The historiographic question that this article asks is: How can historians uncover actual social and economic practices without imposing anachronistic standards and terminologies on the available evidence? The analysis focuses on the relationship between landlords and zégoch—a hitherto unrecognized and socially subservient class of peasants—in the context of social, economic, and cultural realities in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Ethiopia. The thesis is that during this period the Ethiopian ruling classes gained their power and income primarily from ownership of rim land—a form of private property—and the labor of zégoch.

Using the University of Malawi as an example, this article analyzes the opportunities and constraints faced by African intellectuals. It argues that during the anticolonial struggle, young nationalists conceived the University of Malawi as a potential engine for the transformation and development of the state. After independence President Banda, who established a repressive one-party state, severely restricted the university's intellectual autonomy through modalities of censorship. Some academics and students went into exile; others conformed to the dominant ideology; others resisted it furtively. Global pressures on both the university and the entire political economy of Malawi contributed to the triumph of prodemocracy movements in overthrowing the Banda regime. After the victory of the United Democratic Front government in 1994, many restrictions on intellectual freedom were lifted. Global socioeconomic forces, however, in complicity with the new government, continued to marginalize the university community. It is suggested that a productive regeneration of intellectuals' contributions to Malawi's development will be possible only through a major realignment of its intellectual capital.

This article is driven by an empirical paradox over where Somalia came from (pre-colonial clan-states) and where it ended up (return to pre-colonial clano-territorial conflicts). Existing academic studies on contemporary Somalia, which were supposed to provide critical analysis, continue to applaud the creation of clan-states within the failed state of Somalia. Based on a variety of unique primary sources, this article offers a new perspective on the current state formation processes occurring in the purview of the Somali State. Somali clans are determined to come to terms with the state collapse by averting the return to political power of the detested military regime, which was led by one clan-based leadership that tended to terrorize other rival clans and denied any equal power- and resource-sharing framework. Conceptualizing the contemporary Somali state as similar to pre-colonial clan-sultanates, this article argues that contemporary Somalis are reverting to a pre-colonial realm where each clan had its clan sultan seeking for a clan-state of its own right. Where else do clan-states compete against each other in entering into “treaties” with external entities intent on exploiting war-torn Somalia as tabula rasa? It is towards the objective of answering this question and of providing a better understanding of the Somali conflict that this article is offered to add a comparative empirical understanding of the different trajectories of state formations in Somalia.

In January 2012 a broad spectrum of popular groups staged an unprecedented protest against the removal of what has been termed a “subsidy” on fuel prices by the Nigerian government. The participation of tailors in this national political event suggests that self-employed artisans were prepared to transcend their narrow nonpolitical agenda to promote their interests and demands for decent social and economic conditions. Interviews with participating organization representatives in Lagos indicate the supportive role of alliances with labor unions and organized informal workers at large. We see current global developments in the textile industry as conducive to this outcome.

One of the most consequential recent developments in Africa is its rapid rate of urbanization. Over much of the continent, there is a movement from rural areas to urban centers and towns (Hanna and Hanna, 1971). There has been some social science research on this process (Caldwell, 1969; Mabogunje, 1968; Ross, 1975). Additional case studies reflecting original empirical research are essential to social scientists attempting to interpret the nature of the concomitant social and political change. Data generated by such empirical research are also needed by policy makers struggling to fashion policy strategies responsive to the changing urban needs.

On this most rapidly urbanizing continent, one of the countries with the highest rates of rural to urban migration is Botswana. Between 1971 and 1975, its capital, Gaborone, experienced an annual population growth rate of almost 15 percent. In December 1975, the Department of Statistics of the University College of Botswana conducted a major survey of migrants in Gaborone. In this article, we will report and discuss significant survey findings concerning the demographic and social characteristics of migrants, their motives for migrating, places of origin, the disposition of new arrivals in town, and the continuing pattern of rural urban linkages.

In 1966, at the time of independence, Botswana, about the size of France or Kenya, had only three “modern” towns with a combined population of around twenty thousand people. Gaborone, a small tribal village and colonial administrative center, was selected in 1964 as the site for the new capital which previously had been Mafeking, South Africa. Nearly all of the present population are migrants to the new town.

Deliberate British support for the supremacy of the Basotho monarchy and the prerogatives of chieftainship after 1884 assured that those traditional institutions would adapt to changing socioeconomic conditions within a relatively narrow, increasingly rigid format not conducive to popular participation. Despite strong official discouragement of overt challenges to the existing structures of rule, various new channels of popular expression began to emerge as potential alternative outlets for political agitation. The expansion of mission education, cash cropping, the money economy, and labor migration along with other similar innovations unleashed forces for reform which could not be entirely contained and quickly became, in Lord Hailey's words, “much stronger than the Administration realized” (1953: 136).

Hailey recognized that the diverse groups generating such social and political pressures included not only the educated, incipient “middle class,” but also certain dissatisfied segments of the chieftainship. Together with most observers, he devoted major attention to the all-important development of the Basutoland National Council, which had evolved in part as a product of colonial inspiration, encouragement, and guidance. However, Hailey, like virtually all other analysts, gave minimal attention to the equally crucial and highly controversial roles of emergent interest aggregations such as the Progressive Association and Lekhotla la Bafo (The Council of Commoners). Nevertheless, these groups established a heritage of political ideas and of interaction with both colonial and chiefly administrations that is vital in understanding the policies, values, and behavior of subsequent Basotho political parties.

The 1980s has been described as Africa's “lost decade.” After the largely positive economic and social developments of the 1960s and 1970s, Africa began to lose ground in the 1980s: economic progress turned into economic decline; social development into social decay. The assumption in leading circles has been that this downturn was necessary because of the costs incurred by a largely state-centered approach to development. Economic liberalization would help bring back growth. Few tangible improvements, however, were recorded in the 1980s. Since 1990, calls for political democratization have been added to the armory of policy prescriptions for Africa. Faith in the significance of democratization among Africans and friends of Africa alike provided the continent with new breathing-space but half way through the 1990s, there is little evidence that Africa has begun turning a corner.

Although per capita GNP income is in itself a measure of neither economic welfare nor success in development and measures for countries with a balmy climate always are lower than those for colder countries —something that the World Bank is the first to admit—the statistical trend for African economies that can be gleaned from studying its World Development Report for the past ten years indicates that in comparison with the rest of the world Africa continues losing ground. Although quite a few countries have registered at least a modest economic recovery in the 1990s, the number of African countries that have dropped into the bottom category of least developed countries has increased. In 1980, the number of African low-income countries (under $700 GNP per capita) was eighteen. In 1995 it had gone up to 27 or half of those listed in this category (World Development Report 1995, 162). The debt burden continues to plague the continent. Although total debt service as percentage of exports has improved for some African countries since 1980, repayment obligations are still beyond what African governments can typically afford. The result is that African countries find themselves locked out from international credit other than that provided by the publicly owned international finance institutions. The little private capital that comes to Africa is usually provided by individuals or companies interested only in a “quick buck.”

Kuduro, meaning “hard-ass” or “in a hard place,” is a contemporary genre of music and dance produced and consumed in Angola, especially in Luanda. This article maps kuduro historically and assesses it in its current moment. While the dance is full of invention and the genre has thrived in the informal economy, this alternative expression and the infrastructure it produces cannot be considered politically or economically liberatory. But the international “os Kuduristas” campaign promoted by two of the Angolan president’s children and companies they own shows the dangers of a culturally conservative discourse that dismisses kuduro as a vulgar popular phenomenon while hegemonic political and commercial forces embrace it.

Every ethnic group in Mali has at least one social category of specialists in conflict mediation and resolution. These are casted groups whose duties include the maintenance of a moral as well as structural social order, even in times of great turmoil. Recent research on the activities of these actors shows that the role of traditional mediator has not vanished, but it has evolved through bureaucratic institutionalization. A thickly described case study of the formation of RECOTRADE, the largest nongovernmental organization of traditional communicators in West Africa, demonstrates how this traditional institution is keeping pace with the political and civil development of the country.

The early scholarship on post-independence Africa contained a decided focus on and preoccupation with political leadership. This emphasis was due in part to the fact that political leaders were particularly visible embodiments of the state and that the institutions of the state were much more amorphous and elusive of analysis than the leadership. Even political parties, which were the focus of a great deal of research in the late fifties and early sixties, were examined much more in the context of political leadership than of institutional structures or their relationship to the state. This focus on political leaders was based on the expectation by both writers and political leaders themselves that the new political elites of Africa were going to transform the political, economic, and social life of these states in the very near future. These views were not just functions of the romanticism of the sixties, but were expectations grounded in beliefs about self-government, freedom, participation, self-determination, and development.

Political leaders were seen as the key to mobilization of the masses (Apter, 1963: xv, 303-5; Pye, 1962: 27-28), the driving force for development (Apter, 1967: 378-79), the architects of institution building (Huntington and Moore, 1970: esp. 32; Huntington, 1968), and the focus of national integration (Coleman and Rosberg, 1964). They were to provide a new moral leadership, a short-cut to political and economic development, and the drive and charisma to move the post-colonial state from its period of suspended animation into the twentieth century.

This article explores the care that husbands in Accra, Ghana, provide for wives who have been diagnosed with cancer. Making use of an inductive, qualitative approach, the study analyzes observations of and in-depth ethnographic interviews conducted with five married female cancer patients and their husbands over a ten-month period. The results suggest a strong association among husbands’ care, wives’ responses to husbands’ care, and cultural ideals of femininity and masculinity. The findings suggest that husbands’ selective and often limited gender-based investments in unpaid care work make their sick wives exceedingly vulnerable in a context in which care for the terminally ill takes place predominately in familial settings.

In the last decade, the rapes (of women) in, and the metaphoric raping (of natural resources) of, the Democratic Republic of Congo have received unprecedented attention from media, donors, and advocacy groups. Beginning in the early 2000s, these two narratives (the involvement of armed groups and state forces in illegal resource exploitation and the widespread prevalence of sexual violence in eastern DRC) merged to form a direct cause-consequence relationship, in which rape is framed as a tool for accessing mineral wealth. Through an analysis of media articles and reports of human rights organizations, this study traces the making of this rape-resources narrative, juxtaposing it with wider academic debates and critical scholarship. The narrative effectively focuses attention on a narrow set of actors and spaces in Congo’s conflicts, highlighting each of those actors/spaces in particular ways while obscuring the role of others. Because of this, key dynamics are missing from the narrative, such as historical context, gendered conflict dynamics, and armed group/civilian activity and mobilization, which are critical to understanding the scale and scope of violence in the region more broadly and the perpetration of instances of rape more specifically. The unraveling of the rape-resources narrative reveals its toxicity in limiting effective interventions and in closing down alternative narratives.

Autoethnography—a methodology that foregrounds personal experience both during research and in writing about it—is a useful keyword for scholars working in Africa and the diaspora. Mara and Thompson argue that by exploring new forms of writing and engaging in critical self-reflexivity regarding (shifting) positionalities, autoethnography—particularly collaborative approaches—is vital to ongoing efforts to decolonize African Studies. Mara and Thompson propose changes necessary for the development of Africanist autoethnography as a Keyword, and some hopeful indicators that these changes are already underway, including a small but growing body of Africanist autoethnographic work.

The focus on decentralization and civil society in Africa demands that scholars examine the factors that affect the institutions (i.e., rules and procedures) of local development organizations. Using two case studies from rural Senegal, this article investigates how the preferences of group participants, the authority positions of group actors, and the alternatives that individuals have shape the institutions of local organizations. The article then illustrates how the rules that emerge through institutional bargaining affect the decisions local organizations make about issues such as resource allocation and the implementation of development projects.

This article argues for the continued merits of research with rural, long-marginalized peoples, including those whose fervent invocations of ethnic difference—such as Maasai—make many scholars and politicians nervous. Their perspectives “from the margins” offer key theoretical and political insights into this complicated place we call “Africa” by challenging grand narratives of modernization, “Africa rising,” and supposedly “universal” ideas of progress and justice. They also defy enduring stereotypes about the passivity and ignorance of rural peoples. I argue, in other words, for the value of both seeing and theorizing Africa from the margins.

This article describes a legal thread running from the commission of massive sexual violence in the eastern provinces of the Congo since 1996 to the enactment of liberal legislation in 2006 to combat sexual violence throughout the country, especially in eastern Congo. In doing so, the article fills a gap in the nascent legal literature on systematic sexual violence. It finds that the new rape law is progressive, liberal, gender-neutral, and in keeping with international law. However, an unfortunate lapse in legislative drafting puts in doubt the authority of the courts to use the new rape law to prosecute systematic sexual violence. Despite this weakness, as well as harsh realities such as resource limitations and institutionalized corruption, the new sexual violence law, “the law of shameful acts,” nonetheless provides a framework on the basis of which the state and rape survivors can prosecute perpetrators. It is a necessary step in upholding accountability and preparing for the more daunting task of healing communities affected by a devastating regional war.

Students of government quite often argue that citizen participation leads to a more equal sharing of economic resources in society. Most empirical support for this proposition comes from analyses of western European societies. In the third world literature, scholars advance this thesis mostly with regard to a village or community context. They assert that participation in key decisions of social change is a critical if not sufficient condition for insuring that the local populace's resources are mobilized and its needs served (Charlick, 1980; Huntington and Nelson, 1976; International Labour Office, 1977; and Nelson, 1979). At the nation-state level, particularly in Africa, there has been little opportunity because of the one-party states and military regimes to establish the character of the relationship between participation and the distribution of economic resources. One prominent study of elections in Kenya's one-party state (Bienen, 1978: 90) concludes that competition for elected office has created a government “responsive to popular pressure” and able to “deliver goods and services which are highly valued.” This study, however, did not attempt to establish that the poorer segments of the public actually benefited. For participation to result in any substantial equalization of wealth those who are most disadvantaged should receive some benefit. This paper seeks to explore this issue: Does a liberal democratic electoral system at the national level induce politicians of an African state to improve the economic existence of the poorer segments of the population? The empirical data for this analysis comes from Botswana. Since most of the poor in Botswana live in the rural areas, the paper will concentrate on rural development.

This article concerns Dr. Remmy Ongala, a Congolese-Tanzanian musician, and the making of postcolonial cosmopolitan music in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. It argues that Dr. Remmy's music is shaped by the postcolonial consciousness and conditions of contemporary Tanzania. It also shows Dr. Remmy's cosmopolitan citizenship in his songs that address political and social issues. Focusing on his involvement in worldbeat festivals, it argues that he, like other musicians, enters into the worldbeat system not as a fully autonomous individual but as a constituted postcolonial subject, compelled to shape his music in accordance with the demands of the worldbeat system.

Challenging the scholarship on the relationship between natural resources and civil society, this article advances a framework that differentiates the various types of protests surrounding mineral extraction in sub-Saharan Africa and explains how this extraction encourages contentious activity. On the basis of protest event data from thirty-nine countries in SSA for the 1990–2006 period, as well as available survey data, the article provides confirming evidence that mineral wealth increases protest activity.

Defined primarily in terms of the exodus of the highly talented from the Southern countries to the North, the phenomenon known as “brain drain” has gained in importance during recent decades and years. Changing global conditions, unprecedented developments in information and electronic technology, globalization, and widening of the gap between the South and the North have focused attention on the brain drain. We begin this article by discussing the nature of the brain drain, briefly noting that it occurs in three settings: internal, regional, and global. Our argument here is that brain drain occurs in almost all societies, initially from poorer and impoverished rural areas to relatively rich and developing urban centers within national boundaries and later (or sometimes concurrently) to more developed and wealthy regions and neighboring countries.