Security culture,transnational challenges and the Economic Community of West African States

This special issue explores how one particular regional organisation, the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), has defined certain transnational issues as security threats and how it has addressed them. In this introductory article, we begin by providing an overview and analysis of some of the most important transnational security challenges facing West Africa. Specifically, we discuss some of the problems raised by cross-border insurgencies, health challenges, organised criminal activities, terrorism and environmental degradation. We then examine the different levels at which actors have responded to these challenges. The section ‘Security culture: shaping the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) response?’ sets out our approach to thinking about the concept of security culture and asks whether it might be relevant to understanding how and why ECOWAS has focused on responding to certain transnational security challenges and not to others. The final section provides an overview of the other articles in this issue.     

Regional transport challenges within the Southern African Development Community and their implications for economic integration and development

The Southern African Development Community (SADC) seeks to deepen economic integration among its members through the SADC free trade area that came into effect in January 2008. The thrust for a progressive reduction of tariff and no-tariff barriers, which the market integration model emphasises, has serious implications for the impact of transport and communication systems on economic integration and development within SADC.

Transport and communications systems have an important bearing on economic integration and development because they can be significant non-tariff barriers. The SADC Protocol on Transport, Communications and Meteorology is the instrument through which transport and communications constraints are to be addressed. Through this protocol, some institutions have been established and others proposed to ensure that projects designed to deepen economic integration and development are implemented effectively.

The neo-functional integration approach is a relevant theoretical framework for analysing transport and communications issues and for implementing joint sectoral projects in areas that impact on overcoming development-related deficiencies in production and infrastructure. Transport and communications fall in this category of projects and the SADC region has benefited from functional co-operation in this sector.

As integration proceeds, polarisation of industries could occur, raising concerns about the distributional effects of economic integration as this affects development. However, polarisation is not inevitable: it depends on transport costs. This might seriously address transport and communications constraints because, if these are greatly reduced and eventually removed, weaker SADC countries need not lose industries to the core with the SADC Free Trade Area in place.     

Democracy,African intellectuals and African Renaissance

Abstract

This article argues that democracy is a prerequisite for the African Renaissance. The role of African intellectuals is crucial in making the dream of the African Renaissance come true. This article revisits the discourse on the African Renaissance, its history and content before dealing with the issue of democracy. Democracy is closely related to human rights and development and is a sine qua non for the African Renaissance. The current discourse on the African Renaissance is not new. The first international conference on the African Renaissance was held in Dakar, Senegal, from 26 February to 2 March 1996 where African intellectuals gathered to celebrate the works of Professor Cheikh Anta Diop, ten years after his death. The theme of the conference was ‘African Renaissance in the Third Millennium’. The first African Renaissance Conference in South Africa took place from 28 to 29 September 1998. Thabo Mbeki ‐ then, Deputy Pesident of South Africa ‐ read the keynote address on ‘Giving the Renaissance content: Objectives and definitions’. This article complements efforts at redefining the roles of African intellectuals in fostering democracy through a conscious application of the framework of African Renaissance.     

African Music

The writer, of St. Mark's College, Mapanza, Northern Rhodesia,is the author of an essay on African music published by theRhodes-Livingstone Institute at Livingstone. He is a keen supporterof the African Music Society recently founded at Johannesburgby Mr. Hugh Tracey. Although he deals specifically with musicin Northern Rhodesia, he suggests there is evidence to showthat his statements apply in principle also to South and toWest Africa.     

An African Review

This article represents the bulk of a lecture on 27th May. Thespeaker, a former Governor of Tanganyika and Governor-Generalof the Sudan, paid a visit last winter to South, Central, andEast Africa.     

African Mental Ability

No question is more vital to the future of Africa than the mentalcapacity of its original inhabitants, whose two main groupingsare the Negro and the Bantu-speaking peoples. Nor is any questionless exactly known. It was therefore with surprise that manypeople learned earlier this year that Colonel Deneys Reitz hadmade the following statement in a war review at the Guildhallin London: "I am not an anthropologist and therefore not qualifiedto say whether our native tribes will ever be capable of evolvingup to European standards. Indeed the balance of scientific evidenceappears to lean to the contrary opinion." The Union High Commissionerin London speaks with the authority of a former South AfricanMinister of Native Affairs. Nevertheless this statement hasnot gone without challenge. The following article was writtenat our request by the Principal of the Adams Native Collegein Natal, who also represents the Natives of Natal and Zululandin the South African Senate. But the subject is of such importanceand such complexity that we have added an extended summary ofa book by Dr. S. Bieshcuvel, a psychologist now working withthe R.A.F., on "African Intelligence".Dr. Bieshcuvel‘swork, which has been delayed by the war, is a reply to someof the "scientific evidence" cited by Colonel Reitz. Althoughin his article Dr. Brookes mentions other work (by Dr. van Rensburg)more recent than Dr. Fick’s, the summary may give someidea of the complexity of the work of investigation requiredbefore it acquires a true scientific validity.     

Our African Territories

This article represents the second half of a speech made ata combined meeting with the Royal Empire Society, on the 27thFebruary. Mr. Creech Jones was deputising, at short notice,for his chief, Mr. George Hall, with Lord Harlech in the chair.The first part of the address was devoted to a general statementof British Colonial principles.     

West African Voices

A new literary programme has been started in the West AfricanService of the B.B.C., and this article is a reprint of oneof the talks. The Ibo speaker was formerly in the Customs, andqualified as a barrister last November: he is also the authorof numerous poems in English, and of a novel, The Prince ofUtete. The other two are schoolmasters working as Assistantsat the School of Oriental and African Studies. For technicalreasons, the orthography is not quite complete.     

East African Development

This article represents the bulk of the speech by the Kenyapolitician now member of the E. African Central Assembly, toa joint meeting with the Royal Empire Society, under the Chairmanshipof Roger Norton, C.M.G., O.B.E., the East African Commissionerin London.     

加入WTO对我国就业的影响

中国加入WTO后竞争力不同的行业所受到的就业影响不尽相同,其中汽车工业和农业受冲击最大,需要解决的就业问题最突出,而对纺织工业和机电工业就业的影响较小.纺织工业和机电工业要想在国际竞争中立于不败之地,必须努力加强自身素质,加快资产的战略重组,提高企业的竞争力.     

China's troubled culture

Abstract

China has spent the twentieth century at repeated efforts, in Ezra Pound's phrase, to “make it new.” But it has repeatedly fallen back on tightly controlled political power and organization as the only means it knows—in the process always discouraging individual initiative and forestalling free expression of ideas, qualities perceived by those in power as twin threats to the order of the state. The use of military force against Chinese citizens on 4 June 1989 is only the most recent example that China has seldom allowed itself to experience the creative chaos that might arise from a true “hundred flowers” era, a protected arena of competing voices. This, at least, is the theme that tugs at the cuff of each of the books grouped here—two cultural studies, three memoirs, and a manifesto.     

China's Anti-encirclement Struggle

Abstract

Confronted during the first decade of the twenty-first century with the rapidly burgeoning US-Indian security partnership and then by the emergence of the India-Japan security relationship, Beijing struggled to respond. After initially attempting to court India away from a too-close partnership with the United States in the first half of the decade, Beijing shifted to a more coercive approach around the end of 2005. One key mechanism used to pressure India was psychological war waged via the Internet raising the possibility of another Sino-Indian war. As China shifted from a soft to a hard-line approach toward India, policy toward Japan was moving in the opposite direction. After keeping relations with Japan in the freezer during the early part of the decade, around 2006, Beijing shifted gear and adopted a much more conciliatory approach. The authors hypothesize that these simultaneous shifts in Sino-Indian and Sino-Japanese relations were not coincidence but predicated instead on an understanding that simultaneous efforts to pressure Japan and India could drive those countries further together.     

China's Foreign Strategy

This article introduces four trends of China's foreign strategy. Analysis of China's diplomacy since the 1980s based on these concepts demonstrates China's intent to become a great power and its aspirations for a China-centric order.