This article examines stocktheft, cattle rustlers, and responses to stocktheft victimization within the broader context of overt and covert cattle manuevering among the Ila of Zambia. This article is concerned with setting the short-term parameters of individual and group decision-making which currently informs concepts of meritability (i.e., behavior meriting praise or esteem) or culpability (i.e., behavior meriting blame or condemnation) in cattle transactions with a historical framework of socioeconomic and legal change. The discussion is approached from the methodological perspectives of legal pluralism (Pound, 1906; Pospisil, 1967; Nader, 1969) and interactionist labeling theories of crime and deviance (Goffman, 1969; Becker, 1973). Both perspectives assert that within any polity there are a multiplicity of normative systems and legal levels which intersect and articulate variously in rule-making and rule-enforcing settings. In such settings, the authority to make decisions regarding the culpability or meritability of a behavior and the authority to sanction the culpable are typically matters of competition between individuals or groups of equal power, or conflict between individuals and groups of unequal power. There is, therefore, a political dimension latent in rule-making and rule-enforcement (Moore, 1978: 208). Moreover, there are often settings where the political dimension looms paramount.

In developing nations such as Zambia, which seek to use law and legal prohibitions to integrate culturally disparate populations such as the Ila within a homogeneous national polity (United National Independence Party), the question of what constitutes criminal culpability (substantive law) and what the proper procedures are for processing the criminally culpable (procedural law) has been subsumed within a lop-sided and conflictual dominant/subordinate power relationship. In this relationship, the state has retained sole jurisdiction in criminal matters while local jurisdiction encompasses only civil matters. At the same time, the state administers a criminal justice system largely predicated upon that of the former colonial justice framework.

The story of the imposition of colonial rule and its impact on African peoples has been told at length in numerous volumes. A half century of European control resulted in the successful implanting of European capitalist infrastructure throughout the African continent. The degree of success depended on many variables–ecology, mineral resources, agricultural productivity, the absence or presence of white settlers, African cultural attitudes, European administrative acumen, and, to a certain extent, luck and chance. The main goals of the colonial system were to replace a subsistence economy with a cash economy, to spread Christianity and western education and to inculcate a western mode of thought concerning government and development. Like it or not, African peoples experienced escalating socioeconomic changes which emanated from vaguely understood sources, had unanticipated consequences, and transformed their ideas and manners. How did ordinary people cope in this situation? What was the range of their options? The papers presented in this special issue seek to address these questions.

The papers collected here originate from the symposium, “Grassroots Involvement in Modern Africa,” sponsored by the African Studies Council of the University of Minnesota and held in Minneapolis on February 28/29, 1980. The symposium's central theme dealt with the question of how ordinary people operated within the context of the socioeconomic and political changes that took place in modern Africa from colonial times to the present era of independence. Ordinary folk–farmers, market women, clerks, laborers, domestic servants, beer brewers, drivers, school teachers, and the like–helped create their own history and restructure their own societies. They bore the brunt of the far-reaching changes which took place after the colonial conquest and they continue to do so to the present day.

Obviously an adequate food base is an essential prerequisite for development. Unless this need can be met there can be little hope for successful economic, social and political development. Agricultural development in most countries is a necessary precondition for economic development unless they are fortunate enough to have other resources which can be exported to finance food imports. Even in the latter case such imports would detract from the accumulation of capital necessary for industrialization and would be unwise from a developmental standpoint, unless the country did not have suitable conditions for agriculture. Comparative economic advantage may dictate the utilization of cropland for the production of non-food agricultural products such as cotton, jute or rubber, but this practice is economically sound only if the country has sufficient food cropland to meet local needs or if the export of non-food agricultural products generates sufficient earnings to offset the cost of food imports. Thus the food question is inextricably entwined with the general problems of agricultural and economic development.

The importance of agriculture to development is not disputed in the developmental literature. Opposing views, however, have emerged as to its proper role in development. Perhaps the most prevalent approach in older, developed countries might be called the integrative view. Agriculture is seen as a more or less equal partner with industry and other sectors of society. As agricultural efficiency and production increase, a release of labor from the agricultural sector requires a reciprocal ability on the part of the industrial sector to absorb such labor. If this release-absorption interaction is not coordinated developmental problems are experienced (Reynolds, 1975: Ch. 1). In countries with the integrative view, agriculture often foots the major burden for the capitalization of industrialization as in the case of the United States and Japan.

In 1957 a dozen northern Mozambicane living in the Makonde highlands organized the Mozambique African Voluntary Cotton Society. By 1959 membership had increased to almost three thousand and output per grower far exceeded per capita yields of neighboring peasant producers. A year later the colonial state outlawed the cooperative. Portuguese officials claimed that it had become a hotbed of subversive activity. Subsequent efforts by the leaders of the banned organization to form a rice cooperative met a similar fate.

Despite its short life, the Mozambique African Voluntary Cotton Society played a significant role in the economic and political history of the colony. It was among the first independently organized African agricultural cooperatives in the country. Whereas its counterparts in neighboring colonies were almost exclusively formed to combat the exploitative marketing practices of foreign middlemen, the Mozambique African Voluntary Cotton Society also sought to protect its members from labor abuses inherent in the system of forced cotton production. As a grassroots movement, firmly implanted among Makonde peasants, the cooperative provided a hospitable terrain for covert anti-colonial activities while serving as a training ground for some of Mozambique's future nationalist leaders. Finally, its links to the cooperative movement in neighboring Tanganyika and to TANU (Tanganyika African National Union) suggest the significant, though generally overlooked, impact the British colony had on the growth of nationalism in northern Mozambique.

The significance of the Mozambique African Voluntary Cotton Society transcends the details of its own history. Like cooperatives in other parts of Africa, it permitted peasants free space in which to operate while simultaneously binding them firmly to the colonial-capitalist system.

While the proximal causes of drought in the Sahel and northeast Africa are known to be due to failure of seasonal rains, possibly linked with long-range climatic changes (Tanaka et al., 1975; Winstanley, 1973; Kelley, 1975; Lamb, 1977), the more persistent problem of human adaptation and survival in increasingly man-made environments during natural disasters is only gradually being appreciated. In recent years emphasis has been placed on man's activities as the major cause of rangeland degradation and famines. It is becoming increasingly clear that drought and famine do not always reflect cause-effect relationships and that the two may coexist independently and often become linked only through politico-economic conditions (Wisner, 1977; Lofchie, 1975; Ball, 1976; Franke and Chasin, 1980: 5; Grossman, 1981; Grove, 1979). In Ethiopia the famine in highland areas in 1972-74 was closely linked to the prerevolution feudal regime (Fitzgerald, 1980; Hussein, 1976; Koehn, 1979; Shepherd, 1975). In the lowlands Bondestam (1974), Cohen (1977) and Flood (1976) associated famine with recent encroachment of pastures by irrigation schemes and with reduced river flooding caused by construction of Koka Dam. However, interaction of physico-environmental and politico-economic factors resulting in the 1972-73 drought and famine and the adaptive responses of the pastoralists in the Awash Valley remain to be studied in depth. The objective of this paper is to examine these relationships among the 130,000 Afar and the 16,000 Kereyu, Arsi and Jile Oromo, the four pastoralist groups traditionally inhabiting the Awash floodplains. The ongoing irrigation development in the Awash Valley with World Bank assistance and the recurrence of drought since 1973 (“Ethiopia”, 1981; Kloos, 1977: 215) make this a timely study. The floodplain ecosystem, although for centuries providing much-needed grazing resources during the dry season, has been relatively neglected in the study of human ecology in Africa (Scudder, 1980: 383). Field work was carried out in 1972/73, 1975/76 and 1982. This was part of disease ecology studies of schistosomiasis and other parasitic infections, irrigation development and migration patterns in the Awash Valley and surrounding highlands (Kloos and Lemma, 1974; Kloos, 1977; Kloos et al., 1981; Kloos, in press) and of a cholera vaccination program in the lower Awash Valley.

This paper explores the political meaning of Ghanaian Highlife songs, which are generally regarded as pure entertainment. The paper is the result of a close cooperation between a Ghanaian insider (Asante-Darko) and a European outsider (Van der Geest). More than one hundred Highlife songs were collected, transcribed, and translated. All these texts are recorded songs. Nearly all Highlife songs examined in this paper are in the Twi (or Akan) language. (The Akan are a collection of culturally related societies with mutually intelligible languages. They number about four million people and live in the southern part of Ghana.) It should be made clear, however, that Highlife is also performed in other languages, within and outside of Ghana.

This brief paper does not discuss the methodological problems involved in the use of artistic expressions for anthropological purposes. This has been done elsewhere (Fabian, 1978; Asante-Darko and Van der Geest, 1981). Instead, it analyzes the meaning of songs and people's reactions to them. The first section of the paper provides background information about Highlife music in Ghana. The second section deals with the hidden meaning of art in general and, in particular, with the hidden political meaning of Ghanaian Highlife songs.

Highlife is a blend of traditional Akan rhythms and melodies with European musical elements, such as the use of European instruments and harmony. It encompasses a variety of artistic expressions: music, dancing, story-telling, and theater. Performances by Highlife bands are called concerts, even in the Twi language. They usually start with a comic or tragi-comic play filled with musical effects and intermezzos and end with a performance of Highlife songs (Richard, 1974; Collins, 1976a). Both the play and the songs can be about many different topics, rural or urban, modern or traditional, true events or stories. Generally, however, the songs deal with the problems of everyday life: poverty, marriage problems, hatred, gossip, shame, sickness, and death (Bame, 1974; Ricard, 1974). Apart from live performances, Highlife owes its popularity to recordings, which are produced in Ghana.

During the colonial era, pre-capitalist social and economic institutions in Nyasaland (now Malawi) underwent profound change as the result of the incorporation of the country's societies into the world capitalist economy. This essay explores the change in the day-to-day relationships between men and women and between the elders and the youth in the Tchiri valley of colonial Nyasaland from 1906 to 1940. The development of cotton as a cash crop was the focus of these changing relationships. This study locates the principal dynamics of the cotton economy in local adaptation to the ecosystem, a process which accounts for the success of cotton agriculture before the mid-1930s and its subsequent decline. The peasantry which developed before the mid-1930s was later reincorporated into the world system mainly as wage earners. This altered all earlier gender and intergenerational relationships.

The history of peasant (or Crown Land) cotton production in the Tchiri valley falls into three distinct periods. The first phase lasted from 1906 to 1923, when it struggled for survival vis-a-vis the state sponsored plantations. The second extended from 1924 to 1935 and represents the prosperous period when peasants triumphed and the plantations failed. The third phase, 1936-1940, was the collapse of peasant production in large parts of the Lower Tchiri valley.

The principal dynamics of the peasant cotton economy were ecological. The Tchiri valley is bounded by a range of hills on the north, west and north-east and cut in a north-south direction by the Tchiri River which has its source in Lake Malawi. It is divided into two broad ecological zones: the rain-fed or mphala and the river-fed or dimba subsystems.

Since his long experience in prison (1967-69), a mystical strain has crept into the writings of the Nigerian poet, playwright, and novelist Wole Soyinka. The long exclusion of his mind from external space has turned his imagination inwards. The works conceived or partly written in prison– Madmen and Specialists (1971), A Shuttle in the Crypt (1972a), and Season of Anomy (1973)–are introspective, visionary, and metaphysical. They are remarkable for their avoidance of sunlight, of open spaces, and the actions of Promethean deities such as Ogun and Shango. Here one looks in vain for the mountains and clouds of the epic poem Idanre (1967) and the grand gestures of its protagonists, the “Skymen of Void's regenerate Wastes.” The landscape of the works of Soyinka's dark phase is, instead, the mind's dark interior or its external correlatives such as caverns, the abyss, vaults, catacombs, and crypts. What prevails is a mood that is Orphic and metaphysical. Madmen and Specialists is a drama of essence rather than of action. The philosophy of As provides the play with its basic metaphysical concept. The actors in the drama are physical and spiritual cripples, beggars, and blindmen. The setting is subterranean in the second part. The prison poems, A Shuttle in the Crypt, visualize Soyinka's prison landscape as an immense universe of void–the crypt–and the poet's mind, the only living essence within the abyss, is evoked as a shuttle. The novel Season of Anomy owes its mythic background to the legend of Orpheus and Euridyce. The leading characters in the novel, Ofeyi and Iriyise, are modern counterparts of Orpheus and Euridyce. Ofeyi's quest for Iriyise takes him through grottoes, caverns, and mortuaries. Ofeyi, the mythic voyager, is frequently lost in the throes of visionary reminiscences. If there is one word that best characterizes the mood behind these works, it is the term “animystic,” that is, quasi-mystical.

Statistical generalizations about peasant behavior in rural Africa that fail to distinguish among kinds of peasants may mask important exceptions. Relationships that hold for the peasantry as a unit may not hold for major subgroups of peasants. For example, there may be significant behavioral differences between rich and poor or male and female peasants. Knowledge of sub-group deviation is needed to build meaningful theory and solve practical problems of rural development.

A few years ago I published an article in this journal titled “Peasant Participation in Communal Farming: the Tanzanian Experience” (1977) which derived a series of hypotheses about peasants and peasant behavior in communal agriculture from a survey of ujamaa villages and villagers. Although it reported differences between men and women in the degree of their participation, it made no further analysis of differences between these sub-groups. The present study seeks to overcome such a deficiency by: (1) examining in more detail the differences between men and women in the degree of their participation in communal production, and (2) determining whether there are significant differences between them in the relationship of their characteristics and attitudes to the degree of their participation. The findings will contribute to an assessment of the scope of applicability of the hypotheses and to an understanding of the factors accounting for differences in sub-group response to communal agriculture.

Idi Amin's brutal regime in Uganda presented a series of unique and complicated dilemmas for American policymakers. Despite its stated commitment to the cause of human rights, the administration of President Jimmy Carter opposed the imposition of economic sanctions against Uganda. Congress, however, determined that the levels of atrocity and repression which marked Amin's dictatorship warranted a new foreign policy approach. In addition, by providing another example of changing executive-legislative relations in foreign policy, the October 10, 1978, embargo of United States' trade with Uganda established new precedents in America's commitment to human rights.

Amin came to power in Uganda as a result of a 1971 coup against President Milton Obote. During his eight-year regime, over 100,000 people were murdered and thousands of others were expelled (U.S. Congress, House, Subcommittee on Africa [hereafter U.S. Congress, House], 1978: 5; International Commission of Jurists, 1977). A number of Amin's victims received worldwide press attention. Two Americans, Nicholas Stroh, a thirty-three year old journalist, and Robert Siedele, a forty-six year old lecturer, were brutally killed in 1971. The expulsion of the Asians from Uganda in 1972 attracted international attention. An El Al jetliner hijacked in July 4, 1976, again thrust Uganda into the headlines. In the aftermath of the daring Israeli raid to rescue the hostages at Entebbe airport in Kampala, the Ugandan authorities murdered Mrs. Dora Bloch, a seventy year old passenger who had been removed to a hospital. The 1977 murder of Ugandan Anglican Archbishop Janai Luwuum, together with two government officials, was condemned throughout the world. This event prompted Senator Clifford Case (R-NJ) to introduce Senate Resolution 175, expressing the sense of the Senate that the regime in Uganda should be condemned.

Therefore, the Union of Tanzanian Women will be: (a) An organization which will unite all Tanzanian women and enable the revolutionary ideas of the Chama Cha Mapinduzi on Socialism and Self Reliance and the liberation of women to reach them and be understood wherever they are (Kazuni Za Jumuiya Ya Wanawake Wa Tanzania, 1978).

First, you must intensify the struggle against us for the purpose of doing away with loopholes and laws that prevent equality between men and women. Second you must overcome mental attitudes imposed on women by social orders. As a result of social systems, women have become either slaves or flowers (Nyerere, 1976).

Men will have to learn to accept women as equals in social production and women must cultivate a new personality, a new consciousness of freedom and rebellion against male exploitation and domination (Tanzania Daily News, 29 Oct., 1976).

One of the greatest weaknesses of the UWT … is the incompetence of its leadership to penetrate to the grassroots level. … (Madabida, 1974: 18).

As the first three quotations with which this paper begins suggest, the rhetoric of “women's liberation” became quite acceptable in Tanzania during the 1970s with President Nyerere himself taking the lead in identifying existing inequalities between men and women as an impediment to socialist transformation. At the international level as well it had become clear–with the declaration in 1975 of a “UN Decade of Women” as the most obvious rhetorical gesture–that the neglect of women as objects of, much less as actors in development projects and programs was seriously undermining the success of such efforts, with negative consequences for development in general and devastating consequences for women in particular.

This village level study in Senegal seeks to improve the understanding of peasant behavior in developing countries. Policy makers designing programs for and interventions in the agricultural sector should benefit from an enhanced understanding of the workings of rural grain transactions. The study attempts (1) to provide a summary of principal producer grain transactions and (2) to discuss in greater detail millet marketing in rural Senegal. The methodology presented and conclusions advanced should encourage other researchers and Third World governments to recognize that evaluations of market process are vital to design effective agricultural policies.

For example, many West African countries have chosen to rely on national marketing organizations instead of using the private trader to commercialize food grains. Such reliance stems from their belief that the private market is noncompetitive and that public sector intervention will lead to efficiency gains. The conclusions of this study show that policy makers should first test the assumption of noncompetitive behavior before assuming that intervention will provide greater efficiency.

The first section of this paper provides some background information on Senegal agriculture. Next comes a summary of producer transactions. An analysis of the millet marketing process appears in the third section, while the last section indicates some policy implications.

Although the presence of foreign capital has been quite evident in most sectors of the Nigerian economy, only a handful of studies have attempted to analyze some aspects of direct foreign investment in the country. Even then, these studies (Hakam, 1966; May, 1965; Edozien, 1968; Langley, 1968; Central Bank of Nigeria, 1964-79) have tended to be descriptive, especially with respect to analyzing trends, incentives, motivations, linkage aspects, and distribution of foreign investment.

Thus, there has been virtually no empirical work aimed at statistically evaluating the determinants of direct foreign investment in Nigeria. Consequently, this study has the object of going beyond intuitive and descriptive analysis by providing a comprehensive empirical estimate of determinants of direct foreign investment, using the least squares regression approach. In order to provide the theoretical framework, a number of direct investment hypotheses proposed or considered in the literature are first reviewed.

The analysis focuses on direct foreign investment in all industries combined. Apart from possible specification problems connected with separate models for different industries which a disaggregated approach entails, such an attempt is further complicated by the absence or the poor quality of data relating to the larger number of variables which would have to be considered. Taking cognizance of this kind of problem in a developing country such as Nigeria, the only disaggregation to be done is in respect to sources of foreign investment. In this direction, the study analyzes total direct investment as well as direct foreign investment from the United Kingdom and the United States of America. These two countries accounted for over 62 percent of direct foreign investment in Nigeria in 1974.

It has been said that, given the proper incentives, farmers in the developing world would “turn sand into gold” (Schultz, 1976: 5). This paper describes and discusses an instance which approximates just such a transformation. It examines the relationships between a shift in the economic base and concomitant social and institutional changes among the Anlo Ewe people of southeastern Ghana. Specifically, it examines changes in the organization of labor and access to resources that developed in response to agricultural intensification.

The data for this paper were gathered between 1970 and 1979 in the vicinity of Anloga (see map), a town of approximately 15,000 people in coastal southeastern Ghana. Anlo Ewe people have been settled in this area since about the mid-1600s. It is an area of sandy soil and sparse rainfall located on a narrow strip of coastal land between the ocean and a large saltwater lagoon. In their season, drought and flood have created difficulties for the Anlo for as long as they have been settled here.

Oral tradition indicates that the first representatives of what were ultimately to become patrilineal clans moved into the area from the east bringing with them an economy based on horticulture and hunting. Cattle, pigs and fowl were kept. Once settled, people began to fish in both the lagoon and the sea. Extensive trade with areas north of the lagoon has apparently always been a significant factor in the economy, with the Anlos trading fish, salt collected from the lagoon, and woven fabrics and mats for vegetable foods.

Rural development in parts of Nigeria is a function of two comparable, if not, coordinate variables: the government and the townsmen residing in the urban areas. The government provides the access roads, runs schools and health clinics or hospitals built by the townsmen. These urban migrants, as we shall henceforth refer to them for reasons to be explained later, in addition to providing other infrastructural facilities, are the political and economic backbone of the rural communities as well as their source of modernization.

Smock (1971) dwelt upon the political and modernity role of ethnic unions in Nigerian cities. She showed how these unions “facilitated the accommodation between tradition and modernity in the Eastern political system…,” linked “traditional commitments with the modern political and administrative structures,” and prevented discontinuities, a characteristic feature of transitional political systems. For Smock, urban migrants, successfully manipulated tradition to politically modernize their rural villages. Little (1970) reasoned slightly differently. He saw the major functions of urban associations as the adaptation of traditional institutions and the integration of institutions whose raison d'etre is alien to traditional culture. These associations nurtured political leaders and the formation of political parties resulting in modernist ambition and nationalist aspirations for self-government. Meillassoux (1968) perceived urban migrants associations, or voluntary associations as he referred to them, as the mechanism by which the migrants approached the problems of social security and created new social networks. Meillassoux also saw a clear nexus between the norms of these associations and their rural origins in terms of their derivation, their roots, and their purposes.

It is mainly from this rural-urban link that we shall approach our present discussion. This paper shall also show that the psychological and sociophysical condition in the urban area, the acceptance that the city is a place for austere living and endurance of rough conditions all combine to prepare psychically urban migrants for their role in the economic maintenance and improvement of their home rural communities.

At half past two, early in the morning of Thursday, November 22nd, 1962, 250 men carrying axes, pangas and various self-made weapons left the Mbekweni location and marched on Paarl, a small town in South Africa's Western Cape. On the outskirts of the city the marchers formed two groups, one destined for the prison where the intention was to release prisoners, the other to make an attack on the police station. Before the marchers reached Paarl's boundaries, the police received warning of their approach from a bus driver. Police patrols set out and one of these encountered the marchers In Paarl's Main Street. Having lost the advantage of surprise, the marchers in Main Street began to throw stones at cars, shop windows, and any police vans which they came across on their way to the police station. The police at the station were armed with Sten guns and rifles in anticipation of the attack. At ten minutes past four between seventy-five and a hundred men advanced on the station throwing stones. When the attackers came within twenty-five yards of the station the police opened fire killing two. The marchers then broke into smaller groups and several were arrested or shot during their retreat. Some of the men who had taken part in the assault on Paarl police station met up in Loop Street with the group that was marching on the prison. These men regrouped and embarked on an attack of the inhabitants of Loop Street, breaking into houses and assaulting people in the street. A seventeen year old girl and a young man were killed and four other people wounded. According to police evidence, five insurgents were killed and fourteen wounded. By five o'clock, the Paarl uprising was over; police reinforcements had arrived from Cape Town and the men from Mbekweni were in full retreat.

This paper has two purposes. One is to provide an analysis of the causes of the Paarl disturbance. In the literature on black South African opposition movements, the events in Paarl are scarcely mentioned. This is at least partly because the participants were not politically very sophisticated or articulate; they are consequently difficult to write about. The neglect of the events in Paarl can also be attributed to a bias in much of the relevant scholarship: the emphasis of historical studies has been on black ideological response and has tended to focus on the most fluent articulants of black aspirations.

The colonization of Malawi produced a revolution in spatial relations among the inhabitants of the territory. Individuals in different parts of the country experienced colonization in different ways. These divergent effects were the result of three different spatial variables: the location of administrative centers, schools and—paradoxically, least importantly—the African population.

The process began in the early 1890s during the regime of the first British executive officer, Harry Johnston (later Sir Harry), who held the title of Commissioner and Consul-General. Johnston had little in the way of money or military force at his disposal and was obliged to act with extreme circumspection. The British treasury was, as ever, extremely reluctant to provide money for the conquest of the territory, forcing Johnston to rely on Cecil Rhodes for private support. At one point, he had to suspend military activities against the Yao chief, Makanjira, until Rhodes had replenished his coffers.

Given this constraint, Johnston undertook to defeat African kingdoms one at a time in a policy of divide and rule. This put a brake on the British occupation of the land. Johnston did not divide the country into administrative districts in 1894, some three years after the declaration of the formal protectorate. Johnston's first goal was to gain control of the major communications arteries, the Shire River and the western shore of Lake Nyasa (now Lake Malawi). He divided the protectorate into twelve districts, eight of them south of the lake and four extending westward from the lake shore. Bases in all of these districts would have provided him with a secure military hold on the territory.

Students of government quite often argue that citizen participation leads to a more equal sharing of economic resources in society. Most empirical support for this proposition comes from analyses of western European societies. In the third world literature, scholars advance this thesis mostly with regard to a village or community context. They assert that participation in key decisions of social change is a critical if not sufficient condition for insuring that the local populace's resources are mobilized and its needs served (Charlick, 1980; Huntington and Nelson, 1976; International Labour Office, 1977; and Nelson, 1979). At the nation-state level, particularly in Africa, there has been little opportunity because of the one-party states and military regimes to establish the character of the relationship between participation and the distribution of economic resources. One prominent study of elections in Kenya's one-party state (Bienen, 1978: 90) concludes that competition for elected office has created a government “responsive to popular pressure” and able to “deliver goods and services which are highly valued.” This study, however, did not attempt to establish that the poorer segments of the public actually benefited. For participation to result in any substantial equalization of wealth those who are most disadvantaged should receive some benefit. This paper seeks to explore this issue: Does a liberal democratic electoral system at the national level induce politicians of an African state to improve the economic existence of the poorer segments of the population? The empirical data for this analysis comes from Botswana. Since most of the poor in Botswana live in the rural areas, the paper will concentrate on rural development.

Farmers, agricultural scientists and politicians have become very aware of the need to increase agricultural productivity in Africa. While there has been a recognition of diverse factors that can contribute to increased productivity, a great deal of emphasis has been placed on the need to change farm technology. Although the traditional farming system might have satisfied the needs of peasant society, it has not been able to supply the needs of present day Africa. In most African countries, food production has fallen behind demand (Food and Agricultural Organization, 1974). Thus, there has been a great deal of effort to change the farming practices of the peasants through the introduction of new and/or improved farm technology.

Numerous recommendations have emerged from agricultural research stations, universities and international research institutes in Africa, but the majority of African farming continue to rely on their traditional farming practices. It is therefore not surprising that the Association for the Advancement of Agricultural Sciences in Africa (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, 1975: iii) has concluded: “The lag between knowledge and practice is usually long, but in some parts of Africa it has seemed to be infinite. The value of research findings, however great, remains potential only until they are transmitted to him who will use them in production practices.” As a result of the failure to improve the farmers practices of African peasants, most African countries continue to spend a substantial amount of their earnings on importation of food (Monu, forthcoming).

This paper takes the view that the non-adoption of recommended farm practices in Africa is attributable in part to the strategy adopted in the introduction of farm practices and the research results which have legitimized this strategy. The objective of this paper, therefore, is to review the strategy commonly practiced in Africa and the research associated with it to point out their shortcomings. In addition, the paper suggests an alternative strategy and research approach.