The paper postulates that the potential conflict and divergence between the Nigerian government in its formal structure and its beneficiaries, the Nigerian people, are crucial factors in the development of the country's present crisis. Its discourse adopts the historical approach, starting from the precolonial to the colonial and independent periods of Nigerian existence. It shows that, while governance in the precolonial period ensured largely the participation and the accommodation of the interest of all, including the women and the youth, the later periods witnessed the alienation of the ruled from the rulers; an elite group, the British and their Nigerian successors, made the interest of the majority subservient to their own. The long period of military rule only increased this alienation. Other potential factors of conflict such as ethnicism and religion intensified the subsequent crisis, which was further aggravated by the oil boom and the corruption it encouraged. The paper concludes by acknowledging civil society's valiant efforts to challenge government's increasing arbitrariness in spite of its constraints, and asserts that only democratic governance and a sovereign national conference to establish the basis of accommodation can provide a lasting solution to Nigeria's present predicament.

This essay examines the history of the African Studies Association's engagement with the debates, concerns, and issues that have generated both tensions and creative energy within the association since its founding in 1948. The author argues that in the future, the association must maintain its preeminent role in fostering scholarly exchange, but that the association must also seek to engage in a much more active dialogue with the policy world; it must address issues of concern to academics in Africa, and it must work to encourage greater interest in Africa within and outside the academy.

On its fortieth anniversary, the African Studies Association faces the task of forging mutuality between itself and others in the study of Africa and in relationships with Africa. This task involves three distinct challenges. The first is to overcome the historical hierarchies based on race and nationality that attended the creation and early history of the ASA. These hierarchies pushed many Africanists of color to the margins of our organization. The second challenge is to address the need for mutuality in internal policy relationships regarding Africa, particularly at a time when many American international affairs experts have said diat there are no U.S. national interests that link us to Africa and that any such assertions are divisive. However, the third and perhaps most time-sensitive challenge is that of creating mutuality in intra-ASA relationships. We must grow comfortable with the increasing diversity of ASA members. We cannot cede African studies to either black or white Africanists, but we must insist that our association, our newly trained professionals, and our ASA leadership mirror the cultural and ethnic diversity that is America.

This paper deals with fashion (la Sape) and its use among Congolese youth as a vehicle to borrow new identities. La Sape is an ambiguous adventure, a sort of Baudelairian voyage, that leads Congolese youth (Sapeurs), not only from a third world city to Paris and Brussels, but also from social dereliction to psychological redemption. It authenticates and validates their quest for a new social identity which the African city has failed to provide its overwhelming population of youth. It is, above all, a study of the interactions between clothing and social (and cultural) identities and the transfer of meaning from one to the other, and vice versa. La Sape allows the Sapeur to define the boundaries that separate him from the Other, but also serves as a defined social territory which distinguishes the Sapeurs from the rest of society. Ultimately, la Sape is redolent with political meanings. It is a political statement which, I argue in this paper, is directed toward the West, the former colonizer, as well as toward the authoritative structures of the African state. I also demonstrate that this political discourse is inseparable from the egotistical and hedonistic dimensions of la Sape.

Increasing commercialization, population growth, and concurrent increases in land value have affected women's land rights in Africa. Most of the literature concentrates on how these changes have led to an erosion of women's rights. This paper examines some of the processes by which women's rights to land are diminishing. First, we examine cases in which rights previously utilized have become less important; that is, the incidence of exercising rights has decreased. Second, we investigate how women's rights to land decrease as the public meanings underlying the social interpretation and enforcement of rights are manipulated. Third, we examine women's diminishing access to land when the actual rules of access change. While this situation may sound grim, the paper also explores how women have responded to reductions in access to land. They have mounted both legal and customary challenges to inheritance laws, made use of anonymous land markets, organized formal cooperative groups to gain tenure rights, and manipulated customary rules using woman-to-woman marriages and mother-son partnerships. These actions have caused women to create new routes of access to land and in some cases new rights.

Architecture functions as a powerful tool in the construction of political power. So, too, can it play an important role in resistance to such power. The following essay explores uses of the built environment, of topography, building methodology, and approaches to the landscape by different sectors of the Bamileke community over a period of ninety years (1906–1996). Its principal focus is architecture and architectural practices associated with an institution imposed by the German and French colonial regimes: the Christian church. How, it asks, and why, primarily through the medium of architecture, did different factions within the Bamileke community (chiefs and their allies, priests and pastors, untided men, youths, women) make use of Christian institutions to further their goals and enhance their position within the social order?

Following the collapse of the Communist bloc, it has virtually become conventional for developing countries to embark on the simultaneous pursuit of structural adjustment and democratization. Some countries such as Ghana started with adjustment for almost a decade before democratization. However, the joint pursuit of adjustment and democratization has engendered intense debate among academics and policy-makers. Given the “mechanisms” adopted by governments with the support of the World Bank and the IMF to impose adjustment policies on many developing countries prior to political liberalization, and given the underpinnings of democracy, some argue that the two processes are antithetical. The seemingly embedded determinism of the incompatibility thesis is challenged by the Ghanaian case study. The Ghanaian case demonstrates diat domestic sociopolitical dynamics may facilitate the pursuit of adjustment and democratization pari passu. These dynamics revolve around the general receptivity to adjustment by critical societal groups, the strength of associational groups, the absence of viable alternatives, and the continued support by the international donor community for adjustment.

Three films serve to explore the metamorphosis involved in translating written fiction onto the screen. Text and screen have different requirements, but there is often also a change in intended audience between written fiction and film—as demonstrated here in the cases of Xala and Kongi's Harvest. Neither such change in intended audience nor the level of funding bears a relationship to the striking difference in the quality and the success of the three films examined in this essay. The comparison among these films instead raises issues that affect all film making: the director's training and experience, and the relationship between the director and the producers. The comparison furthermore suggests two issues that are specific to the transformation of a novel or play to the screen. There is first of all the relative ease or difficulty of transforming very different texts. And there is the risk that the text may come to dominate the picture because of its stature or because of the relationship between author and director.

In an interview in Sight and Sound John Akomfrah remarks that “there is the myth of African Cinema and there is the reality of it. The myth is that it is largely made by people who live and work in Africa—but my sense is that the thing is much more fluid than that.… African Cinema is a film world in search of both a constituency and a community, and it realises tfiat it is potentially a borderless cinema” (Givanni 1995: 39). Akomfrah's statement underscores the existence of slippage between transnational and continental articulations of Africa, opening the debate around the nature of the relationship between Africa as origin and African diasporic identities.

Visions of Africa created by filmmakers on the shores of the Black Atlantic undeniably challenge monolithic constructions of origin and authenticity. This paper examines the nature of this challenge through an investigation of the aesthetic and ideological projects of three films: Soleil O (Med Hondo, Mauritania/France, 1970); Testament (John Akomfrah, Ghana/UK, 1988) and Ye Wonz Maibel/Deluge (Salem Mekuria, Ethiopia, 1997). Ultimately, the paper demonstrates that although each film possesses a divergent connection to Africa, all three probe the slippage between personal and national histories as a restorative force in redefining contexts of origin and identity.

Regime transition programs have played contradictory roles in Nigerian politics, from the end of the colonial era to the present. The latest transition program is scheduled to culminate in the installation of a civilian regime in mid-1999. An analysis of this process, through reviewing recent academic writing on this subject, reveals that transition programs play a contradictory role in Nigerian politics. Some observers see the possibility of designing a political system that will force Nigeria's rulers to heed popular interests and lessen politicians' use of public office for personal gain. Others regard transition programs as elaborate ploys to entrench private privilege under new institutional guise. The analysis in this essay finds more support for the latter view. The essay identifies elements of the latest transition program that point to continuity with previous politics. This development now results in the appearance of factional conflicts and political violence common to other countries such as Congo, Sierra Leone, and Liberia that have suffered “state collapse.”

This essay outlines a realist explanation for an increase in women's participation in formal political processes in Uganda. The essay notes that a variety of factors influence women's participation in formal politics, such as demands for increased participation from women and women's organizations, the influence of the worldwide feminist movement, and Uganda's turbulent political and economic history which has created openings for novel political initiatives. However, the paper's central argument asserts that women's role in formal politics in Uganda is expanding principally because women constitute a potentially influential voting bloc in an era in which the liberalization of African economic and political systems limits politicians' abilities to build electoral support based on patronage. The essay suggests that in this context, politicians will seek to build support around issues that can be addressed with symbolic solutions. In sum, this essay asserts that women's increased role in formal politics in Uganda has been brought about by power-seeking politicians who are sympathetic to feminist issues because (1) electoral strategies are severely limited by liberal political and economic values and (2) politicians can secure support from women with relatively low-cost symbolic political initiatives. The paper concludes with a brief examination of the implications of an expansion of women's influence in formal politics in Uganda, especially concerning the potential for women's political support to “cross-cut” historical Ugandan political allegiances defined by ethnicity, religion, region, and political party affiliation.

This essay traces the military and diplomatic stalemate in the Sudan from 1955 to the present, with special attention directed to events of the past decade. Today, the Sudan government appears determined to maintain itself in power at whatever cost. Yet the Northern Sudanese opposition has sought a reconciliation with their former enemies from the South who with their experienced military forces now hold the balance of power within the opposition forces. The history of the abortive negotiations during this past decade appears only to lead to a resolution on the field of battle which cannot be accomplished by enemies too weak to vanquish one another.