If during the 1960s the coup d'état emerged as the most visible and recurrent characteristic of the African political experience, by the 1980s quasi-permanent military rule, of whatever ideological hue, had become the norm for much of the continent. At any moment in time, up to 65 per cent of all Africa's inhabitants and well over half its states are governed by military administrators. Civilian rule is but a distant memory in some countries. Few at some stage or another have not been run by an armed-forces junta, and fewer still have not been rocked at least once by an attempted coup, putsch, or military-sponsored plot. According to one tabulation, ‘only six states have not witnessed some form of extra-legal armed involvement in national politics since 1958’.1 The phenomenon has even reached the non-state Homelands of Bophuthatswana, Transkei, and Ciskei in South Africa. Rule by civilians is very much the statistical ‘deviation’ from the continental norm, as military leaders lay a permanent claim to the political throne in much of Africa

It has become the common wisdom among students of sub-Saharan Africa since the publication of the so-called Berg Report that the poor performance of agriculture in the continent is a result of the economic policies pursued by most governments.1 Their intervention in the economy, according to several authors, has systematically favoured those living in the towns and cities at the expense of the vast majority in the rural areas. Urban bias is allegedly the consequence of the inability of the state to resist pressure from urban constituencies. Robert Bates, in particular, has been influential in disseminating the view that these policies are chosen because they have a political rationality, even if they are economically irrational.3 His central contention has been that state allocations in Africa have favoured urban at the expense of rural constituencies because the former are able to exert more influence on decision-makers.

Women in Tanzania's largest city, Dar es Salaam, used to be described as ‘relatively inactive’ as regards paid work or self-employment.1 One study undertaken in 1971 found that only one-fifth of urban women were either working for wages (13 per cent) or earning their own sources of income (7 per cent).2 The situation could not have been more different in the late 1980s, with as many as 66 per cent in Dar es Salaam being self-employed. Although about the same proportion of women were in some kind of paid employment as during the previous decade, it appeared that since then many of them had been leaving their place of work to farm and to engage in small income-generating projects, known as miradi midogo midogo or shughuli ndogo ndogo in Kiswahili3.

France continues to wield considerable power and influence in Africa three decades after her former colonies achieved their independence. Based on a variety of socio-economic, political, and cultural interests, many of her actions in Africa are essentially neo-colonial in so far as they are designed to perpetuate the prevailing pattern of dominance.1 Yet, France also suffers from an almost excessive dependence on African sources for the supply of cheap minerals essential to her economy and national defence.

The Epistemological status of their own consciousness is the core contradiction of Marxist thought. This difficulty has not been acknowledged by African Marxists, nor do they explicitly admit to the varieties of radical scholarship which form their intellectual heritage, and which their own worl seeks to modify and elaborate. Marxist scholars have been unable to develop a cogent, persuasive justification for radical theorising as an alternative to positivist social science, largely because of their unwillingness to confront and affir, their own historical specificity. As argued by Bogumil Jewsiewicki:

The Democratic Republic of São Tomé e Príncipe is the smallest country in lusophone Africa. The inhabitants of these two islands in the Gulf of Guinea just north of the Equator number approximately 115,000,2 of whom over 95 per cent live on São Tomé which has a total area of 857 sq. km. The smaller island of Príncipe, with only 140 sq. km, is inhabited primarily by Cape Verdeans whose ancestors migrated there during the colonial era. The economy has always been dominated by cocoa plantations, known as roças, which despite changes in organisation have been the fundamental sociopolitical foundation of this creole African society.3 The continuity of this unit of production in the national economy, and its attendant impact on the structure of society, remains the central problem facing the country's leaders.

Nigeria is a nation of tremendous socio-cultural diversities – in historical background, ethnicity, religion, belief, and especially language, which more often than not is the strongest factor giving identity, harmony, and continuity to ethnic groups, shaping the perceptions of their members. John Paden sees language as ‘a major mechanism of social communication between sub-systems …and… of expressing values, culture and ethnicity within a sub-system’.1 It is easy to see, in this light, how the most difficult problems of the entire political fabric of Nigeria are related to its great diversity of language.

In May 1989 the National Commission for the Study of National Unity appointed by President Pierre Buyoya issued its eagerly awaited report, ostensibly designed to find a lasting solution to the bloody confrontations that have repeatedly pitted Hutu against Tutsi. For the first time in the history of independent Burundi an official statement has been made public which explicitly recognises the centrality of the Hutu-Tutsi problem, and sets forth specific solutions to resolve it. As such this is a document of historic significance, and the sum of its recommendations must be seen as an important breakthrough towards national reconciliation.