Conflicts between farmers and herdsmen are certainly not new phenomena: they already occurred at the time of the biblical patriarchs. In West Africa, conflicts over the use of scarce natural resources between farmers and herdsmen are said to be on the increase. The occurrence of such conflicts is generally attributed to growing pressure on natural resources, caused by population increase, the growth of herds and the extension of cultivated areas outpacing population growth. That such conflicts appear to oppose two ethnic groups – generally Fulbe herdsmen versus a population group of farmers – is explained by the fact that not only has overall competition over natural resources increased due to a saturation of space, but that at the same time a balance between the two groups has been broken. The convergence of production systems, as a result of farmers engaging in cattle breeding and herdsmen in agriculture, entailed the disappearance of both ecological and economic complementarity between the two groups – a process that is said to have been accelerated by the droughts of the 1970s and 1980s. The interpretation of these conflicts depends on the – sometimes implicit – assumption that formerly, in an often unspecified epoch in the past, relations between farmers and herdsmen could be conceived of in terms of symbiosis – a relationship based on mutual dependence and mutual advantage with implied complementarity in the ecological and economic spheres.

There is no question about the seriousness of the AIDS epidemic in Africa. It has been clear for some years that problems associated with the epidemic are enormous. The depth of the problem has been documented repeatedly. Now that we have moved into what is described below as the ‘acceptance-response phase’, it is timely to look beyond present problems to the legacy that will remain once the epidemic has been confronted by medical science and endured by its millions of victims and their families, most especially in Africa. This article argues that as a result of many pre-existing conditions, having little to do with AIDS, aggressive responses to the epidemic, especially by the international community, are likely to undermine African autonomy and impede future development, particularly politically and psychologically. While AIDS is one of many deterrents to development, it has, in many affected countries contributed significantly to undermining their future prospects.

From several perspectives the AIDS epidemic can be seen to have levelled an enormous toll on Africa, especially in the eastern and southern regions. This article confines itself to the non-medical consequences of the epidemic where it has been most profound. Although the epidemic has possibly passed its peak, evidence of the toll of the disease, with its related health problems is now clear. In its wake are serious multidimensional problems: anthropological, sociological, economic and political. AIDS has greatly diminished prospects for increased autonomy in many countries, and dashed hopes for major improvements in their quality of life. These multisectoral dimensions of the AIDS impact are likely to affect African development negatively for many years to come. As an extreme example of the enormous difficulties, a recent report suggests an HIV rate of 50 per cent in seven armies in central Africa. Such reports highlight consequences that affect development prospects in general. These and related problems undermine the sense of nationalism and national identity so eagerly fought for in all parts of Africa during the independence era. This article focuses on these dimensions of the epidemic and suggests possible consequences in terms of national development in those countries most affected.

There is a thriving literature of religious tracts in Africa. The few formal bookshops, and the far more numerous market-stalls and itinerant hawkers who sell books, offer for sale pamphlets and popular works on religious subjects in every country of the continent, it would seem. Some are theological inquiries into aspects of the Bible or the Koran. Others contain moral lessons derived from these sacred books. Perhaps the most common category, however, is testimonies of personal religious experiences. Much of this literature hardly makes its way outside Africa and is only rarely to be found in even the finest Western academic libraries.

The most puzzling genre, at least for anyone educated in modern Western academies of learning, is that of the numerous works on witchcraft and other perceived forms of evil, sometimes in the form of a description of a personal journey into a world of spirits. While many pious works on Christianity on sale in Africa are authored by American evangelicals and published in America, popular books on witchcraft and mystical voyages are almost invariably written by Africans and published locally. Similar material is circulated through churches, sometimes in the form of video recordings. This is also true of African-led churches in the diaspora, among African communities on other continents. It is impossible to know with certainty how many people give any credence to stories like these, but the indications are that very many do so. Not only do pamphlets describing mystical journeys appear to circulate in large numbers, but such accounts may clearly be situated within an older tradition of stories about witchcraft and journeys into the underworld which is to be found in collections of folklore and even in the literature of high culture. Studies of churches and of healers in almost any part of Africa indicate that incidents of perceived witchcraft and of shamanism or near-death experiences are relatively common, and probably have been for as long as it is possible to trace. Such evidence may be drawn not just from studies of the pentecostal churches which have attracted so much scholarly interest of late, but also of many other sorts of church including African independent congregations, of Muslim communities and of indigenous religious traditions. Thus, the popular literature written by people who claim to have experienced spiritual journeys or to have expert knowledge of witchcraft is not, we believe, an ephemeral genre but rather represents a modern form of an important tradition of mysticism in Africa.

The management of ethnic problems has tended to be complicated by the complex ethnic situations which give rise to them. It is known for example that ethnicity rarely exists in a pure form, being usually combined with other conflict-generating cleavages, such as religion, race, class and regionalism, in mutually reinforcing ways. Ethnicity is also situational, fluid and intermittent, while ethnic boundaries are constantly changing. In addition, levels of ethnic consciousness and political mobilisation differ among groups, for reasons of different perceptions of relative privileges or deprivation, history of inter-group relations, effects of state policies or actions, dispositions and strategies adopted by other competing groups, and so on. For these and other reasons, common stimuli like democratisation, economic prosperity or decline, and transformatory social processes, all of which impact on ethnicity, produce different effects on ethnic groups.

These differences and complexities have implications for the management of ethnic problems and conflicts. For one thing, ethnic conflicts tend to be intractable, especially where their management does not take full account of their complexity. The temptation to proffer catch-all management formulae, such as federalism, bills of rights, secularity and so on, as if all ethnic conflicts can be dealt with uniformly or in one fell swoop, is the product of the fallacy of oversimplification. It goes without saying that conflict situations must be properly understood for the appropriate ‘therapies’ to be formulated and applied. If this is done, it will be found that more nuanced solutions are required to cope with the demands of the complex situations.

The relationship between language and politics in the African post-colony remains obscure and underexamined. Here we withdraw into a poorly lit area, an area of potentialities, where new political shapes may emerge as the outcome of half-conscious choices made by very large numbers of people. Language choices in the first place: the expansion of the Wolof language in Senegal, principally though far from exclusively an urban phenomenon, is to be seen in a context where the individual may speak several languages, switching linguistically from one social situation to another. Such multilingualism is general in Africa: the particularity of the Wolof case, at least in Senegal, is the extent to which this language has spread, far beyond the boundaries of core ethnicity, of a historical Wolof zone from the colonial or pre-colonial periods. And these individual language choices cast their political shadow.

The political consequences of this socio-linguistic phenomenon are as yet indistinct, but to see a little more clearly one should in the second place relate it to the subject of the politics of ethnicity. Language is of course an important element in any definition of ethnicity, and there is an evident overlap; but the politics of language is also a distinguishable subject in its own right. Where the assertion of ethnic identity can be identified as a possible weapon in the individual's struggle for power and recognition within the colonial and post-colonial state, the choice of a language is that of the most effective code in the individual's daily struggle for survival. Language choice in such a setting may be less a matter of assertion, the proud proclamation of an identity, than it is one of evasion, a more or less conscious blurring of the boundaries of identity. And in Senegal the government itself by its inaction has practised its own shadow-politics of procrastination.

A constitution enjoys a special place in the life of any nation, for it regulates not only the exercise of political power, but also the relationship between political entities and between the state and persons. Being the supreme law, it helps to shape the organisation and development of society both for the present and for future generations, and sets objective standards upon which the people and the international community can judge government performance, thus providing a measure of accountability and transparency in national and local affairs. Further, a constitution sets out the rights and duties of the citizens, and provides mechanisms to enable them to protect their interests. Overall a constitution can contribute to the development of a politically active civil society as well as promoting good governance, accountability and the rule of law.

Prior to the 1990s the history of constitutions and constitutionalism in Commonwealth Africa, as elsewhere on the continent, was bleak. The newly independent states started life with the Westminster export model constitution bestowed upon them by the British. There was little or no opportunity for public debate on the document, and the nationalist leaders themselves had no genuine choice as to its structure and contents. The futility of forcing the model on the newly independent states, in the words of Karugire ‘a triumph of hope over experience’, inevitably led to constitutional instability and a round of constitution-making and amendment wholly designed to enhance executive power, remove checks and balances, and undermine the enjoyment of fundamental rights and freedoms.

There is a voluminous academic literature concerned with understanding the way in which African states act in rural societies. This article makes a contribution to this broad area of literature by looking at the way in which the state in Mozambique has intervened in, conditioned, or created trade between peasant farmers and other social agents. The contours of this interaction are complex, reflecting specific class relations, particular socio-cultural characteristics of peasant society, the environment, regional economic history and the nature of the state itself. The role of the state has been central to peasant marketing in Mozambique since the Second World War – first, to create markets which explicitly favoured Portuguese settlers, Portuguese national planning and the requirements of international capital, and subsequently as part of a broader reorganisation of rural markets articulated by Frelimo. What makes an analysis of the state's role in marketing particularly important is the political aspect of marketing: the state is an agency which needs to justify its actions with reference to a broader programmatic or ideological plan; states command a (sometimes contested) political dominance over other actors.

By concentrating on the political aspect of rural marketing, we can understand something of the way the state and peasant societies interact. This interaction is complex, and changes over time; it is also powerfully affected by factors such as broader economic change, both national (national development programmes or institutional reorganisations) and international (changes in world crop prices). This article will show how at the local level, this complexity realises itself in a particular political relationship between rural government and rural producers. In this way, it relates to concerns of state legitimacy and peasant attitudes to ‘official’ power. These considerations will be elaborated through the example of Mecúfi district in Cabo Delgado province, Mozambique.

We recruited fifty-four boys, mostly from Bugisu, and started training them at Nachingwea. Unfortunately, once again, these boys had not been well selected. They had been working mostly in towns like Nairobi and had a kiyaye (lumpen proletariat) culture. They began misbehaving in the Frelimo camp and soon after their training, the Tanzanian government dispersed them.

I took personal charge of the Montepuez group and stayed with the boys during the training months in Mozambique because I feared that some of the recruits might be undisciplined bayaye, like those of 1973, and they might have caused us problems. With my presence in the camp, however, we were able to suppress most of their negative tendencies and attitudes.

When the Revolutionary United Front/Sierra Leone (RUF/SL) entered Kailahun District on 23 March 1991, few people took them seriously or realised that a protracted and senseless war was in the making. The corrupt and inept government in Freetown was quick to label the movement as the handy work of Charles Taylor; the incursion a spillover from the Liberian civil war. This erroneous representation of the movement and the war was echoed by the media, both local and foreign; it later appeared in one scholarly investigation as ‘the border war’, and in another as an attempt by Charles Taylor to ‘do a RENAMO’ on Sierra Leone. Twelve months after the initial attack in Kailahun, a group of army officers from the warfront trooped to Freetown, the seat of government, and seized power from the corrupt politicians amidst popular support. Calling itself the National Provisional Ruling Council (NPRC), the new regime declared its intention to end the war, revamp the economy, and put the nation on the path to multiparty democracy. Following an eventual return to civilian rule in March 1996, with the election of President Ahmed Tejan Kabbah, a further coup in May 1997 led to the bloody takeover of Freetown by elements drawn from both the RUF and the army against which it had been fighting, under the title of the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC).

What is the relationship between these events? What is the link between the ‘revolution’ (coup d'état) in Freetown and the ‘revolutionary’ movement in the hinterland? What did the coup plotters, most of whom were in their twenties, share with those who had started the insurrection that gave them the opportunity to launch their ‘revolution’ in the city? Why did both movements borrow the same ‘revolutionary’ script? I provide answers to some of these questions by examining lumpen culture and youth resistance in Sierra Leone, for it is this oppositional culture which connects the ‘revolution’ in the hinterland (RUF) and the one in the city (NPRC and later AFRC). Both were products of a rebellious youth culture in search of a radical alternative (though without a concrete emancipatory programme) to the bankrupt All Peoples Congress (APC) regime. To understand the historical and sociological processes which gave birth to RUF, with which this article is concerned, it is necessary to situate the investigation within the context of Sierra Leone's political culture, especially the glaring absence of a radical post-colonial alternative. It is this absence, I argue, which paved the way for the bush path to destruction.

Analyses of Nigeria's adjustment experience have emphasised three main issues, namely, federal government dominance of reform processes; the macro-economic components and impact of the structural adjustment programme (SAP); and social responses to economic reform. Much illustrative material has been drawn also from the agricultural and rural sector, reflecting the locus of SAP-induced policy change in Nigeria. Less apparent in the available literature has been the place of state governments in the adjustment process. Also lacking is a historical perspective on the social infrastructure of étatism in rural society – official and quasi-official groupings of peasants, traders and rural dwellers.

This article examines continuity and change in farmer organisation in Nigeria's cocoa belt since the 1930s. Locating agricultural politics in Ondo State since the 1970s within this historical context, the article analyses the advent and operations of the Ondo State Farmers' Congress (OSFC), supposedly a ‘farmers' lobby’ established by the local state in 1988. Congress operations, it is shown, illustrate Nigeria's tradition of ‘top-down’ policy-making on agriculture and rural development. But Congress was also inaugurated about the same time as étatism was being dismantled. Congress's existence thus highlights critical issues in the design of SAP, the structure of policy-making on Nigeria agriculture, and the continuing debate on state–market conjunctures in Africa's economic development.

This article attempts to explain the rural–urban voting patterns in the 1992 Ghanaian presidential election. In this election, rural voters voted overwhelmingly for the incumbent and urban voters did the opposite. It is argued that Ghana's Structural Adjustment Programme (1983–92) was distributionally favourable to rural households and unfavourable to urban households. A link is therefore drawn between the distributional impacts of the Structural Adjustment Programme and the voting patterns of rural and urban households.

The relationship between the state of the economy and the fortunes of political parties at the polls is one which has generated a lot of debate. This debate has largely taken place within the confines of Western democracies, not least because of the absence of Western-style democracy in many developing countries. We are, however, seeing a movement towards ‘democracy’ in many developing countries, with pressures for economic liberalisation going hand in glove with those for political liberalisation. The increasing democratisation by many African countries undertaking Structural Adjustment Programmes provides us with an opportunity to investigate the relationships between the welfare implications of these programmes and the voting behaviour of the electorate. Is voting behaviour in Africa any different from that in Western democracies?

At the end of June 1997, the mandate of the third United Nations Angola Verification Mission (UNAVEM III) was completed with conditional success, and superseded by the more modestly manned and resourced Observation Mission in Angola (Missão de Observação das Nações Unidas em Angola – MONUA). The ‘draw-down’ of UNAVEM III marked the end of one period in the UN's somewhat chequered history of engagement in Angola. The completion of its mandate followed the apparent commitment on the part of UNITA (União Nacional para a Indepêndencia Total de Angola) to move ahead to the final implementation of the Lusaka Protocol of November 1994. By the terms of this protocol, UNITA was to demobilise the greater part of its army and integrate the remainder into the national armed forces (the FAA – Forças Armadas Angolanas). Already in April, UNITA had complied with a central part of the political requirements of the protocol by inaugurating a new coalition government of national unity with the ruling MPLA-PT (Movimento de Libertação de Angola – Partido Trabalhista).

Franco–American rivalry is not a new phenomenon. Although France helped the United States to gain its independence over two centuries ago, since the early 1950s the Americans have often considered the French as having ‘anti-American feelings’. On the other side, though America fought on France's side in two world wars, many French politicians have, over the last fifty years, found it difficult to hide a deep resentment vis-à-vis the United States. After the collapse of the bipolar system, the list of disagreements between Washington and Paris grew, and, by early 1997, bilateral relations had probably reached an all-time low. With regard to NATO's controversial Southern Command, France clashed with the United States in Brussels; then, Paris strongly reacted to the American veto on Boutros Boutros-Ghali's re-election to the position of the secretary-general of the UN; and finally, French foreign policy initiatives in the Middle East provoked negative reactions from Washington.

The Great Lakes crisis occupies a very important position in the list of recent Franco–American disagreements. The main hypothesis of this article is that Franco–American antagonism with regard to the Great Lakes region was a perception far more of the French government than of the United States administration. However, French views of and tactics during the Central African crisis led to American reactions that reinforced French beliefs and contributed to Franco–American tensions, not only in relation to the Great Lakes region but also in relation to other geopolitical areas. Interestingly, some African governments regarded Franco–American rivalry positively, since it seemed to offer them an opportunity for regaining part of the international leverage and bargaining power that they had lost with the end of the Cold War.

The 1994–7 developments in Rwanda and Zaïre were considered by many French politicians, diplomats and many journalists as evidence of an ‘anglosaxon conspiracy’, part of a plot to develop an arc of influence from Ethiopia and Eritrea via Uganda, Rwanda and Zaïre to Congo and Cameroon. For them, the ‘anglosaxons’ (a term directed not at Britain, la perfide Albion, but at the United States) had a hidden agenda ‘to oust France from Africa’. This article attempts to provide an analytical framework for the explanation of French perceptions of the United States's role in the Great Lakes crisis.

The Zambian general elections held on 18 November 1996 to elect a president and parliament are of more than merely national interest. Even before the elections took place, a vocal opposition already doubted their genuineness, and these claims have found considerable international sympathy. The Zambian government and those who voted them into power for a second term, however, consider these elections a hallmark of the success of the reintroduction of multi-partyism, which Zambia was one of the first, and one of the most successful, to reintroduce in Africa. These elections, therefore, provide a case in which to analyse a triangular interaction which is common in Africa: the interaction between an incumbent political group, an opposition which does not accept the victory of the former, and the international community. This article aims to offer a theoretical perspective on the way in which these three groups of actors intermesh; but, in order to ground these more theoretical concerns in an understanding of the empirical realities, an attempt is made first to capture the essence of the conflicts involved.

The early years of the East–West Cold War in sub-Saharan Africa are remembered for the violence surrounding the 1960–1 Congo crisis. While the crisis in the Congo threatened to spin out of control, on 6 January 1961 Nikita Khrushchev delivered his secret ‘sacred wars of national liberation’ speech, which suggested that Moscow intended to undermine Western influence in the region by fanning war and subversion. Despite the nasty turn of events in the Congo and Khrushchev's blustery rhetoric, Soviet activities in sub-Saharan African remained limited in scope and within the bounds of ‘peaceful coexistence’. Moscow sought to challenge Western hegemony in the region by offering economic and military assistance to developing countries, ‘free from any political or military obligations’. Although Moscow first targeted the radical West African governments in Ghana, Guinea, and Mali, as part of his break with Stalinist orthodoxy Khrushchev was also willing to extend Moscow's ‘friendly hand’ to moderate African countries.

Moscow achieved an important strategic breakthrough within the moderate African camp in November 1963, when the Republic of Somalia announced that it would accept a $30 million military aid offer from the Soviet Union, thereby foiling an attempt by the West to preclude Soviet military aid to Somalia. During 1962–3, a consortium of Western powers, led by the United States, had presented a series of arms packages of increasing value to Mogadishu. This was done over the strong protests of Washington's long-time ally in the Horn of Africa, Ethiopian Emperor Haile-Selassie. But in the end, Moscow won the bidding war for Somalia by raising the arms ‘ante’ to a level which the Western powers were unwilling to match, owing to Washington's fear that to do so would jeopardise strategically vital US base rights in Ethiopia and provoke Haile-Selassie to adopt a less moderate voice in African affairs.

Although students of the Cold War in Africa are familiar with this general outline of the 1963 Soviet–Somali arms deal, scant attention has been paid to the behind-the-scenes manoeuvres and bureaucratic conflicts arising over the efforts of the Kennedy administration to dissuade Somalia from accepting military assistance from the Eastern bloc. A more probing analysis of this event is instructive in furthering our understanding of future developments in the Horn of Africa.

Shortly after the overthrow of the Traoré regime in early 1991, several thousand cotton farmers in the southern part of Mali rose up to demand significant policy changes in cotton production and marketing. This rural revolt symbolised a new era of ‘democracy in the countryside’, and brought forth a vital, new political actor (the National Union of Cotton and Food Crop Producers, Syndicat des Producteurs de Coton de Vivriers, SYCOV) in Malian politics. After listening to more than thirty years of governmental populist pronouncements, Mali's cotton growers finally had a real opportunity to realise a measure of empowerment.

Earlier assessments of agricultural development and technology policy-making in Mali confirmed the need to see SYCOV in the long tradition of discontented farmers' movements around the world. This article places SYCOV in a broader political and global setting. It explores how an analysis of the union's emergence and its political relationships can improve our understanding of the contours and dynamics of democratisation in Mali, and perhaps throughout sub-Saharan Africa.

Civil society is the space of uncoerced human association and relational networks formed for the sake of family, faith, interests and ideology. Supporters of civil society have argued that this conglomeration of networks and organisations has helped to fuel democratic aspirations and channel democratic demands in Africa. Proponents maintain that civil society serves as a counter to the actions of the predatory African state, which seeks to limit individual freedoms and to encroach on societal resources. By questioning the actions of state officials and by challenging state policies, civil society organisations can cause the state to be more accountable and transparent, and can facilitate a positive deconcentration of political power. A plural, vibrant civil society encourages political liberalisation and the development of a democratic and legitimate state. It is because the organisations of civil society promote democratic values among their members that they are able to challenge repressive state actions and facilitate democratic development. Since their members trust each other and feel that they have a say in group activities, democratic organisations are more unified and effective at achieving their political objectives.

This article challenges these assumptions about civil society through an examination of rural Senegalese organisations. I argue that groups in civil society rarely teach their members democratic values because most associations do not practice legitimate, inclusive and accountable decision making. More often than not, social hierarchies and power relations that define how individuals of different genders and classes are to interact in the public realm limit democracy. As a result, civil society groups often become ineffective and disorganised, and cannot achieve their political, economic or social goals. The inefficiency and undemocratic nature of civil society have larger implications for democratic transitions in Africa.

The peace accord signed in October 1992 and multiparty elections held in October 1994 brought to Mozambique fresh hopes and opportunities. Post-war reconstruction has been underway for some years, through an array of projects ranging from hand-outs for demobilised soldiers to the World Bank supported Roads and Coastal Shipping (ROCS) rehabilitation project running from 1994 to 2000. Although there is political tension between the two main parties and former contestants in the civil war, Frelimo and Renamo, and a combination of rising urban crime and sporadic banditry on roads in rural areas, generally there has been a strong improvement in political stability and physical security for the majority of the population. Economic reforms, broadly typical of World Bank/IMF stabilisation and structural adjustment programmes, have accelerated during the 1990s and have been underwritten by substantial external financial support. The end of war together with deregulating policy reforms and a sweeping privatisation programme have provoked a surge in foreign investor interest in the country. In aggregate terms and in spite of data caveats, the evidence suggests that Mozambique has become one of the fastest growing economies in Sub-Saharan Africa during the 1990s.

The successful conclusion to South Africa's first all-race elections in April 1994 marked a turning point for political and economic relations throughout the whole of Southern Africa, not least since the regional ‘superpower’ which the sub-continent had previously tried to isolate was invited to participate in regional organisations. However, the ending of apartheid, unquestioningly the single most important factor determining the nature and evolution of future integrative efforts, has to be examined alongside other significant changes affecting Southern Africa throughout the 1980s and early 1990s. Most importantly, the structural adjustment programmes instigated by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), together with the Uruguay Round of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), resulted in a greater emphasis on economic liberalisation and political democratisation. Consequently, Southern Africa's most important regional arrangements (as shown in Figure 1) are all in a state of transformation as they endeavour to respond to the new environment. The Southern African Customs Union (SACU), the Southern African Development Community (SADC), and the Common Market for East and Southern Africa (COMESA) have already changed, or are in the process of renegotiating, their treaties and constitutions.

The People's Republic of China's (PRC's) policy towards Africa in the 1990s has its roots in the crisis surrounding the Tiananmen Square crackdown on 4 June 1989, and the heavy and persistent criticism by the developed world levelled against Beijing's human rights record since that date. Previous to this, the importance of the African continent to China had become less and less important in the 1980s, as the Cold War underwent a thawing process and China's modernisation project demanded foreign investment and technological assistance. Though Chinese officials paid rhetorical lip service to such issues as South–South co-operation, the reality of the situation was that Beijing was mainly interested in maintaining intimate relations with those countries from which it could benefit economically. In stark contrast to China's position in the 1960s and 1970s, exhortations and propaganda grounded in Maoist foundations disappeared, for the ‘socialist modernisation’ project of Deng Xiaoping demanded economic investment and a non-conflictual approach to international politics. As a result, non-ideological relations with the United States, Western Europe and Japan based on expanding trade links and co-operation took a priority in China's foreign policy formulation.

In 1998, over seven years after a Commission of Inquiry into Land Matters was appointed by the then president of Tanzania, Ali Hassan Mwinyi, in January 1991, it is expected that a Land Bill will be tabled in the Tanzanian National Assembly. These seven years have witnessed mounting debate on the purpose and direction of land tenure reform. The purpose of this article is to review the debate in order to show that the question of women's unequal rights to land has been almost totally neglected. The article explores the politics of the land tenure reform process in Tanzania, and examines the reasons why the gender gap in the command over property has received little attention. Tanzania is presently at an important juncture in the restructuring of land relations. Since the issue of land reform came to the forefront of the political agenda in the early 1990s, an opportunity has existed to address the question of women's ownership and control of land. I argue, however, that this opportunity has not been taken, and that the issue of women's land rights has become marginalised within the debate and consequently in policy.

Examining first what may be termed the mainstream of the land tenure debate, conducted on the whole by those involved in making major policy recommendations and drafting legislation, it is argued that the issue of gender has been largely ignored. There have been a number of opportunities when the specific issue of women's relations to land should have been explicitly addressed in research findings and recommendations. Instead, one sees no more than a passing acknowledgement of the gender dimensions of land tenure reform. This is most noticeably the case in the academic writing of those who profess themselves to be most concerned with the land issue as one of democracy and justice. A number of reasons will be canvassed to explain this.

This article goes on to discuss the role of gender progressive groups, such as women's advocacy groups and non-governmental organisations (NGOs), in the land reform debate. Whilst it might be expected that such groups would be concerned to ensure that women's land rights are addressed, especially when the issue is being neglected in the mainstream debate, it is clear that in Tanzania they have been unable to challenge the marginalisation of gender issues in the reform agenda. I advance a number of reasons why feminist analyses of the land issue have been hampered and why there has been a failure to respond effectively to the opportunity to press the government for reforms to address women's demands.

Women's unequal command of property, and the question of how it might be overcome, merits attention. If there is to be progress, researchers and activists will have to document and theorise women's land relations, and I discuss some issues which might be addressed in order to broaden the land tenure reform agenda. These include questions about the form which women's land rights might take, how they might be achieved, and the strategies which will need to be adopted in pressuring the state for land reforms.