The title of this article betrays its comparative character: an attempt to outline in broad strokes the political experiences of the United States and Africa spanning 1787 and 1966. The first date marks the year of the Philadelphia Convention whose concern, as it developed, was to draw up an entirely new constitutional framework that was ‘adequate to the exigencies of government and the preservation of the Union’, in place of the ‘weak, deficient and inadequate’ Articles of Confederacy.

A Quarter of a century has elapsed since France granted independence to her former colonies in West and Central Africa. Yet to this day, France continues to wield considerable power and influence in these countries politically, economically, socially, and culturally, thanks to a tightly-knit network of formal and informal relations. France's African policy has been remarkably constant and stable through the various successive governments of the Fifth Republic. How can this persistent situation of dominance/dependency and this continuity in foreign policy be accounted for? More specifically, the present study tries to analyse the main characteristics and essential mechanisms of France/s post-colonial policy in Africa, all too often shrouded under a veil of secrecy, albeit premised on a number of historical factors for its ideological foundation. On this basis, a variety of economic and political interests have been developed which constitute the main elements of this policy and its principal explanatory variables. Eventually, it is concluded that a neo-colonial strategy has been adopted in order to preserve a status quo that is clearly favourable to the conservative interests of the western world in general, and to France in particular.

Seaways and settlers were closely associated with the creation of the European colonial empires which radially changed the course of modern history. That expansion was triggered off by the search for a way round the Arab monopoly to the riches of the Orient, and the massive land-mass of Africa was in the way. The European sailors looked westwards across the uncharted ocean and the search led, inadvertently, to America where the New World of settlers was brought into being. Southwards, skirting the rim of the African continent, the seamen finally discovered the great sea route to the Orient round the Cape of Good Hope: there another world of settlers grew up closely linked to the seaway. Long after, with Europe's supremacy over the oceans well established, the Suez Canal was cut, and the old route to the East round the north of Africa was re-opened. Later, EuropeanJewish settlers were implanted in the area.

A Frequent error in foreign policy analysis is to allow government to set the agenda of inquiry. Officials invariably define the terrain too narrowly. Their concerns are short term, not only because of the immediacy of problems stalking policy-makers, but also because averting fundamental questions about the social forces that shape the day-to-day agenda of government redounds to the advantage of those who control state power. Consequently, the task of the analyst is to overcome the inhibiting parameters of public discourse. Without trivialising matters of practical politics, the analyst must transpose prefabricated questions into more productive lines of inquiry.

Nearly two decades ago Aristide Zolberg suggested that the most visible feature of independent Africa might well be instability and not stability, cleavage and conflict rather than unity and consensus. This observation holds equally true today. The elusive formula assuring the establishment of a viable and integrative political order has eluded many African states. Their failure politically to institutionalise themselves and to forge ahead in the direction of national integration and socio-economic development has been documented in the voluminous literature that has sprung up since Zolberg's original analysis. Ravaged now by natural disasters, international conflict or civil war, and military coups, early expectations of a relatively smooth transition from colonialism to meaningful independence have been dashed. While striking exceptions do exist, neither the richer nor the more developed nations are necessarily assured of stability and unity, given the continental context of scarcity and conflict.

The investigation of African economies has been dominated by two perspectives. On the one hand, the neo-classical or diffusionist position views third-world nations as essentially repeating the same development path as occurred during the historical experience of the now-industrialised nations. This paradigm indicates that the barriers to the advance of these undeveloped economic systems are essentially internal, and that they include issues such as shortages of labour, limitations in infrastructure, and lack of capital savings. On the other hand, while recognising the constraining influences posed by such factors, the dependency or neo-Marxian perspective argues that the constraints posed by the peripheral position of these economies in a world system is of pre-eminent importance. Such contrasts, although greatly simplified, dominate the explanations of the economic difficulties facing African nations.

In the years since the April Revolution of 1974 and the subsequent process of decolonisation, Portugal's relations with its former African colonies have undergone considerable strains, and on occasion have been marked by deep suspicion and acrimony. Yet, over the period, the general tendency has been one of accelerating rapprochement. The pace and depth of this re-engagement has, for numerous reasons, varied between the states involved. More or less cordial relations were established with Guiné-Bissau, for example, even before formal independence, whereas those with Mozambique were fraught with difficulties until the 1980s, and can still occasionally give way to mistrust and hostility. But, given the legacy of the wars of liberation and a world recession which developed simultaneously with the new relationships, the achievements have been considerable.

At the beginning of this century only two African countries, Liberia and Ethiopia, were recognised as independent states which could be fully involved in international law. Both participated in the activities of the League of Nations. Today, with the exception of Namibia, the face of Africa is covered by sovereign states.

The problem of food insecurity in less-developed countries (L.D.C.s) continues to demand the attention of the international community. Despite the progress that has been made in increasing the world's production of cereals and other major foodstuffs, many L.D.C.s continue to face immense difficulties in ensuring an adequate level of food supplies on a regular year-to-year basis. The current African food crisis has once again demonstrated the vulnerability of low-income economies to a sudden shortfall in supplies, and has highlighted the need for additional measures to strengthen food security in the Third World.

One of the major objectives sought by the New International Economic Order is to secure favourable conditions for the transfer of resources to the Third World, and to ensure that they are fully utilised for the development of the countries concerned.1 However, the unprecedented growth of the global economy since World War II has not been equitably distributed between the rich and poor nations. Unfortunately, within this international scenario, the increasing external indebtedness of the latter has had, and still has, wide-ranging domestic implications that have rocked the foundations on which many African economies stand.

The appalling experience of most African countries has led many observers to conclude that the continent has now reached a critical stage in its development, and that a political, social, and economic ‘nightmare’ by the turn of the century cannot be ruled out.1 One pessimistic scenario suggests that even with fundamental improvements in domestic economic management, up to four-fifths of Africa's population in 1995 will be below the poverty line compared with three-fifths today.2 This is the context in which African leaders enunciated new development priorities in their 1980 Lagos Plan of Action, notably greater self-reliance and industrialisation geared to domestic markets. Outside the continent, a growing concern with dismal African prospects has generated two action programmes by the World Bank,3 while new guidelines have recently been produced in the European Community for supporting African development.4 Without exception, all of these appraisals see a major role for regional co-operation and economic integration.

The Ivory Coast was lauded as a development ‘success’ for 20 years after independence in 1960. In fact, the 1978 World Bank report on the Ivory Coast was sub-titled ‘the challenge of success’. Six years after the publication of this economic study, the so-called ‘miracle’ looked more like a mirage, so much so that an analyst could write: ‘no African country's creditworthiness has fallen more spectacularly than that of the Ivory Coast’. Domestically, it has been obliged to implement a severe austerity programme, and externally, to request a rescheduling of its debt. From a real growth rate of G.N.P. that had averaged more than 7 per cent a year since 1960, growth fell to 2 per cent in 1981, to zero per cent in 1982, and to −4.3 per cent in 1983.

An earlier contribution to this Journal addressed itself to the question of how Kwame Nkrumah tried to subordinate his military forces to the civil authority of the Convention People's Party during the Ghanaian First Republic, 1960–6.1 It was argued that the pattern of objective control inherited from the British colonial authorities was cast aside in favour of an entirely new subjective mechanism: ‘This involved the orchestration of a programme of military diversification in which new security organisations were formed and existing ones split up’.2 Thisarticle will continue that theme by examining how civilian politicians attempted to confront the same dilemma in the Second and Third Republics during 1969–72 and 1979–81, respectively.

Given a continuation of current trends, with increasing population growth and declining food production, Southern Africa (excluding South Africa) which could nearly feed itself during 1979–81, will be only 64 per cent self-sufficient by the turn of the century. Zimbabwe has a particularly important rôle to play in trying to prevent such a disaster. It is by far the most important exporter of food and cash crops in the region, and has been allocated the task of co-ordinating a food-security strategy for the nine member-states of the Southern African Development Co-ordination Conference, namely Angola, Botswana, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Swaziland, Tanzania, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.

This is a study of feuding and conciliation, fissioning and fusing, among the constituent segments of Accra's Muslim community. It articulates the argument of legitimacy – to build a new mosque, to choose a new leader, in effect, to direct the group – and in so doing, politically delineates the principle that by excluding rivals it is feasible to gainsay power for one's own group.

Growing food deficits and declining agricultural productivity per capita in Africa have become the central concern of an increasing number of studies.

Any consideration of the process of decolonisation must be primarily concerned with the question of to whom power was transferred. Who inherited the colonial state and how did they establish their claim? The basic thesis of this article is that in order to understand the nature of the post-colonial state in Swaziland it is necessary to look back at least as far as the 1930s, and to trace the roots of Swazi ‘traditionalism’, the ideology which triumphed over competing forms of African nationalism during the 1960s.

The Southern African Development Co-ordination Conference (S.A.D.C.C.) was established in 1979 to eliminate the economic dependence of Angola, Botswana, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Swaziland, Tanzania, Zambia, and Zimbabwe upon the Republic of South Africa, and to create regional self-reliance –that is, economic development and regional co-operation. To attain these goals, S.A.D.C.C. seeks financial and technical assistance from all possible public and private sources, inculding international commercial banks and industrial corporations.

From the ancient Greek city-states of Athens and Sparta to twentiethcentury Bolivia and Zaïre, from theories of development and underdevelopment to models of civil-military relations, one is struck by the enormous literature on armed intervention in the domestic political arena. In recent years, a veritable rash of material on the subject of military politics has appeared – as much from newspaper correspondents reporting pre-dawn coups from third-world capitals as from the more rarefied towers of academe. Yet looking at the subject from the perspective of how régimes mobilise resources and mechanisms to protect themselves from their own security forces, one is struck by the paucity of empirically-based evidence on the subject.1

The transfer of European farms to Africans began in Kenya a few years before independence in 1963. The main principles of the programmes for land transfer and settlement – the two elements cannot be separated – were laid down at that time and continued thereafter. This article describes their history and main features, sets out the principles on which they were based, and explains the financial arrangements. It then analyses the experience of land transfer and settlement, and suggests lessons that may be drawin form this knowledge.