Trends In Africa Research Articles

Geography, Demography, and Economic Growth in Africa

This paper presents the effects of climate, topography, and natural ecology on public health, nutrition, demographics, technological diffusion, international trade and other determinants of economic development in Africa. The goal of this paper is to emphasize the need for intensified research on the issues at the intersection of ecology and human society. Geography was given emphasis because of three reasons: the minimal gain from another recitation of the damage caused by statism, protectionism and corruption to African economic performance; negligence of the role of natural forces in shaping economic performance; and tailoring of policies to geographical realities. The paper also discusses the general problems of tropical development and the focus of Africa's problems in worldwide tropical perspectives; demographic trends in Africa; use of standard cross-country growth equations with demographic and geographic variables, to account for the relative roles of geography; and the future growth strategies and the need for urban-based export growth in manufacturing and services. Lastly, the authors provide a summary of conclusions and discuss the agenda for future research.

Economic Trends in Africa: The Economic Performance of Sub-Saharan African Countries

This paper highlights selected recent developments in the economies of sub-Saharan Africa. It notes that the outlook for commodity prices has improved, and with it the outlook for economic activity beyond 1994; it also notes, however, the need for higher savings and investment to sustain growth over the medium term. The paper also covers two aspects of structural adjustment: the liberalization of exchange and trade systems, which has been extensive and has resulted in a sharp reduction in exchange market distortions; and the momentum of regional integration in the CFA countries and in the Southern Africa region.

Economic Trends in Africa: The Economic Performance of Sub-Saharan African Countries

Economic Trends in Africa: The Economic Performance of Sub-Saharan African Countries

Economic Trends in Africa: The Economic Performance of Sub-Saharan African Countries

This paper highlights selected recent developments in the economies of sub-Saharan Africa. It notes that the outlook for commodity prices has improved, and with it the outlook for economic activity beyond 1994; it also notes, however, the need for higher savings and investment to sustain growth over the medium term. The paper also covers two aspects of structural adjustment: the liberalization of exchange and trade systems, which has been extensive and has resulted in a sharp reduction in exchange market distortions; and the momentum of regional integration in the CFA countries and in the Southern Africa region.

Economic Trends in Africa: (The Economic Performance of Sub-Saharan African Countries)

This paper highlights selected recent developments in the economies of sub-Saharan Africa. It notes that the outlook for commodity prices has improved, and with it the outlook for economic activity beyond 1994; it also notes, however, the need for higher savings and investment to sustain growth over the medium term. The paper also covers two aspects of structural adjustment: the liberalization of exchange and trade systems, which has been extensive and has resulted in a sharp reduction in exchange market distortions; and the momentum of regional integration in the CFA countries and in the Southern Africa region.

Population trends, issues and implications.

"The aim of the paper is to provide an overview of the population trends in Africa, the critical population issues of the region and their implications, as well as linkages with important social and economic sectors such as education, health, employment, food and nutrition etc. The time frame for the paper is the recent past and the immediate future until 2025 for which United Nations projections are available. The data utilized in the paper are the United Nations Population Projections as assessed in 1988 supplemented by information available from various surveys and studies, particularly the World Fertility Surveys and Demographic and Health Surveys."

Emerging Music Education Trends in Africa

Emerging Music Education Trends in Africa

Niger: Anatomy of a Neotraditional Corporatist State

The apparent failure of competitive party politics to take root in much of contemporary Africa has not curtailed efforts by military regimes to extend popular participation. Curiously, current scholarship does not adequately reflect the range of such initiatives.' While analysts periodically look for liberalizing trends in Africa's soldier states and are primed to consider the prospects for a return to civilian rule,2 few have examined participatory institutions under indeterminate military tutelage.3 Indeed, the literature reflects a tendency to assume that officers who tarry in government regard the modem bureaucratic army as a paragon for the organization of society as a whole.4 There is growing evidence to suggest, however, that in the future Africa's military rulers will have greater recourse to corporatist models of state-society relations as they seek to avoid a return to the barracks. Why this is so and what characteristics these structural alternatives are likely to assume are central questions addressed in this essay. Following a brief typology of corporatist systems, my purpose here is to relate the installation of corporatist modes of representation and policymaking in Africa to the quest for effectiveness and legitimacy by regimes faced with a crisis of governance which is inseparable from the international context of capitalism. This proposition will be developed more fully in a case study of neotraditional corporatism in Niger. Distinctions among several frequently occurring varieties of corporatism establish the parameters for elaborating the special case of neotraditional corporatism, a mode of governance that draws heavily on indigenous cultural patterns of authority, interest aggregation, and leader-follower relations as prime sources of legitimation. By examining Niger's recent experience with participation fostered through a five-tier hierarchy of development councils, we shall see how a corporatist-style representational system was installed by the military rulers in a two-step process. First the system was presented as transitional; it served to draw civilian constituencies into preparations for a return to constitutional government. Then, when Niger's domestic economy began wrenching from the shocks of a precipitous decline in the price and market for uranium, the existence of these purportedly transitional participatory structures preempted the formation of class-based parties or pluralist political alternatives. The. final section of our analysis, which links the onset of a crisis in Niger's political economy of development with the new politics of participation, explores the regime's recourse to corporatist intermediaries in the implementation of structural and policy reforms. Following a discussion that highlights the interactive relationship between economic policy dilemmas and the problems of governance, we conclude with a few theoretical and empirical observations about neotraditional corporatism and regime legitimation in Niger.

Sexual Contact Patterns between Men and Women and the Spread of HIV-1 in Urban Centres in Africa

A simple model of the transmission of HIV-1 by heterosexual contact and from mother to unborn infant is developed to assess the influence of patterns of mixing between low and high sexual activity classes of the two sexes on the pattern of spread of the virus and the demographic impact of AIDS. Numerical studies of model behaviour are based, where possible, on parameter estimates derived from epidemiological studies of HIV-1 spread in Africa. Analyses reveal that the assumed pattern of mixing, ranging from assortative (like with like) through random (proportional) to disassortative (like with unlike), has a very major impact on the predicted spread of the virus and the concomitant demographic impact of AIDS. Patterns of strong assortative mixing are predicted to generate the least spread and demographic impact, by comparison with proportional or disassortative mixing. Analyses also reveal that the rules governing behaviour changes, once AIDS-induced mortality changes the structure of the population (i.e. the numbers in the low and high sexual activity classes of the two sexes), have a very significant influence on the course of the epidemic. Where possible, predicted patterns are compared with observed trends in Africa.

Nea Presidential Address, 1990: Africa, The Development Challenge of the 1990s

Much of Africa has been excluded from the considerable social and economic progress made in most regions of the world over the past several decades. Disheartening trends in Africa include budget and trade deficits, debt accumulation, inflation, overvalued currency and foreign exchange shortages. However, about half of African nations have courageously implemented structural adjustment programs since the early 1980s. The author examines the economic problems facing Africa and builds a case for responding to the crisis, proposing efforts to increase donor support and coordination and encouraging sustainable adjustment. She strongly advocates research leading to a more productive dialogue with policymakers.

Trends in Africa

Trends in Africa

Nutritional Trends in Africa and the Americas: Heights of Africans, 1819-1839

Nutritional Trends in Africa and the Americas: Heights of Africans, I8I9-I839 Recent attempts to understand differences in the development of slave societies in the Americas have generated a number of studies on the growth patterns and stature of the progenitors of modern Afro-Americans. Such work provides important insights into the living conditions, demographic performances, and, through these, the basic cultural parameters of black and racially mixed societies. Some recent studies have pointed to significant differences between African-born slaves and Creoles, and data from some of the British colonies are sufficiently detailed to permit a breakdown of African-born slaves by region of embarkation. The focus of this work, however, has necessarily been on the Americas. Many in the African-born groups would have crossed the Atlantic as children or adolescents and, in consequence, their growth patterns and even their final stature may have been influenced by their new environments. The literature has long recognized the importance of both genetic and environmental factors on human growth, acknowledging that the interaction between the two is complex and imperfectly understood. As part of a long campaign to suppress the slave trade, the British negotiated treaties with several foreign countries to provide for the establishment of courts of mixed commission to adjudicate cases involving suspected slave ships. The data for this study come from copies of the records of the courts at Sierra Leone deposited at the Public Record Office in London. Between I819 and I845 British cruisers landed almost 60,000 Africans at Sierra Leone, most of whom had been recaptured while en route to the Americas or to islands off the African coast. The age,

Soldiers as Traditionalizers: Military Rule and the Re-Africanization of Africa

On the basis of evidence mainly from West Africa, many scholars in the 1960's made predictions about likely trends in Africa as a whole on such issues as one-party states. On the basis of data from Eastern Africa, can we now risk predictions about likely performance of military regimes in Africa as a whole?There is evidence from Eastern Africa that African soldiers may be agents of retradi-tionalization. The bulk of the army in most countries is recruited from some of the most rural and least acculturated sectors of society. Contemporary African soldiers may be traditionalists in charge of modern armies with modern technology. What happens when a modern organization is manned mainly by rural recruits?It may be that both modernization and retraditionalization are taking place under military leadership in Africa. The cultural revivalist role of sub-westernized or non-westernized African soldiers is beginning to manifest itself in places like Uganda under Idi Amin and Zaire under Mobutu Sese Seko. The political decline of westernized intellectuals and the rise of soldiers may herald a partial re-Africanization of Africa, but with some painful costs.

Soldiers As Traditionalizers: Military Rule and the Re-Africanization of Africa

On the basis of evidence mainly from West Africa, many scholars in the 1960's made predictions about likely trends in Africa as a whole on such issues as one-party states. On the basis of data from Eastern Africa, can we now risk predictions about likely performance of military regimes in Africa as a whole?There is evidence from Eastern Africa that African soldiers may be agents of retradi-tionalization. The bulk of the army in most countries is recruited from some of the most rural and least acculturated sectors of society. Contemporary African soldiers may be traditionalists in charge of modern armies with modern technology. What happens when a modern organization is manned mainly by rural recruits?It may be that both modernization and retraditionalization are taking place under military leadership in Africa. The cultural revivalist role of sub-westernized or non-westernized African soldiers is beginning to manifest itself in places like Uganda under Idi Amin and Zaire under Mobutu Sese Seko. The political decline of westernized intellectuals and the rise of soldiers may herald a partial re-Africanization of Africa, but with some painful costs.

A review of ivory exploitation and elephant population trends in Africa

SummaryA brief review of published data is presented, outlining the intensive exploitation of African elephants for ivory. Records suggest that this began in the early seventeenth century in western Africa, and that hunting pressure was sufficient to eliminate, or drive out, populations over wide areas. In eastern Africa intensive exploitation ensued between 1840 and 1890, leading to a sudden collapse of the ivory supply from over‐exploitation. Subsequent protection has apparently enabled surviving elephants to enter an exponential phase of population increase. Elephant population cycles, if they can be shown to have occurred, are probably reflections of over‐exploitation, followed by population recovery when hunting was no longer profitable. If cycles of scarcity and abundance were a natural feature of elephant populations, then they could have been masked by the intensity of hunting.

Recent Rainfall Trends in Africa, the Middle East and India

IN the Middle East and Africa north of the Sahara the wet season extends from October to May; small amounts of rain also fall in Pakistan and north-west India at that time of year. Winter–spring rainfall in these areas is controlled primarily by divergence patterns in pressure troughs in the mid- and upper-tropospheric circumpolar westerlies. Rainfall is associated with the widespread ascent of warm, moist air from the tropics on the eastern side of the troughs, and also with deep convective instability in the cold air at, and slightly to the rear of, the trough axes, especially over coasts and mountains. It is in winter that the increase in the latitudinal temperature gradient in the northern hemisphere causes the westerly circulation to increase in strength and the westerly troughs to penetrate into sub-tropical latitudes. In summer, the latitudinal temperature gradient is at a minimum, the general circulation is relatively weak, and the westerly troughs are of small amplitude and restricted to middle and high latitudes.

Science and Medicine in Central Africa

Scientific congress embracing the entire spectrum of knowledge should be avoided more and more. One such congress was convened in Johannesburg, South Africa, in 1949, for the specific and worthy purpose of launching the Scientific Council for Africa. The trend in Africa as elsewhere has been for specialized symposia gathering fewer and closer to each other scientists. The reasons for convening as late as 1963 in Lusaka, Northern Rhodesia, (now ZAMBIA) a Central African Scientific and Medical Congress are not too clearly indicated except that it followed a 1960 Federal (Rhodesia and Nyassaland) Scientific Congress and that it was held in Lusaka at the time of the Golden Jubilee of the city and in the new College of Adult Education. Science and Medicine in Central Africa records the proceedings of the Congress under a very misleading title. Out of a total of 83 subjects only 23 are medical, 14 of which are not relevant to tropical or geographical medicine.

Introduction: Population Trends in Africa [Abstract

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(3) Introduction: Population Trends in Africa

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The serum protein pattern of african infants in Uganda

1. (1) The results of 120 estimations of serum proteins in 110 Uganda African infants of different ages under 18 months are presented. 2. (2) The serum protein pattern in the first month of life is similar to that found at birth in Europe and America. 3. (3) During the first 9 months of life the changes in serum protein fractions show the same trends in Africa as in Europe and America. 4. (4) The characteristic adult pattern becomes evident towards the end of the first year in Africans in Uganda. This change occurs at the same age as in America and Europe, but the resulting pattern differs.