny of the perceived linkages between taxation, ideas around redistribution, and solidarity we develop a framework of imagined solidarity, which differentiates between affective and calculative solidarity on the one hand, and personal and generalised solidarity on the other hand. Using data from focus groups with formal sector workers in Namibia, we illustrate how taxpayers link solidarity to the practice of paying taxes along these dimensions; demonstrating the usefulness of this framework for the further study of fiscal interconnectedness, also beyond Namibia.

Chiefs in Malawi exercise significant authority based on legitimacy derived from the position's purportedly deep historical origins. But, does such legitimacy confer when a new chieftaincy is created from scratch? I address this question within the context of an ongoing cultural revival of the Lhomwe ethnic group in Malawi, which has included the appointment of many new Lhomwe chiefs and the creation of a Lhomwe paramount chieftaincy. Using a combination of in-depth interviews and original survey data, I explore the political drivers, mechanisms and implications of the this newly created Lhomwe chieftaincy. I find that its creation was driven by top-down, elite-led action rather than citizen demands, and that the newly appointed chiefs enjoy the most support among urban-based backers of the political party responsible for their appointments. This research contributes to historical work on the colonial-era creation of chieftaincies, but does so using a contemporary case of cultural engineering.

Charcoal economies in central-east Africa are deep and powerful: they connect military and state financing with everyday family cooking. This article, based on new fieldwork in the understudied charcoal economy in South Sudan, explores the hierarchies and systems of self-employed producers, cash-for-piecework workers, middlemen and transporters, large-scale investors, and the public and defence sector financiers, landlords, brokers and security providers who all work in this political economy of forestry and charcoal-making. Drawing on local colonial archives and extensive fieldwork over 2020–2022, we break down the forms of work, investment and exploitation across this historical post/colonial landscape of labour, tree cultures, land rights and regional trade. In doing this we expand and escape the dominant and neatening metaphor of the value chain; we present a wider view of the expansion of the armed, privatised state economy; and we highlight current debates over the value, commodification and sale of forests and rural life.

The formalisation of informal security-providers has important consequences for citizenship, the rule of law, and human rights. We examine these policies in Burkina Faso, where formalisation has led to concerns about vigilante justice and ethnic targeting. Although African governments' reliance on informal security provision is well-documented, less is known about the origins of formalisation policies. To advance theory-building in this domain, this paper examines the political logic of empowering self-defence groups through the study of Burkina Faso's 2022 junta government, with comparisons to two prior regimes. We argue that formalisation is not only a mechanism for overcoming vexing security challenges, but is a tool used by leaders to build legitimacy and strengthen the regime's grip on power. In doing so, the article contributes insights into the origins of governmental policies towards self-defence groups, with implications for the study of political legitimacy, security provision and citizen–state relations.

Most of the attention on Africa-China relations has centred on China's economic activities. What remains unclear is the role of partisanship in shaping public perceptions of China in African countries. Since the Chinese government builds a favourable relationship with an incumbent party, incumbent party supporters tend to have positive views towards China whereas opposition party supporters perceive China more critically. This study conducts multilevel mixed-effects regression analyses of public opinion across 33 African countries, and finds that opposition party supporters are indeed more critical of China. While opposition parties are motivated by their office-seeking interests, they also hold an incumbent party accountable. This study sheds light on the agency of political parties and their supporters in African countries and the mode (instead of volume) of China's bilateral engagement.

Elections in divided societies and in countries undergoing political transitions are precarious events. Hastened democratisation may ignite inter-communal antagonism and mobilise voters for conflict. Sub-national elections are even more prone to challenge national policies to defend regional autonomy and self-determination. The relationship between the Tigray Peoples' Liberation Front (TPLF) and the Ethiopian Federal government had been deteriorating since the coming to power of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed in 2018. It was formally breached in September 2020 when the TPLF insisted on organising a separate regional election in Tigray in defiance of the federal government's decision to postpone national elections due to the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, leading to one of Africa's most devastating civil wars in modern times. In the pursuit of democratic legitimacy, and conversely consciously framing the federal government as non-democratic, the TPLF ‘weaponised’ the election. This article analyses the process leading up to the decision to conduct separate elections in Tigray, its conduct and result. The analysis demonstrates how elections and the contestation to claim a democratic legitimacy in transition countries may contribute to a politics of violence, ultimately leading to war.

Zambia experienced its third electoral turnover in the 2021 election. While the ruling Patriotic Front (PF) lost votes across the territory, the electoral collapse in urban Zambia was particularly remarkable. This paper argues that economic performance voting can explain urban party switching in Zambia. The argument is supported by a unique panel survey of Zambian voters in the period 2019–2022. We show that urban voters were more likely to desert the PF, even when we control for ethnicity. We also show that they were more likely to evaluate the economy poorly and more likely to change their electoral preferences in view of such poor economic evaluation. Our results stress that African elections should not be understood as static expressions of stable political cleavages but may function as real opportunities for political accountability. However, the extent to which voters are willing to re-evaluate their vote choice varies across space.