Reasons for sub-Saharan Africa's development deficit that the commission for Africa did not consider

Despite a substantial amount of aid (much larger in per capitaterms than provided to any other region), sub-Saharan Africancountries, with very few exceptions, have regressed since independence.The general history of Africa since achieving independence hasbeen one of development failure. Some protagonists point tosigns of change that argue for more aid. This article suggeststhat aid to Africa has not worked because human, social andinstitutional capital — not financial capital —poses the binding constraint. In that context, doubling aidto Africa from $23 billion in 2004 to $50 billion annually by2015 seems a questionable proposition. This commentary suggestsunconventional ways of dealing with the problems involved inimporting the essential ingredients that Africa needs. It concludeswith the observation that the aid community’s currentobsession with poverty reduction and the Millennium DevelopmentGoals (MDGs) may be harming rather than helping the cause ofdevelopment in Africa and argues that the focus on growth anddevelopment should be restored.     

Malcolm Caldwell

This paper is an analysis of the role played by the 1952 language movement (bhasha andolan) in East Bengal in the development of a Bengali nationalist discourse. The language movement forged a conscious link between various subaltern social groups, enabling them to transcend existing barriers and transform them into formidable political actors. Using the concept of counter hegemonic striving, this paper argues that the language movement was a definitive outcome of years of counter hegemonic activities of the Bengali subalterns.

This process of counter hegemony was especially evident in the peasant insurgency in rural areas and in the building of an alternative political organization. The articulation of political power through these two processes stands in sharp contrast to the efforts of the Muslim League, both ideologically and politically. It negated the idea of the very existence of the Pakistan state, and facilitated new ways of articulating the concept of Bengali nationalism. Although the unit forged by the language movement was short-lived it, nonetheless, underscored the existence of an indigenous political culture to the subalterns and paved the way for the historic emergence of a separate nationstate in 1971 — Bangladesh.     

A Desultory Defense of Democracy: OAS Resolution 1080 and the Inter-American Democratic Charter

This article evaluates the effectiveness of OAS mechanisms for safeguarding democracy through multilateral diplomacy, what some scholars have dubbed the interamerican defense of democracy regime. Drawing on a range of international relations theories, this study derives competing hypotheses about member states' responses to democratic crises in the Americas. It then analyzes all instances in which a collective response—that is, an application of Resolution 1080 or the Inter-American Democratic Charter—was debated in the OAS between 1991 and 2002. Patterns of state behavior suggest that domestic politics, rather than the structural or systemic traits of the interamerican system, best explain foreign policy responses to crises of democracy in the region. The OAS record in confronting such crises is uneven.     

Freetown Morning

This account originated in an assignment of work given to anExtra-Mural student of Fourah Bay College by his tutor. Thestudent, M. S. Koroma, is a supervising driver in the Road TransportService. Koroma took notes on what he heard and saw in one morningon the job, then wrote them up in collaboration with his tutor(L.Proudfoot). His account where given verbatim, is put in invertedcommas.