The state system during the so-called ‘cold war’ rested on a paradox. Peace and stability in the developed countries was accompanied by scores of ‘hot’ wars in the Third World, fuelled and at times created by the United States, the Soviet Union, and their allies. Each superpower had a high incentive to arm client states and rebel armies, in return for political loyalty and access to primary products. Nowhere did the logic of this system have such negative effects as in Africa. There, the result was the militarisation of states, the escalation of wars, and the strengthening of authoritarian forms of rule.

A paradox of Italian colonial policy was the striking contrast between the main aims and the actual results of its overseas initiatives. The Mediterranean with its familiar towns, harbours, and cultures, and plenty of Italians transplanted from the poor overpopulated countryside of the Peninsula, was the main area of desirable expansion, but historical circumstances forced Italy to divert her attention towards the faraway and unknown Horn of Africa. The Foreign Minister, P. S. Mancini, in January 1885 adroitly formulated a bizarre aphorism in a bid to convince a disoriented public opinion and doubtful parliamentarians: ‘The Red Sea is the key to the Mediterranean’. So from the outset of Italian colonialism, dreams competed with interests almost making the authorities lose a sense of proportion.

What constraints have so far prevented the full emergence in subSaharan Africa of strong and effective local capitalist classes capable of playing a leading rôle in the economic transformation of their societies?

Until the late 1980s, decentralisation experiments in sub-Saharan Africa tended in the majority of states to reinforce central control rather than enhance local autonomy. However, recent moves towards political pluralism have brought a switch in emphasis to more meaningful types of local participation. These have taken the form of political decentralisation, understood in the sense used by Philip Mawhood to denote the devolution of powers to representative local councils, each with its separate legal existence and its own budget, and with the authority to allocate resources and to carry out multiple functions. However, a number of African regimés also intend to transfer power from the centre to officials of the central government in the field. They therefore attach a broader meaning to the concept of decentralisation, using it to cover both political devolution and the deconcentration of administrative authority. The two processes are, in fact, often complementary rather than separate.

One of the intriguing paradoxes of Côte d'Ivoire is that while the political class has become famous for its ‘open-door’ capitalism, the Government headed by Félix Houphouët-Boigny consistently heightened its rhetoric of ‘Ivoirianisation’ through which it purported to indigenise the economy. The fact is that capitalism controlled by foreigners has generally gained the upper hand with state connivance or approval. Where local capitalism exists, it is often spearheaded by the state as participant and competitor, rather than as a facilitator of indigenous enterprise. Shipping offers a good example of this dual approach, where the state became the vanguard of a vigorous national and regional drive for maritime independence, but at the same time pursued its self-declared ‘open-door’ strategy which ensured continued domination of the sector by foreigners.

Against the backdrop of Africa's recent transitions to multi-party democracy, two countries stand at opposite ends of a spectrum of success and failure that ranges from the apocalyptic to the nearly miraculous. At one extreme, South Africa, the site of what has been described as ‘one of the most extraordinary political transformations of the twentieth century’, where the people ‘have defied the logic of their past, and broken all the rules of social theory, to forge a powerful spirit of unity from a shattered nation’. At the other end of the scale, Rwanda, a synonym for abyssal violence — a name that will go down in history as the epitome of an African Holocaust. Burundi, though spared the agonies of her neighbour, has not fared much better. There a remarkably successful transition was abruptly brought to a halt by an attempted military take-over, setting off an explosion of ethnic violence on a scale consonant with her reputation as a leading candidate for the title of genocidal state.

South Africa's security establishment, specifically the South African Defence Force (S.A.D.F.), illustrates important linkages between national security and political reform. The military and police influence reconciliation, for better or for worse, in all post-conflict states, especially those experiencing an interregnum between authoritarianism and hoped-for democracy, and in which no undisputed ‘winner’ has yet emerged. Alexis de Tocqueville noted long ago that ‘the most perilous moment for a bad government is one when it seeks to mend its ways’, Reform and political change, as Samuel Huntington observes, ‘may contribute not to political stability but to greater instability …[and] encourages demands for still more changes which can easily snowball’. Both suddenly unrestrained popular demands and forces loyal to the ancien régime (including the military) may threaten the process and outcome of reform.

[Peacekeepers] should not… have the obligation, the soldiers, or the equipment to engage violators in hostilities. International peacekeeping forces express and facilitate the erstwhile belligerents' will to live in peace; they cannot supervise peace in conditions of war. Turning them into a fighting force erodes international consensus on their function, encourages withdrawals by contributing contingents, converts them into a factional participant in the internal power struggle, and turns them into targets of attack from rival internal factions.

Eight years of reconciliation, policy reform, and economic recovery have now followed 20 years of dictatorship, corruption, civil war, and economic decline in Uganda. This stems from the interaction between a government which has created a benign environment for development, and donors who have provided generous support conditional on compliance with a standard package of structural adjustment policies involving changes in macro-economic management. These include the removal of price distortions on foreign exchange, capital, and essential commodities, improved fiscal and financial discipline, the reduction of marketing monopolies and state controls, and civil service reform. Government has set up participatory political structures at national and local levels, restored law and order, and taken many of the unpopular decisions required to enforce the changes demanded by adjustment policy.

Cameroon's upheavals since 1990 have not been widely reported among the more visible and violent African state-society conflicts. Their anonymity on the continent's political agenda is understandable, since by the formal, most visible indices, little has changed since pluralist pressures appeared. The ‘Gaullist’ monolith state remains fundamentally in place after 25 years: the constitution retains the unitary executive stamp of 1972, against federalist and devolution challenges, although multi-party politics were legalised in 1990. This and a new press law have been the régime's major concessions to emerging opposition forces, and led to presidential and national assembly elections in 1992.

Zaïre, by the early 1990s, by some accounts had all but vanished. One senior American diplomat described it as nothing more than the presidential vessel ‘Kamanyola’ anchored safely offshore in the Zaïre River, an élite praetorian guard compensated in hard currency, the remote marble city of Gbadolite, a shrivelled state superstructure nourished by diamond smuggling. Its perennial President, Mobutu Sese Seko, was characterised contemptuously by a French official as ‘a walking bank account in a leopard-skin cap’. More than a decade ago, a former publicist for the central régime had relegated the once-powerful state to a zone of non-existence: ‘The state does not exist or no longer exists in Za’. The 1992 National Conference resolved to expunge Zaire from history by restoring its earlier colonial and post-colonial nomenclature of ‘Congo’.

With the demise of the Soviet Union and the fall of many authoritarian régimes, some observers suggest that we are in the midst of what can be called a worldwide democratic revolution. Although questions remain as to the durability of these changes, particularly in Africa, it is clear that we are at a cross-roads. Nations are considering what kinds of political institutions they want to replace those they are trying to dismantle. What, at this historical moment, is the special appeal of democracy in the non-Western world? Is it the promise of individual freedom? or popular elections designed to give all citizens a say in who governs? or the prospect of guaranteed individual and group rights?

As many as seven Conférences nationales (CNs) took place in French-speaking Africa between February 1990 and January 1993, all against the background of the apparent ‘wind of change’ which is sweeping across the continent where democratic governance is eventually to replace authoritarian rule. In Benin, the assembly of delegates that met during 19–28 February 1990 was supposed to be representative of all social, religious, professional, and political interest groups whose aim was to introduce a constitutional liberal democracy. This CN managed to gain acceptance of the sovereignty which it had declared on the second day — namely, that all its decisions would be legal and binding. The authority of President Matthieu Kérékou was thus effectively emasculated, whilst the elections which were timetabled and held a year later, finally unseated him after 20 years in power. In Togo, General Gnassingbe Eyadéma was able to reject the sovereignty claimed. by the CN, held from 8 July to 28 August 1991, as the balance of power was firmly in his favour.

The South African elections of 1994 constituted one of those rare historical moments when humankind made a significant step forward. The peaceful culmination of a liberation struggle, which for years many had feared would end in a bloodbath, registered not only a triumph for the democratic ideal but the resounding defeat of racism as an organising principle of government. If its more recent reference point was the collapse of dictatorial régimes throughout Eastern Europe during 1989–90, it can more distantly be identified as following in the grand tradition of 1789, confirming and extending and elaborating the ‘rights of man’. Yet historical ‘progress’ rarely unfolds in an uncomplicated way, and — however momentous and however much the external world may be willing it to succeed — South Africa's new democracy, by fairly general agreement, faces daunting tasks.

The rôle of foreign assistance in the development process is not only complex, because exogenous donors infuse ideas and capital into diverse and dynamic socio-economic settings, but also contentious, because the impact can alter the development prospects of recipient states and communities. Different perceptions and ideological underpinnings shape the parameters in which programmes are finally implemented, and the views of those most directly concerned affect the outcome of the intervention, often in ways unforeseen by the donor or state. The process of accumulation can be altered, whilst some classes and institutions may be strengthened over others.

By 1994 Africa had only one major unresolved colonial question. Namibia and Eritrea having acquired their independence in March 1990 and May 1993 respectively, the former Spanish colony of Western Sahara remains controlled by the Kingdom of Morocco (as it has since 1975), despite the expenditure of thousands of human lives, billions of dollars, and strenuous diplomatic efforts to resolve the dispute through the Organisation of African Unity (O.A.U.) and the United Nations. Both Morocco, under the monarchical régime of King Hassan II, and the Frente popular para la Liberación de Saguia el-Hamra y Río de Oro (Polisario Front) composed of Saharawis dedicated to the establishment of an independent Saharan Arab Democratic Republic (S.A.D.R.), have found each other far more resourceful and less willing to compromise than they could possibly have surmised almost two decades ago.

The literature on drugs in Africa includes policy statements by government officials which, by and large, follow the line set by international organisations created to design counter-measures to drug consumption and trafficking, such as the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the International Narcotics Control Board (INCB) of the United Nations. At this level the debate revolves largely around the effectiveness of different preventative strategies; control programmes and the performance of agencies are evaluated, and authors often bewail the perversion of moral values in the countries concerned, while appeals for financial assistance figure frequently in the media. Much less well known are the oral traditions and the popular culture in which the drug users, traffickers, and barons are ascribed certain roles. I would like to compare the material contained in these different bodies of work with my own field observations from the drug ‘scene’ in both high and low density areas of Lagos.

Are there lessons Africa can learn from Taiwan and the other East Asian newly industrialising countries (NICs)? Evaluating the relevance of their experience is fraught with difficulties inherent in making comparisons across regions, during different periods of time, with different preconditions. Clearly, developments in Africa have to be based on local institutions, values, and resources. Yet Taiwan's successful combination of industrialisation and growth with equity reflects goals that are important for African policy-makes. The country's G.N.P. per capita increased from $143 in 1953 to $7,284 in 1990. Even during the 1980s, its economy grew at an average annual rate of 8·2 per cent as against only 0·5 per cent in sub-Saharan Africa for the period 1980–7. Taiwan's sustained growth has been widely shared by all income groups, with the top fifth of households only receiving 4·5 times as much as the bottom fifth. By way of contrast, in Côte d'Ivoire (1986–7) and in Botswana (1985–6), the share of the top 20 per cent was respectively almost ii and 24 times that of the bottom 20 per cent.

Most African states have been engaged in market-oriented economic reforms for the better part of a decade, if not longer. One characteristic of their liberalisation efforts that stands out in empirical studies is the unevenness with which measures have been agreed and implemented. But how do we understand what has been proposed and pursued? Who have been the principal players, what have been their motivations and strategies, when have they been able to influence the choices to be made, and have these conditioned the environment for successive proposals? In short, what are the dynamics of economic liberalisation in contemporary African economics, and what are the prospects for the durability and extension of market-oriented reforms? These questions motivate reflections on the checkered history of agricultural liberalisation in Madagascar.

Since independence most sub-Saharan African countries have retrogressed from an early period of rising expectations and optimism to growing difficulties in the 1970s and early 1980s, followed by a painful era of stabilisation and structural adjustment measures. A large part of the blame for so many unfavourable developments, notably stagnating growth and untenable domestic and external account imbalances, can be attributed to the nature of the African state.