The process of innovation in traditional genres of music with popular musical idioms involves various socio-political factors, such as an upsurge of developmental ideology, cultural policy by political authorities, and change of the populace's perceptions. In postcolonial Africa, the rehabilitation of traditional values of music, changes in the educational system, and the development of mass media also played an important role in this transformative process of tradition.
In the 1970s, the calypso rhythm pattern of “highlife”, Ghanaian popular music, was introduced into the traditional royal drum ensemble, fontomfrom, among the Fante of southern Ghana by an individual educated in African and Western music. It was spread through cultural festivals to promote musical traditions, and was developed by newly-formed performing groups who gave staged performances to contribute to the creation of a sense of national identity. It has now become the most popular repertoire of fontomfrom music among the Fante.
This paper demonstrates the connection between the process of this successful innovation and the cultural policy which Kwame Nkrumah, Ghana's first president, adopted for nation-building after independence. Nkrumah's political philosophy, known as “African Personality”, involved the rehabilitation of the cultural values of traditional music and dance, leading to the development of the National Theatre Movement in the 1960s. The Movement aimed to explore new styles of performing arts based on the traditional genres of music and dance to construct national identity. It greatly promoted the development of the Ghanaian performing traditions.
The introduction of the calypso pattern into the royal drum ensemble is thus considered to be one of the phenomena that resulted from this large cultural movement which grew with the upsurge of nationalist sentiment after independence.

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The purpose of this paper is to trace the historical outline of the development of popular dance bands in Tanzania, with special reference to their relationship with long-term cultural trends in the region.
Dance bands (“jazz bands” as they are known in East Africa) have been flourishing throughout Tanzania over the past five decades. In the early days, they emerged as communal social clubs (“jazz clubs”) in various urban centers from the 1940s, probably on the basis of the pre-existing traditions of competitive dance societies (beni ngoma), as well as the wide diffusion of coastal Swahili culture, which dates back to the mid-19th century. Like beni societies, jazz clubs developed as multi-ethnic organizations with a mutual aid function, fostered rival relations within each urban center, besides forming networks among the clubs in different towns. This jazz-club movement culminated in the 1960s when Dar es Salaam, the capital, and some provincial towns produced a number of famous jazz bands, which became popular throughout East Africa.
Post-independence changes in the economic and political system had a considerable impact upon the social character of urban musical activities. From the mid-1960s, chiefly in Dar es Salaam, a number of jazz bands were launched by various governmental organizations and public corporations. Enjoying the various advantages of public sector patronage under socialist rule, these “publicly-owned bands” were often mobilized for the political and economic purposes of the government. Frequent local tours and radio broadcasting contributed significantly to the achievement of nationwide fame by these bands. Partly for this reason, and also thanks to stable institutional backing, some long-standing publicly-owned bands have survived post-socialist economic changes and still retain their status as top bands even into the 1990s.
Along the way, jazz bands always had a close connection with the regional cultural dynamics of 20th century Tanzania, that is, the wide diffusion of Swahili-oriented culture in the colonial era and the post-independence formation of a nationwide common culture.

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L'Afrique n'est pas un continent isolé et fermé. Elle est ouverte au reste du monde, notamment grâce aux médias. De nos jours, les informations parvenues en Afrique par ce biais sont souvent à l'origine des nouvelles tendances de la culture urbaine. Je présente ici la relation entre les medias et la culture de la rue à Abidjan, en prenant l'exemple du rap, musique populaire auprès des jeunes citadins de Côte d'Ivoire, et en remarquant la ‹commercialisation›.
La commercialisation désigne en effet une partie importante de la vie urbaine en Afrique. Les médias jouent certes un grand rôle en taut que ferment culturel Bans les villes africaines, mais it ne faut pas oublier qu'ils s'inscrivent aussi Bans un processus economique. Or, pour comprendre le dynamisme des cultures urbaines d'Afrique, it nest plus possible aujourd'hui de négliger cet aspect du phénomène, dont la commercialisation est un facteur essentiel.
Le rap a été importé à Abidjan au milieu des années quatre-vingts et le premier groupe local a fait ses débuts en 1989. Son succès a entraîné l'apparition de plusieurs autres artistes et le rap est rapidement devenu l'un des genres de musique préférés des jeunes. Or il est intéressant de voter que le rap entretient des rapports étroits avec la culture de la rue, qui constitue sa première source d'inspiration. Issu de ces milieux, puis développé par les médias, le rap abidjanais se présente comme un phénomène à la fois culturel et économique, un champ musical où se croisent culture et commerce. Cet article expose les résultats d'une étude relative aux débuts de quelques jeunes rappeurs: R. A. S., le premier groupe créé à Abidjan, et Roch Bi, un artiste qui a connu un grand succès et dont les morceaux reflètent bien l'ambiance de la rue. Cette analyse révèle clairement le processus de commercialisation de la culture de la rue.

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The thumb piano originated in Africa and is still played in various areas south of the Sahara. I am interested in clarifying the historical process in which this instrument has spread throughout the regions, and the role of music played on the instrument in people's everyday life.
This paper focuses on thumb pianos, one example of the Tshokwe sound culture, and aims to clarify the relationship between the the Tshokwe sound culture and their lives by studying the forms of thumb pianos and lyrics of thumb-piano music.
From mid-January to early in February 2001, I listered to nine thumb-piano players living in Dundo and its neighboring areas in the northeastern regions of Angola, and recorded their musical performance. I also studied artifacts preserved at the Dundo Museum, and obtained information on the variety of forms of Tshokwe thumb pianos.
The Tshokwe people mainly live the in eastern parts of Angola, and belong to the Bantu. With farming such as cassava growing as their central source of livelihood, the Tshokwe make a living by a combination of hunting, fishing, and seasonal labor.
As a result of this field study, I identified the following three facts.
(1) There are eight types of Tshokwe thumb pianos, each of which has a different name according to its form, although a previous study specified only four to five types.
(2) 43 pieces of music are songs performed solo by men, and the all have lyrics. I studied the lyrics of 31 songs, and classified them the following themes: economic life, such as hunting; the relationship between a child and parent or between the sexes; everyday life, such as asking who is pounding cassava in a mortar; teachings such as which birds and mice are inedible; the incident of a man who left his family to travel and suddenly came home, or of a man killed by bees; circumcision rituals; and the history of the colonial era, including the violent acts of Portuguese officials. None of the collected songs, however, refer to the Angolan civil war, which lasted for 25 years. I suppose this is because the people studied experienced the war around 1998, which is relatively recently.
(3) The thumb piano is usually played for recreation, rituals, and making money. I found instances of recreation and rituals, but no one in Tshokwe society plays it as an occupation. Playing the thumb piano also has another role, other than the above, of handing down the Tshokwe people's personal history, reflecting their lives and surroundings, because incidents described in the lyrics are passed down from generation to generation. By comparing a report in the 1960s with this one, it is also clear that the thumb piano is no longer used in rituals although it is used for recreation. There are now fewer people to pass down the lyrics than in the past as some of the thumb piano players have died.
This study showed that the music is performed by thumb piano has a variety of forms and that the role of this music in people's lives is declining, unlike in the past when it was closely related to everyday life.

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In this paper, I would like to examine the recent social change among the /Gui and//Gana. Since the Remote Area Development Programme (RADP) began in 1970's, sedentation of the/Gui and//Gana has increased. It has been reported that they selectively adopted some aspects of introduced culture in order to integrate it into their tradition. In 1997, the government of Botswana relocated these people to a new settlement.
The relocation resulted in great changes to many aspects of their life. For example, resettlement on the plots allocated by the government disrupted residential patterns as well concentrating the population. In addition, foraging activities declined due to the lack of veld foods, while the importance of livestock raising, agriculture, wage labor, and rations increased. One year old children tended to gain weight slower than those before relocation. The data suggest that breastfed infants could not obtain sufficient nutrition after relocation.
Meanwhile, economic diversity grew in connection with specific ethnicities. The//Gana, who had been closely related to the neighboring Kgalagadi, were eager to be engaged in livestock raising, agriculture, and wage labor. It followed that the//Gana acquired more property of all kinds than the/Gui after relocation. The situation can be understood as a logical consequence of the decrease of accessibility to their traditional land in addition to the disruption of residential patterns based on ties of kinship.
These findings suggest that the relocation programme was a catalyst in the enhancement of ethnic identities among people by highlighting the differences between the/Gui and//Gana, as well as those between the dominant Tswana society and that of local dwellers. It should also be mentioned that these results are inconsistent with the original intention of the government to integrate people into the nation state.

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Traditional pastoral systems in the African coastal zones of the and tropics have not attracted fieldworkers' attention so far. The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate aspects of camel pastoralism, focusing on the feeding behavior of livestock on coastal vegetation and inter-species variations of pasture utilization.
The herding activities of camels, cattle, goats, sheep, and donkeys on the Sudanese Red Sea coast were analysed. The pastures were classified into six zones: I) grasslands on the coastal plain; II) shrublands at which the surface runoff of seasonal streams terminates; III) shrublands at the inland margin of saltmarshes; IV) salt-marshes near the shoreline; V) mangrove communities in the littoral zone; VI) grasslands and shrublands in the raised coral reef islands.
As a result of these analyses, the characteristics of the pastures in relation to animal feeding behavior in each season are clarified: 1) livestocks show various degrees of pasture utilization depending on taxon, life forms, and categories such as halophytes/glycophytes; 2) half-shrub halophytes, mainly Chenopodiaceae plants, and the foliage of the evergreen mangrove, Avicennia marina, are highly palatable for camels; 3) some grasslands and shrublands are accessible and available only to camels.
In conclusion, the most distinctive characteristic of human-livestock-plant relationships in the coastal zones of the arid tropics is the pastoral system of camels that rely on halophytes and mangroves for food and have exclusive grasslands and shrublands as their habitat.

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From the lessons of aid in the past and the limited capacities of governments in recipient countries, program aid has been advocated as an alternative to project aid. Especially in Africa, the application of aid approach has become a choice between program or project aid in the progress of the Sector Wide Approach and Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper.
This paper redefines the concepts of program and project aid by re-thinking development aid in the context of policy structures of donor and recipient countries.
The case of Tanzania was selected as there have been active discussions on program and project aid. As a result, it became clear that, although a movement toward program aid with strengthened aid coordination has been seen, the changes have only been gradual, and were not at all a linear process. In analysis using the above framework, we clearly see diversities in aid modalities, and the political strategies of each donor.
Donors have to stress contribution to the recipient countries' policy structure and their budget management. However, donors can take various approaches. Regarding Japanese aid to Africa, efforts should be made to move to program aid in the long term, but its influence on the recipient's policy structure, and the budget implication of the support should be considered fully even during the implementation of project aid.

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The process of civil war in Sierra Leone was complicated. This was mainly due to the changing alignment of local players committed to the war, and the bewildering changes of administrations. Almost all the administrations lacked sufficient capability in conflict management and depended on many players: private security corporations, traditional militias and so on. They fulfilled the function of a regular army but took a passive attitude toward negotiations with the Revolutionary United Front (RUF). They were not under the control of any administration and their political influence grew. Similarly, the RUF's attitude toward negotiation tended to split into two factions; leader and follower. When the former accepted a negotiation, the latter refused it partly because RUF was a group lacking clear ideas and with loose ties. It was inability of the leaders of both sides to control their troops that caused the long-term continuity of the war. On the other hand, Nigeria, which had initially taken a hard line with the RUF, changed to a softer approach because of its own financial and domestic political motives. As a result, international mediation efforts through monitoring and controlling the export of diamonds and the import of weapons played a important role in saving the situation. However, although the end of war declaration was announced in January 2002, several factors which initited the war remain and the situation does not warrant optimism. In partialar, the ‘shadow state’, the unfair distribution of resources attached to political corruption, and ‘rural isolation’, a peripheral miserable situation, lacking daily necessities and public services, have not resolved sufficiently.

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