Many Nigerian intellectuals have persisted in their enthusiasm for a socialist revolution. Historians, political scientists, sociologists, economists, novelists, and playwrights in the universities have presented a Marxist critique of the political economy and society, and variously sought to provide a socialist solution to the multiple ills of their country. For example, in November 1985, Tunji Braithwaite was insisting that ‘socialism is the way out’ of the political and economic impasse besetting the nation, while Krees Imodibie was claiming that the Nigerian social ethos expressed the essential precepts of socialism. Even the National Political Bureau appointed in 1986 by President Ibrahim Babangida to devise the blueprint of a civilian government for the 1990s recommended, albeit rejected by the Armed Forces Ruling Council, ‘that Nigeria should adopt a socialist socio-economic system’.

Although many African countries have had to address pressures for democratisation and are undergoing some form of transition, Mali is an especially interesting case which could provide useful insights into the durability of democracy on the continent and elsewhere. Mali has experienced extraordinary changes in the past two years leading to the almost total transformation of the political system from a highly authoritarian régime to one which has all the trappings of a liberal democracy. Unlike most other nations, Mali was fortunate in being able to write a new constitution and hold elections without the burden of continued participation in the process by a ruling party and head of state. Therefore, the more open procedures offer a better indication of the degree to which, given the opportunity, a modern democratic system can take root in the African milieu.

The end of the cold war and of the bi-polar world order that shaped international relations over the past 50 years is forcing the Government of the United States to make dramatic policy changes that affect all parts of the globe. In Africa, it is also confronted by significant new developments on local, regional, and continent-wide levels. Of particular concern to American leaders are increasing internal demands for political democracy, and the intensification of ethnic and other conflicts which call national integrity into question. And, as the decision to send up to 30,000 marines, infantrymen, and other troops to Somalia proves, the U.S. Administration will not hesitate to use military force if authorised by the United Nations.

Political corruption is widespread in contemporary societies, and is regarded by some analysts of the Third World as the single most important obstacle to economic development and political integration. Certainly the frequent régime changes which have occurred in Africa in the last several decades have been accompanied by charges of gross administrative malfeasance and promises to introduce honest government. Perhaps no country in the continent has devoted more attention and energy to continuing allegations of corruption than Nigeria. Indeed, from the late colonial period up until the present, critics of those in power have lamented the level of venality, and numerous published reports have catalogued a wide range of iniquities and called for reform.

Botswana ranks very high in sub-Saharan Africa in income per capita, and in such indicators of human development as public expenditure on health and education. Nevertheless, inequalities of wealth and income are particularly severe, in both international and domestic comparisons. Although wealth and poverty are mediated and expressed in complex ways, the disparities between the very rich and the very poor are established, structured, and growing.

As the news of President Moussa Traoré's overthrow spread through Mali in March 1991, large crowds of people poured into the streets of Bamako, Segu, Kati, and other towns to exact retribution, culminating weeks of popular unrest. They went after prominent officials, military officers, and members of the wealthy élite that had prospered during the 23 years of Traoré's authoritarian rule. Customs and tax offices, traditional centres of high-level corruption and embezzlement, were systematically burned, their files taken of scattered, their staff put to flight. Big merchants, accused of collaborating with the ousted régime and benefiting from state favours, saw their shops emptied and destroyed. Though disorganised and apparently beyond the control of any leadership, the crowds carefully spared vital economic installations — but not the Bamako offices of the Caisse centrale de coopération économique (C.C.C.E.), seemingly tainted by its rôle as the main channel for French financial aid to the Government.

Land-Locked Burundi in the Great Lakes area of East-Central Africa, while very small in size (slightly under 28,000 sq. kilometres, roughly the size of Belgium), is after neighbouring Rwanda the most densely populated country in the continent, with about six million inhabitants of whom it is commonly admitted that Hutu and Tutsi constitute about 85 and 15 per cent, respectively.

Marxist scholarship on South Africa's political economy was born as a meta-theoretical critique of liberalism in the 1960s and matured into a rich tradition of its own by the 1980s. As Marxists became more focused empirically and conceptually, they presented compelling evidence for their key analytical claims and generally bettered their liberal rivals—as they saw and portrayed them—in the debate over the complicity of capitalist development in the officially mandated racism of South Africa. Whereas liberals either ignored, minimised, or denied an association, Marxists argued that capitalism and its dominant classes systematically promoted and actively underwrote apartheid in particular, and white domination in general.

By the World Bank's reckoning, Mozambique is the poorest country in the world, with a gross domestic product per capita of approximately $80 in 1990, as well as one of the most dependent on foreign assistance, which accounts for two-thirds of measured G.D.P. Indeed, aid receipts per capita amounted to approximately $60 in 1990, almost double the figure for sub-Saharan Africa, as may be seen from Table I.

The Government of Zimbabwe has only recently begun to implement the commitment of the liberation movements to give land to poor ‘communal’ farmers, especially those dispossessed by the whiteminority régime after Rhodesia's unilateral declaration of independence in 1965. It needs to be recalled that by virtue of the Land Tenure Act of 1969 almost half of the country's agricultural land was allocated to Europeans, who had ‘greater access to the regions considered suited to intensive crop and livestock production’, and that ‘On average, each of the nearly 7,000 European farms was roughly 100 times the size of any of the 700,000 or so holdings in the Tribal Trust Lands’. The fact that much of this land was under-utilised only served to increase African resentment.

Like the flow of the Nile, the policy-making environment of ruling élites in Eastern Africa has remained remarkably unaltered over the years. New and old leaderships alike confront the perennial questions of building political authority and legitimacy on fragile socio-economic bases, in addition to finding appropriate modes of inter-state relationships. Uganda has occupied a central place in this structure as a participant in regional economic and political interactions, and since the 1970s as the primary source of instability.

At a time when radical reforms are being implemented not only in Eastern Europe and Russia, but also in a number of ex-socialist economies in Africa, a review of an earlier wave of relevant financial changes in the post-independence era can be instructive. Previously, currency and banking arrangements were largely equivalent to those of the colonial powers, but in or about 1960 for most states, and as late as 1975 for the ex-Portuguese territories, real choices had to be made, and the ruling régimes chose a variety of quite divergent paths.

When Julius Nyerere visited Mgeta in the Uluguru mountains while campaigning in 1987 for the chairmanship of what was then Tanzania's only party, Chama cha Mapinduzi (C.C.M.), he was confronted with a question relating to a long-running land dispute. Given that a national leader can expect to make little political capital from getting embroiled in such a controverty, Nyerere not surprisingly emphasised that he could not interfere with the work of the local primary court. It is doubtful, however, whether those present considered this a satisfactory reply as, in their experience, the administration of law – especially in relation to land–is highly problematic. Indeed, the magistrate handling this very case was removed by popular request because of alleged corruption soon after stating confidently: ‘After the hospital, we provide the most popular government service’. The demand for legal services is great in Mgeta, as elsewhere in the country, but at the same time there is little or no trust in the legal institutions.

Côte D'Ivoire retains a central place in discussions on the development of African capitalism. Dramatic increases in agricultural and industrial production in the post-colonial period, coupled with the régime's unequivocally liberal and pro-capitalist discourse, contributed to the image of the Ivoirian state as aggressively promoting the expansion of local and foreign capital. By the late 1970s, it was clear that a select stratum of Ivoirians had amassed private fortunes in the industrial sector, agro-industry, and real estate. Less clear is the significance of this fact for understanding the internal dynamics and development trajectory of Ivoirian capitalism. The idea that the Ivoirian bourgeoisie diversified from its base in agriculture to become one of the most dynamic and influential business classes in sub-Saharan Africa remains plausible, but it evokes no consensus among analysts. Indeed, students of Ivoirian capitalism have been more inclined to argue that the state itself remains the main source of private fortunes, that local capital is thoroughly subordinated to foreign capital, and that indigenous business interests are ensnared in the clientelistic networks of the régime.

Several African countries have found that the road towards the reintroduction of multi-party politics is not easy. This short article examines aspects of constitutional developments in the Seychelles, and argues that three fundamental criteria are necessary for a genuine return to democratic pluralism: the implementation of a proper and fairly organised electoral process, the drafting of a new constitution which represents the wishes of the people, and the effective de-linking of ruling party and government.

Contested territories and challenges to state sovereignty have become almost the norm in post-colonial Africa. The nexus of many of these conflicts resides in a status quo which gives primacy to territorial integrity over the right of peoples to self-determination. The comparative advantage thus accorded to sovereign states has resulted in a disequilibrium that legitimated the violation of both regionally and internationally sanctioned rules enshrined in the Organisation of African Unity (O.A.U.) and the United Nations (U.N.). Thus a normative bias in favour of the imperative of stability and order was justified by reference to the fragility of the newly independent régimes. In the process, the right of self-determination was narrowly interpreted to refer solely to those African peoples waging liberation struggles against European colonialism or white rule.

The observation and monitoring of elections and referenda has become a ‘growth business’ in Africa since external and internal pressures have forced the leaders of one-party states to test their political legitimacy. The closely monitored 1991 presidential and parliamentary elections in Zambia heralded the first peaceful transition from a single to a multi-party system of governance with a change of leadership in English-speaking Africa. It marked the beginning of an era of confidence in the possibilities of democratic change, and confirmed the positive influence that international observers can have on such processes. Their presence was henceforth considered an essential pre-condition for acceptable transitional multi-party elections. The hopes that Zambia would indeed ‘set a standard for Africa’, and offer encouragement to nascent democratic movements on the continent have, however, remained elusive. More recent elections have been replete with controversy, intimidations, and violence. Despite being certified to varying degrees as free and fair by observers, the losers have contested the results—in Angola with arms, in Kenya and Ghana with threatened and actual boycotts.

International donors supporting Kenya's development strategies have increasingly tied aid to the implementation of policy and sectoral reforms. After being confronted by more than 150 required structural adjustment conditions, the Government's good rhetoric but slow response led frustrated donors in November 1991 to suspend all foreign-exchange relief, and large blocks of bilateral aid, pending substantial progress in meeting these requirements.

Political life in Africa was described 25 years ago as ‘an almost institutionless arena with conflict and disorder as its most prominent features’. However, the wave of national conferences in Africa in the current decade would have been inconceivable without the various institutions and beliefs that have persisted despite the prevalence of dictatorship. These ‘fragments of democracy’ have been manifest in trade union movements, voluntary associations, and the nascent political parties that have organised popular protests against authoritarian régimes during the past few years.

Most discussions about development in the periphery during the 1950s to the 1980s tended to fall into two main camps. Those in the so-called ‘dependency school’ maintained that indigenous bourgeoisies, unlike their metropolitan counterparts, could not lead the accumulation and transformation process while in junior partnership with foreign capital, which entrenched a system that transferred resources to metropolitan economies through, for example, the repatriation of profits, loyalty payments, and other licencing schemes. In other words, ‘real’ capitalism in the periphery was improbable, if not impossible. On the other hand, orthodox Marxists, liberal scholars, and, subsequently, ‘modified’ dependentistas, held that foreign investments in the periphery need not forestall the emergence of transforming social forces, and that development was likely to be accelerated if/when some elements of the domestic bourgeoisie participated in joint ventures with international capital.