Introduction

Abstract

Any discussion of politics in Africa today is confronted with three apparently intractable issues: how to define "Africa?; how to make sense of the problems besetting the continent; and what can we do about it. As a result, our approach to the understanding of the continent is conditioned, and perhaps over-determined, by an unholy alliance of normative and practical questions. On the one hand, we constantly have to revise our standpoint, since we need to come to terms with the fact that existing explanations do not, in fact, explain very well what is happening in Africa. On the other hand, we approach the continent with an all-too instrumental agenda, which seems to compel us ceaselessly to search for the "solutions? to its problems. We swing between the frustration of not understanding and the need to find out what to do.