Africa has come a long way since the economic turmoil of the 1980s, the decade of "structural adjustment". Growth has been strong, yet poverty remains high. Underlying the shortage of good livelihoods and high social inequality is the lack of diversification in Africa's economies-in contrast to...

The last two decades have seen many societies attempt the move from authoritarianism to democracy. Some of these transitions have been successful, while others remain tentative, and some have been reversed with either a relapse into full dictatorship or with the trappings of democracy used to...

The development prospects in SSA are particularly problematic in those countries which adopted Soviet style planning in the 1970s, i.e. Angola, Congo, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique, and Somalia. The policies of these countries emphasized state intervention in agriculture...