When Britain first made a bid for membership of the European Economic Community (E.E.C.) in the early 1960s, it was generally understood that its negotiators had the responsibility for safeguarding the interests of other Commonwealth countries. Although the matter was discussed briefly by the Heads of Government in January 1971, and more fully later that year at the Nassau meeting of Finance Ministers, it was realised by all parties concerned that the other members of the Commonwealth would have to deal themselves with the effect of British entry into the E.E.C. and negotiate directly with the European Commission.

The Christian and animist population of the Southern Sudan is largely composed of black Africans, estimated to number 5·3 million in 1983, as against the 15·3 million, predominantly Arabic and Muslim, who inhabit the Northern Sudan. The economy of the Southern Sudan, comprised of the three semi-autonomous regions of Bahr El Ghazal, Upper Nile, and Equatoria, remains one of the least developed in sub-Saharan Africa. The great majority of the population is engaged in subsistence agriculture, although some limited cash income is generated from the sale of surplus crops, and nomadic pastoralism is also widely practised. Only about three per cent of the inhabitants live in the three regional capitals of Wau, Malakal, and Juba, and they have to depend heavily for work in the public sector and small-scale informal activities.

The Economic Community of West African States (Ecowas) was established by the Treaty signed in Lagos on 25 May 1975 by the Heads of State and Government (or their representatives) from Benin, Burkina Faso, Côte d'Ivoire, The Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone, and Togo. They were joined a few months later by Cape Verde, thereby increasing the number of member-states to 16. Following the post-World War II convention whereby international organisations formally insert in their constitutive instruments a declaratory statement concerning their status, it is not surprising that Article 60(1) stipulated that the Community ‘shall enjoy legal personality’. Although such organisations may be similar they are never identical, and this is why the nature and scope of the legal personality of each needs to be ascertained and discussed.

During the past 25 years, there have been several efforts by developing countries to establish regional economic institutions to address their poverty, underdevelopment, and external dependency. Although the economic imperatives and rationales for their creation intuitively seemed sufficient to ensure that the national political leaderships would choose to engage in whatever give-and-take was necessary to achieve their stated goals, the historical record reveals that these regional organisations have experienced uneven results at best. Several are now defunct. Why is this the case?

The study of elections and parliamentary behaviour in Africa has become a neglected topic. Whilst the emergence of political élites during and after the colonial period has been examined carefully, little attention has been paid to the structure and functioning of the modern one-party state. Emphasis has tended to shift towards the analysis of political economy and of the nature of class relations, partly as a consequence of the close linkages between economic and political relations within developing states. However, studies of post-1969 politics in Kenya are now scarce, and basic knowledge of the operation of the political system is often absent. In order to help redress the balance, this article presents and analyses data about the socio-economic background of the Members of Parliament.

In the debate over relief for Africa and the Third World, the situation of dictatorial, corrupt, and mismanaged régimes is often subsumed with the rest. It is rather uncritically accepted that indebtedness chiefly results from the impact of international factors, such as falling commodity prices, International Monetary Fund conditionalities, and rising metropolitan interest rates. The independent national state, whatever its policies and form, is seen as simply the passive victim of such forces, and little or no differentiation is made between the régime and the groups and classes of the domestic society.

Zaïre has been open to external penetration from its earliest days as the Congo Independent State of King Léopold II, but unlike most other weak and vulnerable African states it has experienced repeated military interventions. When President Mobutu Sese Seko addressed the U.N. General Assembly in October 1973 he formally thanked the world organisation for preserving his country during the early 1960s:

If a small minority of member countries of this organisation had refused to participate in the Congo operation, at the time, the vast majority had, however, spontaneously put troops at its disposition or intervened in favour of this operation. This permitted the maintenance of peace, unity, and the integrity of the national territory.

The Soviet Union and South Africa – on the face of it, no two powers on earth look on each other with greater hostility. For many years, no diplomatic relations have existed between them. South African propagandists never tire of denouncing the Godless Soviet tyranny, and the ‘total onslaught’ waged against their country by communists at home and abroad. As the official Soviet interpretation would have it, South Africa is governed by a racist clique, and menaces all its neighbours.

Women could be said to be ‘the second sex in town’ in colonial Africa in that men predominated in the urban centres spawned by the political economy of colonialism. An explanation has to consider both employment and family separation. Although colonial governments, missions, commercial firms, and mines recruited men, it is not clear to what extent this was a matter of preference on the part of the major employers rather than the response of peasant households. Not at issue are the reasons for the latter's integration into the cash economy and the rôle of coercion, whether in the form of forced labour or indirectly through the imposition of tax. But what considerations were borne in mind when households deliberated about which of their members to dispatch? Whatever the part played by both employers and suppliers in determining the composition of the labour supply – and this so far totally neglected topic demands research – the result was that in many, if not all, African colonies, almost as a rule, domestic servants, secretaries, and nurses were male.

After years of constant struggle, the Pan-African News Agency (Pana) appears barely closer to commanding respect and economic stability today than when it issued its first bulletin in 1983. The yearning for noble repute might seem more to do with vanity than necessity, because Pana was created to perform a specific function: to counter what African leaders decried as the negative, distorted coverage of the continent by western news organisations being beamed back to Africa and out to the rest of the world. However, since arriving on the scene six years ago as purveyors of African liberation, content to implement their own ideas of what journalism should be, the Agency's administrators are increasingly making it known that they realise credibility is not superfluous: that in the business of international news, respect goes hand in hand with survival.