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ABSTRACTThe issue of child labour in the artisanal and small‐scale mining (ASM) economy is attracting significant attention worldwide. This article critically examines this 'problem' in the context of sub‐Saharan Africa, where a lack of formal sector employment opportunities and/or the need to provide financial support to their impoverished families has led tens of thousands of children to take up work in this industry. The article begins by engaging with the main debates on child labour in an attempt to explain why young boys and girls elect to pursue arduous work in ASM camps across the region. The remainder of the article uses the Ghana experience to further articulate the challenges associated with eradicating child labour at ASM camps, drawing upon recent fieldwork undertaken in Talensi‐Nabdam District, Upper East Region. Overall, the issue of child labour in African ASM communities has been diagnosed far too superficially, and until donor agencies and host governments fully come to grips with the underlying causes of the poverty responsible for its existence, it will continue to burgeon.

National audience ; Post-reform markets in commodity-exporting countries in Africa and Latin America are generally characterized by the withdrawal of government organizations from commodity marketing, the emergence of new private agents operating as traders and exporters, and farmers' participation in the newly-reconfigured market regulatory authorities. However, the liberalization process varied across countries and resulted in the emergence of various marketing systems. This empirical analysis aims at providing better understanding of the situation faced by farmers likely to be exposed to both high world price volatility and possible market power of private agents. Focusing on three coffee exporting countries which have experienced market liberalization in the mid-1990s but display very different marketing systems today, I show that asymmetric adjustments of producer prices that characterized the pre-reform period and were favorable to farmers have disappeared in the post-reform period. Moreover, in spite of farmers' participation in market authorities, largest decreases in world prices may be transmitted relatively quickly to farmers when the number of exporters remains small.

National audience ; Post-reform markets in commodity-exporting countries in Africa and Latin America are generally characterized by the withdrawal of government organizations from commodity marketing, the emergence of new private agents operating as traders and exporters, and farmers' participation in the newly-reconfigured market regulatory authorities. However, the liberalization process varied across countries and resulted in the emergence of various marketing systems. This empirical analysis aims at providing better understanding of the situation faced by farmers likely to be exposed to both high world price volatility and possible market power of private agents. Focusing on three coffee exporting countries which have experienced market liberalization in the mid-1990s but display very different marketing systems today, I show that asymmetric adjustments of producer prices that characterized the pre-reform period and were favorable to farmers have disappeared in the post-reform period. Moreover, in spite of farmers' participation in market authorities, largest decreases in world prices may be transmitted relatively quickly to farmers when the number of exporters remains small.

There is a popular belief among decentralists that if local governments have the power to generate and spend revenue, without relying on central government funding, their expenditure will be pro-poor and will improve the lives of local people. Such views have influenced recent calls for greater decentralisation in developing countries in general and Africa in particular. However, evidence from Ghana casts some doubts on this view. A brief comparison of the expenditure and revenue patterns of the poorest and richest local governments there suggests that local governments are not inherently pro-poor and that locally generated funds might be used in ways that do not reflect the needs of the locality as a whole. Thus the fiscal devolution view of decentralisation appears to be out of kilter with reality. To discuss this issue, the three sections in this paper summarise the assumptions and perceived benefits of decentralisation, describe decentralisation in Ghana, and analyse the revenue and expenditure patterns of the Kumasi Metropolitan Authority and the Kasena Nankana District Assembly.

Post-reform markets in commodity-exporting countries in Africa and Latin America are generally characterized by the withdrawal of government organizations from commodity marketing, the emergence of new private agents operating as traders and exporters, and farmers' participation in the newly-reconfigured market regulatory authorities. However, the liberalization process varied across countries and resulted in the emergence of various marketing systems. This empirical analysis aims at providing better understanding of the situation faced by farmers likely to be exposed to both high world price volatility and possible market power of private agents. Focusing on three coffee exporting countries which have experienced market liberalization in the mid-1990s but display very different marketing systems today, I show that asymmetric adjustments of producer prices that characterized the pre-reform period and were favorable to farmers have disappeared in the post-reform period. Moreover, in spite of farmers' participation in market authorities, largest decreases in world prices may be transmitted relatively quickly to farmers when the number of exporters remains small.

`De-ideologizing reality' is an urgent task within the psychology of liberation. Ignacio Martín-Baró characterized it as a process of conscientization that unmasks power interests underlying knowledge production, retrieves the `original experience of the people', and returns that experience in the form of `objective data'. In contemporary humanitarian trauma work in crisis areas, however, psychology often masks global power structures and further stigmatizes and alienates `victims' from their communities and their original experience. I draw upon my work as a psychologist, theologian and freelance consultant in the Great Lakes Region of Central Africa to analyse two case studies. I use these examples to analyse and critique the underlying power discourses implied in definitions of `victimhood' in humanitarian interventions and identify contradictions that challenge liberation thinking as well as demystify feminist agendas. I conclude by calling for a change of perspective and of professional attitudes that can be realized through engaging a de-ideologizing approach towards global psychosocial trauma interventions.

This essay examines the relationship between Western notions of modernity and Wahhabi-inclined Islamic reform in Ghana and Burkina Faso (Upper Volta until 1984) during the early decades of independence. I will highlight ways in which Western/secular education facilitated the early diffusion of this genre of reform. Over the past decade or so, historians have explored the extent to which the appeal of the Wahhabi movement in urban West Africa, toward the end of French and British colonialism, can be traced to Muslim attempts to find a middle ground between Western "modernity" and authentic spiritual purity. In what follows, I employ comparative, ethnographic, and historical analyses to draw attention to the pivotal roles Western-educated urban Muslim professionals played in the development of this reform. Despite the active participation of these professionals in transforming the Wahhabi message into urban mass movements, scholars have paid scant attention to the factors that drew them to the Wahhabi doctrine in the first instance.

Historical scholarship on Arab nationalism has experienced a conceptual revolution over the last two decades. It is now widely accepted among historians that local identities and loyalties have been crucial components of nationalist thought and action from the very beginning; it is equally well established that the line between nationalism and various elements of Islam is much harder to draw than one might imagine. In addition, there is solid evidence that nationalism across the Arab world took shape, arguably as an unintended consequence, out of sustained interaction among conflicting elite and popular conceptions of political community. Moreover, it turns out to be important to differentiate Arab nationalism as a cluster of ideological principles from Pan-Arabism as a set of diplomatic practices that constituted a basic component of regional statecraft, initially at the time the Ottoman Empire found itself disintegrating and later on as the newly independent states of the Middle East and North Africa experimented with ways to get along simultaneously with one another and with outside powers.

Of all new states in Asia, Latin America, and Africa, Nigeria qualifies as one that has suffered recurring praetorianism. Nigeria was under firm military autocracy and absolutism for a longer period than civil rule. It is against this background that transitions from the military to civil rule in 1999 made the polity heave a sigh of relieve. However, the performance of the civil government is now a serious concern because of the system's inability to nurture and sustain democracy. Thus, this article reviews all previous coups and attempts an in-depth analysis of salient factors that may be a harbinger of democratic reversal. This paper infers that the performance of the state makes the military an alternative that is only waiting for another auspicious period to terminate the fledging democracy. The article calls for an increase in social spending if the so-called dividend of democracy will make Nigerians a catalyst for democracy.

Reconciliation efforts have become an almost routine element of post-conflict peace building. From a scientific point of view, tools are needed to enable systematic studies of reconciliation. In this article, a structured method for studying national reconciliation initiatives is suggested, focusing on public statements and behaviors of those in power. The aim is to contribute to the development of systematic research in the field by designing a structured method to measure if, when, and what kind of reconciliation initiatives promote durable peace and if and when they instead might be an obstacle to peace building. Two widely used sources in peace and conflict research were used for coding: the Regional Survey of the World and the Africa Research Bulletin. The analytical framework, built on Galtung's well-known conflict triangle and applied to Rwanda and Mozambique, proves to be useful for structuring the analysis of reconciliation at this level. In addition, three hypotheses on reconciliation are generated, which would benefit from further research. Adapted from the source document.

Quantifying the effects of human disturbance on rare species is crucial for conservation. The eastern tree hyrax (Dendrohyrax validus), restricted to East Africa, is one of the region's least studied mammals. This study assesses the effect of hunting and logging on density and calling behavior. We evaluate three methods for estimating relative density: circular plot counts of calling individuals, latrine counts, and daytime transect counts. Circular plots show that the density of calling individuals within one forest is positively related to canopy cover. Furthermore we estimate densities of 17.3 calling individuals ha-1 in a little-disturbed forest, 12.1 in a lightly disturbed forest, and zero in an intensely hunted and formerly logged forest. Other methods support this trend, thus confirming that D. validus is dependent on intact forest. Estimation of hyrax density (and relative density) is however highly problematic and the magnitude of the trend varied between methods. Despite methodological problems, the results clearly highlight the discordance between Forest Reserve legislation and management, a conservation concern throughout the tropics.