African languages. By comparison, the author states, the French Catholic Church had a centralised orthodox institution that excluded African languages from the sacred realms, with a negative corollary on the transcriptions of those languages or their use in schools. However, in both colonial systems, language education was elitist, not designed or destined to the masses. Cameroon, because of its mixed colonial legacy– initially German colonisation, followed by British and French colonisation– stood mid-way between Ghana and Senegal, the two extreme edges of the two colonial models. However, inertia and neglect marked most African governments towards language policy in the aftermath of decolonisation. Preference was heavily granted to European colonial languages, considered as salvaging tools for ethnically fractionalised nations. The author points up the indigenisation experiments that swept the continent, yet hurtles by material deficiencies and a paternalistic reticence of former colonial governments.
After the analysis of the political impacts of language policy in Africa, Albaugh debunks the assumptions that multilingual policy is prone to spark off ethnic attachments and hostile interrelationships between linguistic communities, demonstrating that conflicting groups are not generally coterminous with lin-guistic entities. On the contrary, she claims, positive effects could be noted con-sidering the rise of political awareness and participation of communities with written languages. The problems that seem to weaken her argument are that, firstly, she grounded it on sample responses of primary level schoolchildren, which, in my view, could hardly be valid for advancing such conclusions, because of the simple fact that the latter are not mature enough to engage in politics or other nationally sensitive issues. And secondly, she seems to overlook the prominence of some of the written African language scripts such as N’Ko (a Mande writing system and language).
This book is a considerable contribution in language policy, whose originality lies in its political approach to the debate. However, the totally blind eye to early African language transcriptions through Arabic, Ajami and N’ko scripts should be deplored, as it seriously undermines the contribution of non-Westernised African scholars in the African politics and cultural development.
A B D O U L W A H A B D I A K I T E Indiana University
Decentralization in Africa: The Paradox of State Strength, edited by J.T. DICKOVICKand J.S. WUNSCH
Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner,. Pp. . £· (hbk)
doi:./SX
Decentralization in Africa contains a remarkable collection of chapters, of which present national co-authored case studies of Sub-Saharan African countries that follow afirst impressive and comprehensive chapter on the theor-etical, conceptual and analytical issues of decentralisation. The analysed countries are presented in alphabetical order in the chapters: Botswana, Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Ghana, Mali, Mozambique, Nigeria, South Africa,
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Tanzania and Uganda. The conclusive chapter presents African decentralisa-tion in comparative perspective.
In Chapter, the book opens with an interesting and very informative contri-bution by one of the editors, developing the concepts that guide the analysis in the subsequent chapters. It focuses on four issues: authority, autonomy, accountability and capacity, which are used as valuable analytical tools in under-standing the complexity of each country’s moves towards decentralisation. But in the author’s view, ‘decentralisation’ is too vague a term to measure the intended beneficial outcomes in terms of local responsiveness, improved service delivery, effective accountability and the local contribution to economic stability and development. Decentralisation must be defined in three forms: deconcentration, delegation and devolution. Combining these four key dimen-sions with the three forms of decentralisation results in an implicit analytical matrix pertinent for comprehensive comparison of the decentralisation roadmap in the selected countries. In addition, these four dimensions are not only properly defined and specified conceptually, but should also be inversely described in their probable consequences if decentralisation goes ‘without’ one or more of them. The challenge and difficulties of studying the countries in this framework are evident particularly because the outcomes are deeply influenced by the social and historical circumstances of each country, and because the trade-offs between these four dimensions of governance vary from one place to the other. So the additional objective given to the chapters is to understand why specific country choices were made.
The analytical framework also requires to touch on the political economy of decentralisation, defined in the following items: (i) the control over resources such as appointments, personnel, substantive areas of responsibilities, the budget; (ii) the funding of sub-national governance (SNG) and the mix between own resources and transfers; (iii) the human resource management at the sub-national level, in terms of capacity building, working and contractual conditions; and (iv) the number of government layers, the size and number of SNG units.
The case studies all present the same analytical structure, which makes the book very informative in the way the relative position of two or several countries can be directly compared. All are co-authored by scholars native and resident of the studied country, a fact that is not very common and is remarkable from the double internal-external perspective. The chapters also all include a short history of the decentralisation origins and moves in the relevant country and a detailed analysis, always well informed, of the four key dimensions: authority, autonomy, accountability and capacity. Interestingly some chapters reduce one or the other dimension to narrower specific considerations: for example ‘fiscal’ autonomy, viewed from the point of view of taxation, or accountability inter-preted in‘participative democracy’. Yet no one chapter treats in depth the pol-itical economy of decentralisation: the assignment of functions and financial powers between government layers, transfers and equalisation, budgeting– all at the core of the political economy preoccupation– are merely described or summarily analysed (for example, only three chapters contain tables giving decentralised publicfinance information). In a large majority of chapters this theme is addressed from the political point of view, looking at the political
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incentives and processes with which governments give away or retain powers and resources.
In conclusion, this volume provides an excellent insight to the state of art in decentralisation in the selected sub-Saharan countries for scholars in socio-economic and political sciences. The introduction organises the conceptual fra-mework and analytical sequence in a very informative and pertinent manner which can be used for other country case studies (not only in Africa) and will certainly remain useful in analysing the dynamics of decentralisation in the selected countries. The conclusion also summarises the main results in com-parative tables which pinpoint the main issues and failures: useful for drawing tomorrow’s road map in the process of learning from each other. In sum, a must on the bookshelves of any researcher with an interest in decentralisation– in Africa and outside– from the point of view both of the analytical method it proposes and its transposition in real world analysis.
B E R N A R D D A F F L O N University of Fribourg
Africa Consensus: New Interests, Initiatives, and Partners by LUDGERKÜHNHARDT
Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press,. Pp. + xvii. $. (pbk)
doi:./SX
The premise of the book under review is that changes in the nature of politics in Africa, the strengthening of regional institutions and the development of new trading partners (primarily the emerging economies) will result in new and qualitatively better links to the external world for Africa. The author argues that an ‘Africa Consensus’ is thus needed to channel all the positives flowing into the continent. This Consensus is to be based on, inter alia,‘a better and respectful engagement with the African people’; ‘true recognition and respect for African ownership’; and a ‘functional redefinition of sovereignty in the service of people and cooperation’ [sic] (pp. –).
The book might be located in the growing trope of literature surrounding a notional‘Africa Rising’. This discourse argues that ‘correct’ policies have driven growth in the context of significant improvements in governance. The basic premise behind this position is, however, false. There is in fact little evidence that overall the quality of governance is improving across the continent. The composite Mo Ibrahim Index of African Governance had a continental average of / in – by it had increased to ·/ – hardly seismic and in fact, barely per cent of Africans live in countries which have shown overall governance improvement since . The World Bank’s own indicators indicate that of the Sub-Saharan states, fully have seen a wor-sening of governance between and .
In contrast to the book’s claims about a new dynamism in Africa, the conti-nent’s countries remain characterised by a dependence on the export of raw commodities and the import of manufactured goods. In fact, the share of primary commodities in total exports has risen precipitously over the last years or so. Exports from Africa to both traditional and non-traditional trading partners exhibit a very clear and continuous pattern in terms of
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