Six years of intense debate have produced a measure of agreement on a solution for Africa's malaise. This is captured by the latest catchphrase of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, ‘Adjustment with Growth’, which implicitly acknowledge past errors by African governments – or, minimally, that a continuation of previous policies is no longer tenable in a changed external environment. An emphasis on ‘growth’ recognises that ‘adjustment’ must encompass more than ‘stabilisation’, that the continent needs additional externally-provided financial resources on concessional terms if import strangulation is not to exacerbate the downward economic spiral in which many countries are currently trapped. This fragile consensus is facing its first serious practical test as the World Bank attempts to extend its Structural Adjustment Lending programme in Africa. Clearly, significant differences remain between the attitudes of African governments and external donors, and within the academic community, on the sources of the continent's problems and on the policy measures that are needed to counteract them.

In the four years since the signing of the Nkomati accord in March 1984, Mozambique has undergone a quiet but far-reaching process of policy reform. Faced with a major crisis caused by the Renamo insurgency and by economic mismanagement, the Government has apparently abandoned its ambitious programme of socialist transformation through the creation of state farms and the launching of large projects, adopting instead a package of market-oriented economic reforms. Having joined the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund in late 1984, Mozambique has been devaluing its currency, increasing the prices of agricultural produce, allowing peasants to sell commodities to private traders, and channelling some aid to the private sector, in keeping with the policies favoured by those organisations, The U.S. Agency for International Development, which has also become a donor since 1984, has likewise exerted pressure for policy reform, in particular for aid to the private commercial farms. While the socialist economic sector has not been dismantled, the Government is now stressing the importance of peasant and private agriculture, and the necessity of providing more support for both.1

In contrast to its policies in the economic sphere, Zambia has one of Africa's most liberal approaches to press freedom. To convey the flavour of public debate during, or immediately after, the 19-month experiment with a market-determined exchange rate, 10 quotations are presented below:

Large scale mining will continue for 12 to 20 years, but small-working may go on for 50–60 years.

– Francis Kaunda, Chairman, Zambia Consolidated Copper Mines, June 1987.

Coffe after copper.

– Campaign slogan of the Coffee Growers Committee of the Commercial Farmers' Bureau.

Even real socialist countries have to find and use foreign exchange.

– Kebby Musokotwane, Prime Minister, replying to a question in the National Assembly, August 1986.

Zambia's cardinal mistake was to subsidise consumption for a long time, thereby delaying diversification.

– Kenneth Kaunda, President of Zambia, May 1986.

The economic reform programme has begun to succeed: devaluation has stimulated exports.

– Kenneth Kaunda, August 1936, Opening the 21st U.N.I.P. National Council Meeting.

It was not socialist principles which ruined the Zambian economy, but unfavourable economic terms which the North has imposed on the South…I have no power…we agreed to the IMF reform programme much against out better judgement.

– Kenneth Kaunda, August 1986, interviewed by Swedish, West German, and Cuban journalists.

A world conference on agrarian reform and rural development came to the conclusion a decade ago that since real progress could only be achieved in these fields if the peasants participated in both the necessary planning and practical work, the prerequisites were democratic organisations for local self-administration and self-reliance.

The Sudan is the largest country in Africa and ranks as one of the poorest, with an estimated income per capita of U.S.$400 in 1983.1 It is predominantly rural and sparsely inhabited, with an estimated total population in 1985 of 21.6 million, of whom as many as almost half are younger than 15 while only three per cent are aged 65 and over.2 The crude birth rate approaches 50 per thousand and the annual growth rate of the population is likely to be about three per cent.3 Harsh environmental and poor sanitation conditions contribute to a relatively high incidence of morbidity and infant mortality, with severe diarrhoeal diseases as a major cause of ill-health and child death. Life expectancy at birth is currently estimated to be only 48 years, while the infant mortality rate is put at 118 per thousand live births.4

In 1977 the member-states of the European Community (E.C.) adopted a collective strategy designed to and apartheid and to encourage the economic independence of South Africa's less-developed neigh-bours. The respective foreign-policy instruments used to achieve these goals were the Code of Conduct and the Lomé Convention, through which assistance was provided for the Frontline states. The scope of the Community's Southern African actions was enlarged in 1985 to include a range of sanctions against Pretoria similar to those adopted by other governments.

Africa's dismal economic performance in recent years has spawned a rather vigorous debate over where to lay the blame for the contonuing crisis. The United Nations and assoviated agencies cite factors outside the control of indivedual fovernlents, and stress the detrimental inpact if the poor condition of the world economy, notably the decline in commodity prices and foreign aid. By way of contrast, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund favour the school of thought that lays blame more directly on internal policy-making. Here the actions taken by government to distort, for example, exchange rates and agricultural prices, and to expand unprofitable state enterprises, are seen as the main reasons for the continent's economic decline.

Touts can be defined as free-lance workers at railway stations, airports, ferry points, and especially motor-parks, who undertake the self-imposed responsibility of recruiting and organising passengers who wish to travel by road, and for this work they receive a fee, or more appropriately, a ‘commission’, that is generally paid by the drivers of the vehicles just before their departure. All the owners are private entrepreneurs, who both compete and collaborate with one another to provide road transport for the public.

The proposition that an independent press can play an extremely positive rôle in focusing attention on, and directing a response to, a food-crisis situation has been put forth by Amartya Sen, who has attempted to explain differential successes in preventing famines partly on this basis,1 supported convincingly in the Indian context by N. Ram,2 editor of the influential newspaper, The Hindu (Madras). As a contribution to the evidence in favour of this proposition, and its relevance to Africa, this article examines the contribution made by one newspaper during 1973–1974 in mediating the public and governmental response to the famine which struck the north of Nigeria.

This short note provides one answer to an anomaly that has perplexed many an observer of rural development in sub-Saharan Africa: How is it possible that two deeply-rooted values in some African societies – the people's sense of individualism and their sense of community – have persisted through time when they seem to work against each other?