A Large volume of transactions between states goes through bilateral channels associated with traditional diplomacy. Accordingly, each independent African state has established its network of formal contacts with those members of the international community it considers friendly, and who similarly reciprocate this gesture of good will. Indeed, a noticeable world-wide trend in the last decade has been to diversify and intensify such diplomatic contacts because of the increasing complexity and interdependence of the contemporary international system. But bilateral relations between states, pervasive as they are, by no means constitute the totality of channels of international transactions.

Although it has long been realised that ‘developing’ countries do not have to follow the example of ‘developed’ nations, the mere use of the terms ‘nation-building’ and ‘national integration’ implies a straight line of ‘progress’ from dispersed sub-national communities towards the integrated entity of the nation-state. Add the eagerness of political leaders in the Third World to exert effective control over the population in the absence of established institutions, if possible by becoming the focus of popular solidarity, and the reasons for this emphasis on the notion of national integration become more apparent.

The rise and fall of the settler societies in Africa – in Algeria, Kenya, Rhodesia, and South Africa – is to be understood in relation to the global expansion and limited contraction of European capitalism, and in the light of the notions of underdevelopment and dependency. In strong contrast with the general experience of the Third World, settler societies show a capacity for independent capitalist development, built upon the heavy exploitation of African land and labour, and policies of economic nationalism externally. They thereby avoid relegation to the periphery of the world system as perpetual suppliers of raw materials, and as providers of dependent domestic markets for the manufactures of the metropole. In the process, the colon state assumes an ambivalent position in relation to imperialism in that it co-operates with the metropole, providing a secure and cheap occupation of a strategic area in return for political support and military aid.

The frustrated aspirations of most Africans for a significantly better life following independence have evoked considerable attention. A growing number of scholars are accounting for the situation in terms of a set of loosely connected propositions contained in the ‘underdevelopment theory’,, at the core of which is the idea that colonialist/neocolonialist countries have created the conditions of underdevelopment by:

(i) encouraging the entry of foreign investment which extracted/extracts a significant proportion of the surplus produced;

(ii) fostering a commercial bourgeoisie which failed/fails to use its profits for productive investment purposes; and

(iii) promoting an indigenous class which acted/acts in the interest of the imperial power to perpetuate the condition of underdevelopment.

The attention of the world was briefly focused on Ethiopia when Emperor Haile Selassie I, once considered the inviolable descendant of Solomon and Sheba, and the Elect of God, was deposed on 12 September 1974, and when two months later 60 public and military officials were executed without trial. The ‘creeping coup’ began in March 1974, and was undertaken by the military Co-ordinating Committee (commonly called the Dirgue, the Amharic word for ‘committee’) in the name of the peasants. Until the Nationalisation of Rural Lands Proclamation of 4 March 1975, however, the activities of the Dirgue were designed to secure an urban power base, and the peasants and the politics of numbers were tacitly irrelevant to a continuing paternal, factional, and urbanised political style. As the prologue to the Proclamation indicates, the Dirgue recognises the centrality of land reform to a broadly-based rural development:

This article examines the attempt of Kenya and Tanzania to deal with the universal problem of how to reconcile inequalities in the distribution of rewards with a concern for equality. It argues that in both countries the mainspring of educational policy is a desire to alleviate the potentially disruptive consequences of inequality, although for different purposes and by different means. The broad purpose of the article is to compare contrasting educational practice in Kenya and Tanzania from this perspective as a way of illuminating two distinctive modes of development. More specifically, it attempts to identify some of the contradictions and dilemmas inherent in their particular use of education. Finally, it uses this analysis to make a speculative assessment of how each is faring in the task of building a relatively integrated polity.

The tribe of economists to which I belong regard concepts as more or less ‘kosher’, but not description. Economics, most of them would probably argue, is concerned with analysis and prediction; description is for lesser breeds. For example, students are taught the intricacies of analysing the supply of money, but it is rarely suggested to them that they might reasonably be expected to know how money actually comes into existence, which would involve knowing and being able to describe what a bank is, what it does and how. Confronted with such searching questions, they are therefore generally floored – and last year's students are, of course, this year's professional economists!

This brief note will argue the case for certain lines of investigation, both empirical and theoretical, in African cities. It is increasingly recognised that the constellation of issues revolving around urbanisation and its effects will be a major factor in development for the rest of the century: witness the convocation of the Habitat Conference in Vancouver, June 1976, and the World Bank's new Urban Policy Task Force. Yet, as always, comprehension trails behind actual developments.

In 1964, in response to a growing number of strikes, the recently-formed independent Government of Kenya established a new method of resolving industrial conflict. The purpose of this short article is to describe the operation and effects of the Kenyan Industrial Court, and to draw attention to some features that have affected its efficient operation.

The major problem of agriculture in Africa has been the low productivity of the traditional sector. The general thrust of development strategies to this point has been towards providing opportunities to small-holders and ‘encouraging agricultural development within existing peasant production units’. This essentially laissez-faire approach has emphasised the need to improve producer incentives and the necessary infrastructure, as well as to provide new crop varieties and modern agricultural inputs in general. Social scientists, in turn, have studied the general question of how farmers respond to changes in incentives and, especially, to the availability of technological innovations.