The article argues that the impact of law enforcement efforts against corruption deserves more scholarly attention. Drawing on a mixed-methods study from Malawi in southern Africa, where a large-scale law enforcement operation has been investigating and prosecuting those involved in a 2013 corruption scandal known as ‘Cashgate’, the article explores the potential for corruption deterrence from the perspective of government officials in the Malawi civil service. Malawi provides a challenging environment for deterrence due to limited state capacity, weak law enforcement agencies and widespread corruption. Nonetheless, the research findings show that Malawian government officials perceive prosecutions and convictions to deter corruption, both with regards to the law enforcement response to Cashgate specifically and law enforcement efforts in general. The findings from Malawi suggest that law enforcement and criminal justice have the potential to make an important contribution to anti-corruption strategies in Africa and the Global South at large.

Existing literature argues that the tactics of Cameroon foreign policy have been conservative, weak and timid. This study refutes that perspective. Based on extensive and previously unused primary sources obtained from Cameroon's Ministry of External Relations and from the nation's archives in Buea and Yaoundé, this study argues that Cameroon's foreign policy was neither timid nor makeshift. Its strategy was one of pragmatism. By examining the nation's policy toward Nigeria in the reunification of Cameroon, the Nigerian civil war, the Bakassi Peninsula crisis and Boko Haram, the study maintains that, while the nation's policy was cautious, its leaders focused on the objectives and as a result scored major victories. The study concludes by suggesting that President Paul Biya invokes the same skills he used in foreign policy to address the ongoing Anglophone problem, a problem that threatens to unravel much of what the country has accomplished.

Police reform in South Africa has been a crucial component of democratic consolidation. Yet recent research presents a contrasting set of opinions, indicating low levels of public trust in the South African Police Service (SAPS), but continued belief in their right to enforce the law, and a strong sense of isolation amongst officers themselves. As police are constitutive of the officers who populate their ranks, attention should be given to how ‘democracy’ is perceived by those charged with its protection. Through a series of interviews, this article examines how SAPS officers understand and experience ‘democracy’. Situating officers in the broader society and communities in which they work, it shows that officers conceive of democracy predominantly through the lens of ‘rights’ and that their role in protecting rights is complicated by the transitional nature of South Africa's democracy. It also provides insight into a sense of disempowerment amongst officers, suggesting negative conceptions of the quality of democracy and of the balance of liberal constitutionalism with the democratic impetus of building safer communities.

South Africa is the intellectual epicentre of the ideology of African renaissance and of the growing scholarly attention to decoloniality as an epistemological and aesthetic agenda of decolonisation. Paradoxically, the country is also a xenophobic crime scene: the continental state associated with endemic Afrophobic violence. This is a contradiction with both contemporary and historical significance. Positing this framing of a contradictory impulse should come with a caveat: Black South African intellectual investments in pan-Africanist projects were part of a broader cosmopolitan imaginary necessitated by South African colonial history and were thus partly projects of necessity. The origins of this politics of self-fashioning were not exclusively pan-Africanist.

This article develops the concept of ‘mediating bureaucrats’ by exploring their role during liberal reforms that led to rehabilitation of the sugar industry in Mozambique. By focusing on how relations between the state, government and business are mediated by a group of cadres who have occupied positions in different social domains, the article argues that these ‘mediating bureaucrats’ cannot easily be identified in one-dimensional terms as belonging to either the public or private sector, the state or the market. It is argued that as ‘socially embedded actors’, the group of ‘mediating bureaucrats’ are in a position to translate and mediate between diverse and sometimes conflicting interests and aspirations of the state, the government and business. We use the rehabilitation of the sugar industry in Mozambique to show how mediating bureaucrats adopted two practices – muddling through and translation – in order to straddle conflicting interests during different reform initiatives in post-independence Mozambique.

South Africa faces interconnected challenges of developing and diversifying its economy and adapting to and mitigating the impacts of climate change. A green policy tilt is ascendant in the country, manifest in a cascading array of policies and special initiatives. Utilising concepts from the multi-level perspective on socio-technical transitions, we assess Africa's first designated Green Special Economic Zone (SEZ), Atlantis SEZ (ASEZ) in the Western Cape, a niche innovation aimed at transforming the Province's industrial base. This initiative is very ambitious in four respects: (1) it links green SEZ development in a deprived metropolitan area to the broader regional economy; (2) it utilises an innovative governance structure; (3) it promises localization economies and export potential; and (4) it connects SEZ niche experimentation with emergent renewable energy regimes. While elements are in place which might seed a sociotechnical transition, societal and political forces (i.e. landscape features) continue to limit its realisation, highlighting the immanent, structural realities shaping South Africa's economic futures.

The Big Man has attracted considerable attention from social scientists, both as an explanatory force as well as a phenomenon to be explained. But the concept has become unmoored from its original meaning. Once used to refer to an apex figure within a patrimonial regime, today Big Men are often described as dictators or thieves. I show this using an original dataset covering discussions of Big Men in leading African Studies journals since 1980. I find that authors, especially political scientists, overemphasise theft and underemphasise accountability of Big Men. Then, drawing on my research with Ghanaian local politicians, I show how Big Men are constantly under pressure from their supporters. The paper concludes with a modest call to put the Big Man back in his place as powerful but also empowered, and thus indebted, to those beneath him.

We analyse the politics of the reform of teacher payment modalities in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) in light of the uneven territorial reach of the DRC state. The reform focused on extending this reach by paying all teachers via a bank account, replacing long-standing shared governance arrangements between state and faith-based organisations with a public-private partnership. By using qualitative and quantitative data, we map the political practices accompanying the implementation of the reform. While the reform itself was officially deemed a success, its intended effects were almost completely offset in rural areas. Moreover, governance of teacher payments was not rationalised but instead became even more complex and spatially differentiated. In sum, the reform has rendered governance processes more opaque and deepened the existing unevenness in the geography of statehood.

Mali has one of the highest migration rates in Africa, but we still know very little about the processes and drivers of migration – particularly in the context of the current political crisis. This article draws on 27 focus groups with 220 returnees and male youth respondents conducted in the summer of 2018. Respondents cite underemployment and the inability to provide for relatives as well as a feeling of hopelessness about a future life in Mali as drivers of migration. Returnees report that the voyage was more difficult than anticipated. However, even with knowledge of the significant risks they face, most (68%) returnees express a desire to try to migrate again: this is particularly true for returned migrants who failed in an attempt to reach Europe (89%). The research illustrates very different experiences for migrants attempting to reach Europe and those with goals of intra-African migration.

Social capital research has measured the concept in two distinct ways: through direct reporting by participants in cross-national surveys and the presence of associative organisations. Both strategies raise difficulties: the former restricts comparability and assumes group stability; the latter relies on literal translation and uses direct questioning. We problematise these approaches and argue that the ratio of ‘check-points’ where individuals are asked to demonstrate adherence to rules, and ‘trust-points’ where such proofs are not required, can better measure social capital. Moreover, the unevenness of social capital between groups is perceptible by ‘fast-lanes’ that differentially treat individuals based on identity. Evidence from a field survey and observational evidence in South Africa is presented.

The existing literature has demonstrated that both ethnic and economic factors affect a vote decision in African democracies. I show that there is a meaningful interaction between the two cleavages in their influence on voting. In particular, I argue for political salience of agricultural subsectors that shape the electoral consequences of economic performance in the context where agricultural policy affects the livelihood of the majority population. Relying on the analyses of the 2007 and 2013 elections in Kenya, I illustrate how likely an individual, who is attached to a politically coherent ethnic group, votes for a candidate, the majority of whose ethnic members engage in the same industry as the voter himself regardless of the candidate's ethnicity. The results show that the sector factor reinforces the positive and negative effects of ethnic communities on incumbent support, and also explains voting by ethnic minorities whose motives for voting are not ethnic.

Since the cessation of conflict in 2002, Sierra Leone has experienced extraordinary levels of involvement from Western donors. Paradoxically, while relationships are often portrayed on the ground as strong with significant donor influence, our research shows considerable fluidity in individual and institutional relationships. The article disaggregates donor–government relations at various levels over a short but crucial period, 2010–16, asking in each case who occupies the driving seat. In so doing, the article interrogates the concept of ‘extraversion’, investigating to what extent government – and indeed donors – has space in which to manoeuvre and how and why government and donors act as they do in this space. The period 2010–16 is of particular interest due to extreme iron ore price volatility and the Ebola epidemic of 2014–15. The article adds much-needed critique and empirical evidence to the debate on donor influence and ‘extraversion’.

In recent years, there has been growing interest among lower-middle income countries (LMICs) to reduce their dependence on donor resources, framed normatively as ‘beyond aid’. Yet, public perceptions about beyond aid narratives remain under-studied. This article explores current public perceptions in Ghana about the ‘Ghana Beyond Aid’ (GhBA) vision aimed at promoting structural economic transformation through the use of national resources while reducing dependence on donor aid. Drawing on 67 semi-structured interviews with government officials, civil society organisations (CSOs), donor representatives, academics, ‘ordinary citizens’ and media reviews, this article examines public understanding, rationale and perceived barriers to the implementation of the GhBA vision. I show that while GhBA is a welcome development for promoting structural economic transformation and ownership over national development priorities, mechanisms for propelling the GhBA are largely absent. Achieving GhBA will require a conscious effort by government and stakeholders to move beyond political rhetoric and partisan politics to setting out clear policy direction in addition to building a national consensus in promoting the vision. Implications of the research findings are discussed.

With much fanfare, Ghana's Jubilee Oil Field was discovered in 2007 and began producing oil in 2010. In the six coastal districts nearest the offshore fields, expectations of oil-backed development have been raised. However, there is growing concern over what locals perceive to be negative impacts of oil and gas production. Based on field research conducted in 2010 and 2015 in the same communities in each district, this paper presents a longitudinal study of the impacts (real and perceived) of oil and gas production in Ghana. With few identifiable benefits beyond corporate social responsibility projects often disconnected from local development priorities, communities are growing angrier at their loss of livelihoods, increased social ills and dispossession from land and ocean. Assuming that others must be benefiting from the petroleum resources being extracted near their communities, there is growing frustration. High expectations, real and perceived grievances, and increasing social fragmentation threaten to lead to conflict and underdevelopment.

This study examines the African Human Rights Action Plan (AHRAP) through the lens of Upendra Baxi's germinal theory on the emergence in our time of a ‘trade-related, market-friendly human rights’ (TREMF) thesis that is challenging the specific understandings of ‘people-centric’ human rights that are predicated in the letter and spirit of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDH). Baxi contends, instead, that the dominant strands of the contemporary understandings of human rights are – for the most part – designed to protect the interests of global capital. That said, human rights frameworks in low-income countries need to be studied with a view to what they say and don't say about global capital. Despite its attempt to facilitate a progressive realisation of human rights in Africa, the AHRAP does not rise far enough above the TREMF paradigm to re-locate itself within the UDH one. This is due to the AHRAP not adequately theorising and analysing the role of capital in the (non)realisation of human rights in Africa. By allowing trade and market practices to slip to a significant extent beyond its purview, the AHRAP privileges – to a significant degree – the needs/interests of capital over the human rights of ordinary Africans. That is, the victims of the excesses of capital in Africa are reincarnated in the AHRAP document by the fact of their exclusion from it.

This article examines changes in the allocation of urban land in Egypt between 1975–2011 with the rise and incorporation of state authoritarianism and neoliberal economics in what I call ‘authoritarian neoliberalism’. Authoritarian neoliberalism in Egypt transferred ownership of urban lands from public wealth to an affluent class of local and foreign capitalists – often in a non-transparent fashion. The article focuses on the government's legally sanctioned practices of subsidisations, privatisations and evictions as they relate to what I call, inspired by David Harvey's formulation, the accumulation of wealth by dispossession. Dispossession of public urban land, I maintain, generated widespread resentment that played a vital, but inadequately discussed, role in the series of revolts that culminated in the 2011 uprising in Egypt. Social tensions engendered in this authoritarian neoliberal regime, I argue, endure under the administration of President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, who continues to transfer public urban lands, from lower to higher socioeconomic classes, at an even faster pace than his predecessor.

This article examines the upsurge in denunciations of ‘tribalism’ in public debate during The Gambia's transition from the autocracy of Yahya Jammeh to the ‘New Gambia’ under President Adama Barrow. In these public debates, derogatory statements about particular ethnicities articulate fears of present or future alliances to monopolise political power. These fears are disproportionate to attempts of organised political mobilisation on ethnic grounds, which remain marginal. It is argued that accusatory politics are a salient, and neglected, feature of ethnic dynamics in contemporary Gambian – and African – politics. This politics of accusation involves the contestation and negotiation of moral legitimacy in the political sphere, in a manner challenging the separation of the moral and the political undergirding scholarly distinctions between ethnicity and tribalism.

In 2005, Cabo Verde became the second African country to receive the new foreign aid programme of the USA, the Millennium Challenge Account (MCA). It was among the few recipients of a second grant. Foreign aid has always been a controversial and hotly contested issue, and the MCA is no exception. This paper, based partly on personal experience with the programme, provides a critical examination of the nature, process and implementation of the MCA grants in Cabo Verde. The country had campaigned aggressively for the grants. The MCA not only financed important public investments, it was debt-free and without conditionalities. However, even while it allowed more leeway over its use and implementation compared with other aid programmes, it engendered its own challenges.

Does a leader's ethnicity affect the regional distribution of basic services such as education in Africa? Several influential studies have argued in the affirmative, by using educational attainment levels to show that children who share the ethnicity of the president during their school-aged years have higher attainment than their peers. In this paper we revisit this empirical evidence and show that it rests on problematic assumptions. Some models commonly used to test for favouritism do not take adequate account of educational convergence and once this is properly accounted for the results are found to be unstable. Using Kenya as a test case, we argue that there is no conclusive evidence of ethnic favouritism in primary or secondary education, but rather a process of educational convergence among the country's larger ethnic groups. This evidence matters, as it shapes how we understand the ethnic calculus of politicians.

The emergence of medium-scale farms is having important consequences for agricultural commercialisation across Africa. This article examines the role of medium-scale A2 farms allocated following Zimbabwe's land reform after 2000. While the existing literature focuses on changing farm size distributions, this article investigates processes of social differentiation across medium-scale farms, based on qualitative-quantitative studies in two contrasting sites (Mvurwi and Masvingo-Gutu). Diverse processes of accumulation are identified across commercial, aspiring and struggling farmers, and linked to contrasting patterns of agricultural production and sale, asset ownership, employment and finance. The ability to mobilise finance, influenced by the state of the macro-economy, as well as forms of political patronage, is identified as a crucial driver. Contrary to assertions that A2 farms are largely occupied by ‘cronies’ and that they are unproductive and under-utilised, a more differentiated picture emerges, with important implications for policy and the wider politics of Zimbabwe's countryside following land reform.