African rural labour and the World Bank: An alternative perspective

In the context of economic and technological change in the late twentieth century, the World Bank's World Development Report 1995 combines the themes of labour and the global market, celebrating the triumph of the market in efficient labour-allocation worldwide. The World Bank's emphasis on boosting Africa's agricultural export capacity ignores the prevailing hostile conditions which African products encounter on the world market, and the current tendency towards agricultural labour displacement. `Labour flight', particularly of youth, signals African farmers' own disenchantment with farming under present liberalised market conditions. The narrowness of the W orld Bank's policy vision for Africa avoids the social and political implications of rural labour displacement as well as the need for human-capital investment in rural areas. This article argues that the alternative to human-capital investment now may be war and expensive disaster-relief for decades to come.     

Taking Your Academic Expertise Public: Lessons Learned Responding to the 11 September Crisis

The advantage of academic life is that society allows us to spend years reading things no one else reads, writing articles and books almost no one else reads, and traveling to places no one else travels to. But in times of crisis, when the totally unexpected becomes reality, society understandably expects that we serve our communities with knowledge, explanation, insights, and policy alternatives. The days, weeks, and months following the attacks of 11 September were such an occasion and many academics experienced sudden demands for public commentary and analysis. As international studies scholars, we have insights and knowledge that our communities require and desire, most notably in times of crisis. By responding to the best of our abilities, we are able to return something to society and help people understand more clearly the world in which we live. In this essay, we discuss how we handled this challenge in the wake of 11 September and the lessons we have learned through that process.