One of the key features of today's global economy is an ‘offshore world’ of financial structures, institutions and techniques designed to provide secrecy, asset protection and tax exemption. While its worldwide impact is very significant, Africa is affected to an unusual extent by the strategies of tax avoidance/evasion, outward financial flows (both legal and illegal) and corruption enabled by the offshore world. This is corroborated by a number of quantitative studies of capital flight as well as by influential investigations such as the Pandora Papers, Panama Papers and Luanda Leaks. The offshore world's limited presence in the study of contemporary African politics, political economy and international relations is therefore striking. The purpose of this exploratory paper is to highlight this gap, provide a preliminary analysis, and suggest that the politics of African insertion in the global offshore economy merits more attention from scholars of African politics.

Relatively few longitudinal studies have been undertaken of change and development among rural communities in Africa. Drawing on field-based research conducted over almost five decades, the article examines the shocks and adaptive strategies experienced in the remote rural community of Kayima in north-eastern Sierra Leone. In coping with both external and internal shocks and displaying a remarkable level of resilience, there has however been very little improvement in community livelihoods, and it is suggested that it is a case of ‘resilience without development’. It is likely that the findings of the study could have wider relevance among rural communities elsewhere in Africa.

Due to the centrality of education to economic growth and social development, successive governments in post-colonial Ghana have implemented policies to improve the quality of education in the country. In line with this, Ghana embarked on its first major education reform in 1987 under the Provisional National Defence Council (PNDC) government. While several studies have been conducted to explain this reform, these studies have largely been descriptive and theoretically, have over relied on the conditionality thesis. Our study draws on ideational literature and research interviews to offer an alternative explanation of the 1987 reform. Drawing extensively on the ideational concepts of bricolage and translation and focusing on the actors using these two mechanisms, the study argues that, while exogenous forces did impact the 1987 reform, it was mainly driven by endogenous factors featuring both path dependent and departing changes.

In the early 1960s, three pilot agricultural and settlement schemes were set up along the shores of Lake Victoria in the north-western region of Tanzania with the involvement of Israeli development agency Agridev. One of these sites was Mbarika, where the experimental project ran for three years and had mixed results before being discontinued by the young Tanzanian government. This article explores the story of that scheme and its long-term legacies some 50 years on. Unpacking the representational and material ruinations that outlived the project's official timeline, we examine the memories and rumours that continue to haunt the site to this day and their entanglement with successive development experiences and shifting political ideologies. Through interviews, ethnographic observations and archival research, we shed light on the complex, deeply ambiguous legacies and ‘afterlives’ of a development intervention set between expectations of modernity and a sense of exclusion.

Artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM) plays a significant socio-economic role in the alleviation of poverty. In Ghana, the increase in and persistence of illegal ASM (galamsey) can be explained by unemployment, cumbersome and costly registration, lack of land, corruption and Chinese engagement. Traditionally, Ghanaian governments have neglected to address ASM activities by means of policy, while publicly emphasizing its negative impacts. In 2017, the media campaign #StopGalamsey became a culmination of this process. This study represents a qualitative content analysis of #StopGalamsey media discourses. It aims to understand how galamsey was framed in the media during the first two years of the campaign. Based on an analysis of 176 articles from the Daily Graphic newspaper, four dominant frames were identified – environmental menace, criminal activity, complex menace and corruption and collusion. Galamsey was portrayed in an overwhelmingly negative way, miners were dehumanised and criminalised, conflicting perspectives marginalised, and non-traditional perception emphasised via Chinese engagement.

Today's African political class is much more diverse in character and aspiration than the one that overcame colonial rule and inaugurated independent governments. Sons of early liberation leaders now jostle for power in a few countries (Chad, Kenya), descendants of successful autocrats perpetuate family rule in others (Gabon), several long-serving hegemons remain in control after decades in office (as in Cameroon, Djibouti, Rwanda and Uganda), a clutch of kleptocrats continue to defraud citizens (as in Equatorial Guinea and Zimbabwe), upstart soldiers oust elected placeholders (Burkina Faso, Guinea, Mali), and here and there democratic stalwarts (Botswana, Ghana, Malawi, Senegal, South Africa, Zambia) are delivering authentic, uplifting, leadership to their followers.