ASA journal editors have great power. They decide whose work will be distributed to the membership in the Association’s journals. They can enforce silence or welcome thought. I am deeply honored to have been offered such a trust, and I hope I have fulfilled my obligations to your expectations. My four years as editor of Issue has been deeply satisfying. I have had the pleasure of working with many of you, and I have been privileged to read some of the very best work in African Studies.

I was offered the position of editor of Issue one year after my diagnosis of breast cancer, and I thought it was a great chance to make a contribution to African Studies. If I might have been tempted to ignore the body as it serves the mind, this wake-up call offered me new understanding of the corporeal sources of my thoughts. To reconcile the spirit with the body is insight. Our bodies are our homes. They create, sustain, and challenge our work.

I agreed to undertake the task of editing this volume, regarding such an opportunity as one more point of entry into a larger academic discourse that must be forced to rethink the content and direction of its discourse. In a recent publication, I stressed the need to restructure existing relations among African and Africanist female scholars in order to give voice to the conditions of African women’s lives as articulated by the former. I drew attention to the diminishing presence of indigenous female voices, especially those in the continent, in shaping the study of African women and feminist scholarship at large. Admittedly, the African case is, in part, a product of the social, economic and political trends which have already weakened both academic networks and infrastructures, distancing us from the very human situations and institutional ties which must define and mediate our research.

This paper is an attempt to link women’s empowerment in the democratization process and the sexual division of labour and resources in land management. Following the introduction, section two will assess the scope of women producers’ participation in the agrarian sector. Section three will analyze traditional land management systems. The impact of land reforms on women’s access to land is examined in section four. Finally, the conclusion will stress the need to create the legal and political climate that will allow the emergence of a more balanced land policy as a first step towards sustainable democratization.

Women’s potential contributions in rural development, particularly in food production, have been extensively documented.

African agriculture needs to be transformed because of the persistent low productivity of the sector. Women play a major role in agriculture but are prevented from optimizing their performance due to socioeconomic factors such as lack of access to productive resources, deforestation, and air and water pollution. But the lack of women extension workers stands out as a major limitation. This paper highlights the plight of women farmers in Africa, using research results from Nigeria. Suggestions are made for improving female participation. These suggestions, the paper stresses, are viable only if the conditions of African women’s lives are improved. A careful implementation of these suggestions will hopefully transform African agriculture.

Since the 1980s, the world has experienced a number of economic recessions. As would be expected, developing countries have borne the brunt of the resultant economic crisis. It is estimated, for example, that the total debt of the developing world rose from $562 billion in 1982 to $1,020 billion in 1988.’ Many of the developing countries are still on the verge of economic collapse, unable to service accumulated foreign debts. Various measures were taken by the developed world in an attempt to revive the fallen global economy. These measures included the introduction of Structural Adjustment Programmes (SAPs) which aimed at (among other targets) reducing national public expenditures and effecting a shift “from a trade deficit to a trade surplus or at least, a reduction of the size of the trade deficit, at least in part to service the debt.”

The adoption of the Nairobi Forward Looking Strategies at the Third World Conference on Women in 1985 provided a framework for action at all levels, to promote peace, equality and development opportunities for women, particularly those in the developing countries. Since then, these strategies have served as a basis for evaluating the actions of government and non-government organisations (NGOs) towards empowering women. In some respects, Uganda can be looked upon as a model African country where women have made remarkable progress. Women constitute more than half of the national population. Of the total population of about 19 million in 1996, 10 million were female, over 4 million who are over 18 years and eligible to vote. Uganda’s Affirmative Action policy has provided women with significant opportunity to participate in both the parliament and other decision making bodies.

This paper focuses primarily on current debates regarding the place of female circumcision in Third World and western feminist discourse. In examining these debates, I will also draw from its fictional and autobiographical depictions as presented and discussed in contemporary African literature. While female circumcision (FC) is not practiced solely in Africa, I will be limiting my analysis to the effects of the practice within the continent. The paper is divided into three sections. Part one places the discussion on FC within current feminist discourse. Part two provides a historical and cultural background on the practice. The final section wades into the debate on FC and African Feminism.

Chandra Mohanty, in her article “Under Western Eyes,” presents a rather intriguing “Third World Woman’s” argument, reflecting as well something of the debate on African feminism.

This paper illuminates the marginalization or absenting of the female from transformational processes in Nigeria evident in male-authored works, specifically the novel. This has engendered the woman writer’s creative response to the need for consciousness raising towards female capabilities, by redefining the female as an achiever in multiple transformational spaces—cultural, social, economic, educational, political. The paper argues that literature has played and is still playing a major role in female consciousness raising towards the transformation of Nigerian society.

Consciousness denotes awareness. Thus, to be conscious is to attain a state of awareness. Given that “the locus of consciousness [is] the psyche,” consciousness raising should re-educate and re-structure the psyche towards a growing awareness. Transformation connotes change in all spheres of life—the cultural, social, economic, educational, political, etc.

I remember that it was a Monday. I had been running with my partner over lunch time and we had just returned to my office in town. The doorbell rang and standing outside were about nine policemen and women. Demanding entry, one of the senior officers brandished a search warrant for “pornographic material.”

I was so angry I didn’t know what to do with myself. I had been targeted simply because I worked for the national Zimbabwean lesbian and gay organization. Furthermore, the police had no broader agenda other than to intimidate and harass me under the pretext of searching for pornography.

The controversy surrounding African/Africanist feminist relations is neither a recent phenomenon nor one peculiar to this academic constituency. In the few odd years following the Second Wave, black feminists in the West have challenged the programs and direction of both the feminist movement and academia at every turn. In very succinct terms they rejected any alliance with a political project which, however well meaning, excludes them from the forums where women’s oppression(s) should be named and confronted. As hooks (1988) points out in the case of African American women, in so far as the “authorities” who study them constitute themselves and forge along in “the absence of the voices of the individuals whose experiences they seek to address, ...the subject-object dichotomy is maintained and domination is reinforced.”