There is no question about the seriousness of the AIDS epidemic in Africa. It has been clear for some years that problems associated with the epidemic are enormous. The depth of the problem has been documented repeatedly. Now that we have moved into what is described below as the ‘acceptance-response phase’, it is timely to look beyond present problems to the legacy that will remain once the epidemic has been confronted by medical science and endured by its millions of victims and their families, most especially in Africa. This article argues that as a result of many pre-existing conditions, having little to do with AIDS, aggressive responses to the epidemic, especially by the international community, are likely to undermine African autonomy and impede future development, particularly politically and psychologically. While AIDS is one of many deterrents to development, it has, in many affected countries contributed significantly to undermining their future prospects.

From several perspectives the AIDS epidemic can be seen to have levelled an enormous toll on Africa, especially in the eastern and southern regions. This article confines itself to the non-medical consequences of the epidemic where it has been most profound. Although the epidemic has possibly passed its peak, evidence of the toll of the disease, with its related health problems is now clear. In its wake are serious multidimensional problems: anthropological, sociological, economic and political. AIDS has greatly diminished prospects for increased autonomy in many countries, and dashed hopes for major improvements in their quality of life. These multisectoral dimensions of the AIDS impact are likely to affect African development negatively for many years to come. As an extreme example of the enormous difficulties, a recent report suggests an HIV rate of 50 per cent in seven armies in central Africa. Such reports highlight consequences that affect development prospects in general. These and related problems undermine the sense of nationalism and national identity so eagerly fought for in all parts of Africa during the independence era. This article focuses on these dimensions of the epidemic and suggests possible consequences in terms of national development in those countries most affected.

There is a voluminous academic literature concerned with understanding the way in which African states act in rural societies. This article makes a contribution to this broad area of literature by looking at the way in which the state in Mozambique has intervened in, conditioned, or created trade between peasant farmers and other social agents. The contours of this interaction are complex, reflecting specific class relations, particular socio-cultural characteristics of peasant society, the environment, regional economic history and the nature of the state itself. The role of the state has been central to peasant marketing in Mozambique since the Second World War – first, to create markets which explicitly favoured Portuguese settlers, Portuguese national planning and the requirements of international capital, and subsequently as part of a broader reorganisation of rural markets articulated by Frelimo. What makes an analysis of the state's role in marketing particularly important is the political aspect of marketing: the state is an agency which needs to justify its actions with reference to a broader programmatic or ideological plan; states command a (sometimes contested) political dominance over other actors.

By concentrating on the political aspect of rural marketing, we can understand something of the way the state and peasant societies interact. This interaction is complex, and changes over time; it is also powerfully affected by factors such as broader economic change, both national (national development programmes or institutional reorganisations) and international (changes in world crop prices). This article will show how at the local level, this complexity realises itself in a particular political relationship between rural government and rural producers. In this way, it relates to concerns of state legitimacy and peasant attitudes to ‘official’ power. These considerations will be elaborated through the example of Mecúfi district in Cabo Delgado province, Mozambique.

Franco–American rivalry is not a new phenomenon. Although France helped the United States to gain its independence over two centuries ago, since the early 1950s the Americans have often considered the French as having ‘anti-American feelings’. On the other side, though America fought on France's side in two world wars, many French politicians have, over the last fifty years, found it difficult to hide a deep resentment vis-à-vis the United States. After the collapse of the bipolar system, the list of disagreements between Washington and Paris grew, and, by early 1997, bilateral relations had probably reached an all-time low. With regard to NATO's controversial Southern Command, France clashed with the United States in Brussels; then, Paris strongly reacted to the American veto on Boutros Boutros-Ghali's re-election to the position of the secretary-general of the UN; and finally, French foreign policy initiatives in the Middle East provoked negative reactions from Washington.

The Great Lakes crisis occupies a very important position in the list of recent Franco–American disagreements. The main hypothesis of this article is that Franco–American antagonism with regard to the Great Lakes region was a perception far more of the French government than of the United States administration. However, French views of and tactics during the Central African crisis led to American reactions that reinforced French beliefs and contributed to Franco–American tensions, not only in relation to the Great Lakes region but also in relation to other geopolitical areas. Interestingly, some African governments regarded Franco–American rivalry positively, since it seemed to offer them an opportunity for regaining part of the international leverage and bargaining power that they had lost with the end of the Cold War.

The 1994–7 developments in Rwanda and Zaïre were considered by many French politicians, diplomats and many journalists as evidence of an ‘anglosaxon conspiracy’, part of a plot to develop an arc of influence from Ethiopia and Eritrea via Uganda, Rwanda and Zaïre to Congo and Cameroon. For them, the ‘anglosaxons’ (a term directed not at Britain, la perfide Albion, but at the United States) had a hidden agenda ‘to oust France from Africa’. This article attempts to provide an analytical framework for the explanation of French perceptions of the United States's role in the Great Lakes crisis.

The early years of the East–West Cold War in sub-Saharan Africa are remembered for the violence surrounding the 1960–1 Congo crisis. While the crisis in the Congo threatened to spin out of control, on 6 January 1961 Nikita Khrushchev delivered his secret ‘sacred wars of national liberation’ speech, which suggested that Moscow intended to undermine Western influence in the region by fanning war and subversion. Despite the nasty turn of events in the Congo and Khrushchev's blustery rhetoric, Soviet activities in sub-Saharan African remained limited in scope and within the bounds of ‘peaceful coexistence’. Moscow sought to challenge Western hegemony in the region by offering economic and military assistance to developing countries, ‘free from any political or military obligations’. Although Moscow first targeted the radical West African governments in Ghana, Guinea, and Mali, as part of his break with Stalinist orthodoxy Khrushchev was also willing to extend Moscow's ‘friendly hand’ to moderate African countries.

Moscow achieved an important strategic breakthrough within the moderate African camp in November 1963, when the Republic of Somalia announced that it would accept a $30 million military aid offer from the Soviet Union, thereby foiling an attempt by the West to preclude Soviet military aid to Somalia. During 1962–3, a consortium of Western powers, led by the United States, had presented a series of arms packages of increasing value to Mogadishu. This was done over the strong protests of Washington's long-time ally in the Horn of Africa, Ethiopian Emperor Haile-Selassie. But in the end, Moscow won the bidding war for Somalia by raising the arms ‘ante’ to a level which the Western powers were unwilling to match, owing to Washington's fear that to do so would jeopardise strategically vital US base rights in Ethiopia and provoke Haile-Selassie to adopt a less moderate voice in African affairs.

Although students of the Cold War in Africa are familiar with this general outline of the 1963 Soviet–Somali arms deal, scant attention has been paid to the behind-the-scenes manoeuvres and bureaucratic conflicts arising over the efforts of the Kennedy administration to dissuade Somalia from accepting military assistance from the Eastern bloc. A more probing analysis of this event is instructive in furthering our understanding of future developments in the Horn of Africa.

In 1998, over seven years after a Commission of Inquiry into Land Matters was appointed by the then president of Tanzania, Ali Hassan Mwinyi, in January 1991, it is expected that a Land Bill will be tabled in the Tanzanian National Assembly. These seven years have witnessed mounting debate on the purpose and direction of land tenure reform. The purpose of this article is to review the debate in order to show that the question of women's unequal rights to land has been almost totally neglected. The article explores the politics of the land tenure reform process in Tanzania, and examines the reasons why the gender gap in the command over property has received little attention. Tanzania is presently at an important juncture in the restructuring of land relations. Since the issue of land reform came to the forefront of the political agenda in the early 1990s, an opportunity has existed to address the question of women's ownership and control of land. I argue, however, that this opportunity has not been taken, and that the issue of women's land rights has become marginalised within the debate and consequently in policy.

Examining first what may be termed the mainstream of the land tenure debate, conducted on the whole by those involved in making major policy recommendations and drafting legislation, it is argued that the issue of gender has been largely ignored. There have been a number of opportunities when the specific issue of women's relations to land should have been explicitly addressed in research findings and recommendations. Instead, one sees no more than a passing acknowledgement of the gender dimensions of land tenure reform. This is most noticeably the case in the academic writing of those who profess themselves to be most concerned with the land issue as one of democracy and justice. A number of reasons will be canvassed to explain this.

This article goes on to discuss the role of gender progressive groups, such as women's advocacy groups and non-governmental organisations (NGOs), in the land reform debate. Whilst it might be expected that such groups would be concerned to ensure that women's land rights are addressed, especially when the issue is being neglected in the mainstream debate, it is clear that in Tanzania they have been unable to challenge the marginalisation of gender issues in the reform agenda. I advance a number of reasons why feminist analyses of the land issue have been hampered and why there has been a failure to respond effectively to the opportunity to press the government for reforms to address women's demands.

Women's unequal command of property, and the question of how it might be overcome, merits attention. If there is to be progress, researchers and activists will have to document and theorise women's land relations, and I discuss some issues which might be addressed in order to broaden the land tenure reform agenda. These include questions about the form which women's land rights might take, how they might be achieved, and the strategies which will need to be adopted in pressuring the state for land reforms.

The establishment of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) in 1995 reflected and reinforced significant shifts in global orthodoxies in favour of the liberalisation of world trade, and posed problems for trading arrangements such as the Lomé Conventions between the European Union (EU) and the 70 African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) states, which had initially been established in the very different setting of the mid-1970s. Integral to the Lomé Conventions has been the principle of non-reciprocity, under which the EU offered preferential conditions for access to its markets by products originating in the ACP states, without any requirement for reciprocal concessions (other than most-favoured-nation status) by the ACP. These preferences are due to expire with the 4th Lomé Convention in February 2000. Because they are non-reciprocal, these preferences cannot qualify under Article XXIV of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) of 1947. Being available only to a particular group of developing countries, they are discriminatory and cannot be regarded as being covered by Part IV of the GATT, or the Enabling Clause of 1979, since these measures only sanction special, differential and preferential treatment for all developing countries. As a result of the changed climate of opinion in the World Trade Organisation (WTO), emphasising the obligation of members to bring their trade measures into conformity with WTO disciplines, the EU sought and obtained a waiver from Article I (principle of non-discrimination) for the remaining duration of the Convention, leaving open the arrangements to be put into effect after 2000.

In the public discussions and consultations on a successor arrangement to Lomé, the European Commission has emphasised the need for such an arrangement to be compatible with WTO requirements, so as to ensure the legal security of preferences. It is therefore envisaged that Lomé preferences will be available only to the least developed countries (LLDCs), but will be generalised to all of the least developed countries, including for example Bangladesh, Bhutan, Cambodia, Lao D.R., Maldives, Nepal and Yemen, and not just to members of the ACP Group. The Commission has proposed that the non-LLDC ACP countries should be offered a series of regional and sub-regional free trade agreements. Not only would such arrangements seek to be WTO compatible, but the Commission also sees reciprocal regional agreements as stepping stones to fully liberalised trade and the integration of the developing countries into the world economy – an important development cooperation objective of the Maastricht Treaty.

This article examines the Commission's proposals, and analyses the likely static and dynamic effects of a free trade agreement on the African ACP countries. It concludes by questioning whether the Commission's proposals would assist, rather than hinder, the regional integration and greater participation of these countries in the world economy.