African Affairs

[Opening paragraph]

In 2015, A CLUSTER OF NEW STUDENT ACTIVIST GROUPS
emerged at South African universities. Their initial names differed across campuses, reflecting the institutional particularities of their concerns. While the language of tuition was the principal focus of advocacy groups at Stellenbosch and the University of Pretoria, catalysts for mobilization elsewhere included student housing shortages and the presence of colonial iconography. By late 2015, through campaigns to establish unity of purpose, student movements mobilized behind a common demand: free higher
education. The name attributed to the movement, “Fees Must Fall”, captured this commitment. For the first time in the post-apartheid era, students marched on campuses, to Parliament, and to the seat of government in Pretoria, to protest against the rising cost of university fees.

Supermarkets are often seen as marking the transition of food economies
from traditional, informal, low-quality markets to more sophisticated, quality-based
modes of food retailing. Focusing on Lusaka, Zambia’s capital,
this article critically assesses the claim that supermarkets ‘revolutionize’
food economies in Africa. While supermarkets have been successful in expanding
their investment reach in Zambia, the article shows that they are
not the only players in the food economy, neither are they the most dominant.
The article argues for a more critical engagement with supermarkets
and their role in urban Africa by drawing attention to contextual changes in
the local food economy and factors in the regional political economy that
drive/resist the process. It argues that the ‘supermarket revolution myopia’
sidelines evidence of other potentially transformative processes by which
the transition of food economies is made possible, and shows that ‘informal’
food markets, made up of complex networks of interaction, present a
considerable challenge to the claims that supermarkets transform food
economies in urban Africa. Transitions in the regulation, governance,
and physical infrastructure of these markets suggest that they are progressively
more resilient and competitive, despite the growth of supermarkets.

This article discusses the economic decision-making of migrant traders from Niger who operate in large second-hand car markets found in Cotonou (Benin). Like the Cotonou car-trading community at large, these traders continued to import cars despite the fact that local demand dropped in 2002. Case analysis uncovers that Nigerien car traders show a propensity to live up to the expectations of people in authority. Business decisions in geographically separated markets tend not to be based on reli- able exchange of information about the conditions of supply and demand. This cultural element that is associated with ethnicity and kinship, in turn, leads to a belief of profitability in the car business that is no longer grounded in observable facts and hence leads to financial losses

Equatorial Guinea is not only one of the world’s most authoritarian regimes but also a striking case of regime and leader survival. This small, oil-rich state and personalist regime defies conventional wisdom because it is both far more resilient and faces far fewer threats from within the regime and from opposition political parties than other resource-rich states. But how does the regime manage to survive? This study argues that four key mechanisms interact to explain Equatorial Guinea’s record of authoritarian survival. Firstly, co-optation (via patronage, party, and cabinet appointments) which President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo and the regime party—Partido democrático de guinea ecuatorial—have used to build internal cohesion and fragment opposition. Secondly, the crafting of restrictive institutional rules (party and electoral laws) that, combined with informal rules, aim to protect the regime’s interests and make participation in political opposition more costly. Thirdly, ...