Suchergebnisse

1. Introduction: Africa in a Globalized World -- I. Africa's Adaptation to Globalization -- 2. The Rediscovery of Africa -- 3. Globalization and the Creative Space in Africa: Implications for Governance and Development -- 4. Postcolonial Africa's Development Trajectories -- 5. Collective Social Action: Enlightenment Ethic and the Rise of Modern Individualism -- 6. Same Migrants, Two Business Models: Culture-centered and Non-traditional Businesses Established by Ethiopians and Eritreans in Washington D.C -- 7. Making Sense of South Africa's Soft Power: Projections, Prospects, and Possibilities -- II. Governance and Creativity -- 8. Developmental Strategies and Cultural Dynamics in Rural Nigeria -- 9. The Impossible Craft of Nation-Building in Postcolonial Cameroon -- 10. Creativity and New Technologies: Piracy, Politics, and the Business of Cultural Production in Nigeria -- 11. Igbo Community Policing and its Relevance for Contemporary Nigeria -- 12. "Come and Chop": Representations of the Parliamentarian in Ola Rotimi's If and Emeka Nwabueze's A Parliament of Vultures

This edition comes out at a time when in the latest general election held on 15 October, Mozambique made history by electing the first president who has not been directly involved in the war of liberation. After Samora Machel, Joaquim Chissano and Armando Guebuza, Filipe Jacinto Nyusi will become the country's fourth president. The election of Filipe Nyusi opens a way for him to lead the historic ruling party, Frelimo.While one can look at the election of the new president of Mozambique as a simple democratic process, it should be noted that the dynamic of the democratic state imposes the need of leadership to be more innovative and outreaching and to develop economic and social policies to meet the demands of the masses. The greatest challenge that any leadership, in Africa, face (Mozambique is not an exception) is the ability to maintain peace and political stability as well as the ability to develop and implement social and economic policies that are inclusive and responsive to the short, medium and long term needs of the country. This dynamic includes, among others, the ability to develop a bilateral partnership that will help the country raise its productivity and build its democratic institutions. In their article entitled Look East or Look Least? The Zimbabwean Experience of Chinese Economic Investment in Selected Texts and Examples, in this issue, Theresia Mdlongwa, James Hlongwana & Thamsanqa Moyo, try to capture the relevance of this approach. The paper looks at how the leadership of Zimbabwe has assumed a new position on public policy amid the economic crises in Zimbabwe since 1999. The country's choice of allies, especially China, as the principal 'development' partner is examined here. The implication of labour relations and practices between the Chinese investors in Zimbabwe and their interference in domestic politics and policies, define Zimbabwe's preference for China as the country's economy battles the imposed economic sanctions by the West. In a well-rooted system of democratic ...

Ransoming practices in historical and contemporary perspective / Jennifer Lofkrantz and Olatunji Ojo -- "Para que me saque cabesea por cabesa..." : exchanging Muslim and Christian slaves across the Mediterranean / Daniel Hershenzon -- Ransoming "Turks" from France's royal galleys / Gillian Weiss -- Ransoming practices and "Barbary Coast" slavery : negotiations relating to Liverpool slave traders in the late eighteenth century / Suzanne Schwarz -- "The disgrace of Christendom" : shipwreck and "ransoming" in southern Morocco (1780s-1820s) / Mohamed H. Mohamed -- Idealism and pragmatism : the related West African discourses on identity, captivity, and ransoming / Jennifer Lofkrantz -- European captives and African captors on the Gold Coast, 1869-1874 / Olatunji Ojo -- West African responses to illegal enslavement and failed ransom negotiations / Jennifer Lofkrantz and Olatunji Ojo -- Biafra and the AGIP oil workers : ransoming and the modern nation state in perspective / Roy Doron -- Deferred reciprocity : historical and theoretical perspectives on ransoming and the ethics of compensatory justice / Amy Niang -- Evolution and socio-political economy of ransoming in Nigeria since the late twentieth century / Akachi Odoemene -- Contemporary piracy and ransoming off the coast of Somalia / Abdi M. Kusow -- From hostage taking to ransoming : (ab)use of ransoming in 21st century northeast Africa : the lifecycle of piracy in Somalia / Awet T. Weldemichael

This paper focuses on the political and economic significance of Africa for a declining Europe, from a Greek vision and perspective. We argue that major ongoing developments (covid-19 included) and those perspectively announced pose dilemmas and the burden of engineering of choice, to decision-makers. As there are no country-level solutions that could be sufficient to address contemporary complex issues such as migration flows, pandemias, sustainable growth, climate change and multiple inequalities, we explore a possible new moral basis for future Euro-African coordination and collaboration.

OBJECTIVES: The South African pharmaceutical market, like many other low-and middle-income countries, has long been synonymous with high medicine prices. In response to this, government had instituted several policies to improve medicine pricing transparency and to lower medicine prices. Importantly amongst the new policies, was the introduction of the single exit price mechanism and provisions for the increased uptake of generic medicines. Despite some early successes, the increasing presence of pseudo-generics in the South African pharmaceutical market appears to be hindering the process. This study thus sought to describe the price differentials between originator, pseudo-generics and true generics registered in South Africa in an effort to create consumer and prescriber awareness of this phenomenon. METHODS: Private sector medicine prices for originator, pseudo-generics and true generics were sourced from the South African Medicine Price Registry. RESULTS: The study revealed that for majority of the medicines that had a true generic competitor (n=10/14) the pseudo-generics were priced more that even the highest priced generics. CONCLUSIONS: The increasing presence of pseudo-generics in the South African pharma market warrants further oversight as well as consumer and prescriber awareness.

Inflationary performance in sub-Saharan Africa since 1996 is examined. Median inflation has tended to be higher than in other regions of the developing world, such as MENA and Latin America. Inflation is highly persistent and is higher in countries that are less politically stable, in those without hard-peg exchange rate regimes, and in those with larger fiscal deficits. Inflation has declined over time, at least at the upper end of the distribution. There is no evidence that commitment devices such as inflation targeting have reduced inflation, but in SSA the sample is confined to two countries. Inflation typically spikes after a devaluation, and is sensitive to supply-side shocks. Movements in the real price of oil and rice (but not maize) have significantly affected the inflation rate. In countries that are poor in oil and minerals and therefore more reliant on agriculture, output growth is negatively correlated with inflation, presumably because, when the harvest is good and agricultural output is high, the extra supply reduces food prices. Fiscal balances also display considerable persistence and are more favourable in resource-rich and politically stable countries and in those with hard-peg exchange rate regimes, and have improved over time.

AbstractSocial protection initiatives in Africa increasingly aim to institutionalize systems that guarantee assistance for the very poor and protect the vulnerable against livelihood risks. Much of the impetus has come from international development actors, with some notable exceptions. Three overlapping agendas are shaping these developments: a technocratic concern with evidence of effects and cost‐effectiveness; a political preoccupation with constituencies, interest groups, and institutions; and a rights‐based concern with universal principles and standards. The articulation between these agendas and the different actors promoting them determines which specific social protection instruments are adopted, how they are designed and implemented, and their outcomes. "Success" is defined here not in terms of immediate benefits for target groups, but of progress towards social protection systems that have nationwide coverage, are sustainable in the long term, have broad political support, and can significantly reduce deprivation and vulnerability. Based on a selective review of social transfer programs and policy processes in several African countries, we argue that initiatives that emerge out of domestic political agendas and respond to local conceptualizations and prioritizations of need are more likely to succeed than those based on imported "projectized" models, but that success depends on a convergence of all three agendas.

War provides economic opportunities, such as the capture of valuable natural resources, that are unavailable in peacetime. However, belligerents may prefer low-intensity conflict to total war when the former has a greater pay-off. The paper therefore uses a two-actor model to capture the continuum from total war to complete peace that often characterises Africa's conflicts. This is in contrast to the existing literature with its focus on mutually exclusive states of total war or complete peace, an assumption which is more relevant to Europe's inter-state wars than to Africa's civil wars. The paper also discusses changes in the economic incentives of belligerents that may induce peaceful behaviour. – aid ; conflict ; natural resources ; sub-Saharan Africa

AbstractWe show that current levels of democracy in Africa are linked to the nature of its independence movements. Using different measures of political regimes and historical data on anticolonial movements, we find that countries that experienced rural insurgencies tend to have autocratic regimes, while those that faced urban protests tend to have more democratic institutions. The association between the type of independence movement and democracy is statistically significant for the post‐Cold War period and robust to a number of potential confounding factors and sensitivity checks. We provide evidence for causality in this relationship by using an instrumental variables approach and a difference‐in‐differences design with fixed effects. Furthermore, we adjudicate between two potential mechanisms and find support for a behavioral path dependence hypothesis. Urban protests enabled participants to develop norms of peaceful political behavior, which provided cultural bases for liberal democracy. In contrast, armed rebellions generated behavioral patterns that perpetuated political exclusion and the use of violence as a form of political dissent.

AbstractWe study how the allocation of resources impacts localised crime rates. Recent studies on the effects of Chinese aid in Africa have increased rapidly, and this paper contributes by showing the mechanism by which aid increases crime. Using a geo‐referenced dataset of subnational allocation of Chinese projects, geographically matched with 145 701 respondents of four rounds of Afrobarometer surveys from 36 African countries, we use a difference‐in‐difference‐in‐difference (DDD) approach and an instrumental variable (IV) identification strategy to account for endogeneity and capture the effect of living near projects under implementation before or after a survey against those with no projects. We find that Chinese aid projects significantly increased crime rates in the immediate locations where the projects were implemented. The main channel of effect is the increased local economic activities leading to the availability of employable opportunities. There is a similar but smaller magnitude of the effect regarding projects funded by other donor agencies.