EDITORS The Review of African Political Economy Jan Burgess, Ray Bush & Morris Szeftel (ROAPE) is published quarterly by Carfax Publishing Company for the ROAPE Inter- BOOK & FILM REVIEWS national editorial board. Now 28 years old, Carolyne Dennis, Roy Love, Tunde Zack- ROAPE is a fully refereed journal covering Williams all aspects of African political economy. ROAPE has always involved the readership in shaping the journal's coverage, welcom- EDITORIAL WORKING GROUP ing contributions from grassroots organisa- Chris Allen, Carolyn Baylies, Sarah Bracking, tions, women's organisations, trade unions Lynne Brydon, Janet Bujra, Jan Burgess, Ray and political groups. The journal is unique Bush, Reg Cline-Cole, Carolyne Dennis, in the comprehensiveness of its biblio- Graham Harrison, Julie Hearn, Shubi Ishemo, graphic referencing, information monitor- Roy Love, Giles Mohan, Colin Murray, Mike ing, statistical documentation and coverage Powell, Marcus Power, David Simon, Colin of work-in-progress. Its award-winning web Stoneman, Morris Szeftel, Tina Wallace, site at www.roape.org is a most useful tool Gavin Williams, A. B. Zack-Williams. for researchers and academics alike. 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Consent to copy for general distribution, Mustafa, Phil O'Keefe, Peter Lawrence, for promotion, for creating new work, or for Stephen Riley (1949-1998), Pepe Roberts, resale must be specifically obtained in Kevin Watkins, Gavin Williams. writing from ROAPE Publications Ltd. ISSN 0305-6244 ©2002 ROAPE Publications Ltd Review of African Political Economy No. 92:205-210 © ROAPE Publications Ltd., 2002 ISSN 0305-6244 Editorial: Africa, the African Diaspora & Development A B Zack-Williams & Giles Mohan In 1995 Zack-Williams commented in this journal: 'development studies has maintained its ostrich-like detachment from issues of race and diasporan concerns' (1995:351). Now, seven years later, we address this 'detachment' and the implications of bringing these two strands of study together in understanding the development of both Africa and its diaspora. In between, there has been a number of books and articles on the African diaspora (for example, Okpewho, Davies, and Mazrui, 1999; Byfield, 2000) but they have tended to be theoretical, cultural and historical as opposed to dealing with pressing questions of the political economy of Africa and its diaspora. Theorising and analysing the diaspora and development is increasingly important given that migration is becoming a key part of many household survival strategies. In other contexts the diaspora has been one of the pillars of development and industrialisation. For example, the Chinese diaspora numbers 50 million and in 1999 generated $700 billion which is equivalent to two-thirds of China's GDP (Devan and Tewari, 2001). While on a smaller scale, remittances from Ghanaians outstripped foreign direct investment for every year of the 1990s (Akyeampong, 2000). So, the financial power of the diaspora is clearly formidable. However, development is more than money and the diaspora contributes in a myriad of other ways. These include political lobbying, cultural exchange, religious networks, and institutional linkages. We can say that an increasingly confident diaspora yearns for Africa, wants to speak and work with Africa in its moment of crisis (Zack-Williams, Frost & Thomson, 2002). In the articles gathered here we address all of these issues although we have attempted to synthesise them in the article which immediately follows this editorial. Reacting to Zack-Williams' call for an overdue dialogue between the concerns of African diasporic cultural studies and those development studies in Africa itself, Hakim Adi (in this Volume) has warned that: Those concerned with the study of African political economy and 'development' in Africa have often neglected those ideas that emerged from the African diaspora. While those who study the African diaspora have often been more concerned with issues of 'identity' than with the political future of Africa. Hakim goes on to argue that many key anti-colonial ideas (such as Pan-Africanism, which is his own concern in this collection) were developed as much in the diaspora and in the capital cities of Europe, as they were within the African continent. For Adi, many of these diaspora-originated ideas soon formed the basis of 'a modern African political theory'. 206 Review of African Political Economy Definitions One of the main problems with African diasporic theorisation is in defining and delimiting the diaspora. This is more than simply an academic exercise in semantics because the definition of diaspora is politically contested and opens up different implications for the types of consciousness we find and the functional relationships between the diaspora and an African 'home'. Running through these articles is the question of periodisation. In terms of the formation of the diaspora different processes have operated in different phases, which then cautions us against seeing a monolithic and unchanging 'diasporic experience'. Clearly, the slave trade inaugurated the African diaspora and was a period of traumatic exile. Shipping ports soon became major loci in the construction and development of the diaspora as the article of Ishemo on the 'Abakua secret societies' in Cuba demonstrates, as well as the contributions of Frost and Uduku. However, subsequent mass movements of African people have been less impelled although the pressures to move have often been a result, directly or indirectly, of underdevelop- ment. For example, the lack of educational opportunities saw many Africans travelling to the metropoles in the 1950s while the recent political and economic crises have seen families and individuals moving to a wider range of countries to escape persecution and to make a living. Without reducing migration and displacement to the results of some uniform capitalist logic, much diasporic formation is linked to the demands of the international labour market combined with the lack of opportunities domestically. A second problem in defining the African diaspora is in 'mapping' its geography. Much has been made of the 'Black Atlantic' diaspora, which is characterised as a dynamic and swirling exchange of people, ideas and commodities. Such a characterisation of the African diaspora reflects, in part, the relative intellectual and political power of academics and activists in Europe and North America who drive the debates and make certain experiences more visible than others. Indeed, most of the empirical studies included in this issue focus on 'Atlantic' diasporas. However, Gilroy's Black Atlantic focus is somehow incomplete, since it fails to recognise the post-slavery and post-colonial diasporas, which have emerged in places like Chicago (Reynolds in this issue); Liverpool (Frost and Uduku's contributions in this issue), or the African presence on the European continent. Furthermore, the African diaspora is spread more widely with flows and linkages across the Indian Ocean, the Mediterranean and the Pacific. Such complex movements and displacements suggest that rather than seeing diaspora as comprising home and exile, we need to look at multiple sites of displacement which may well be linked to each other more strongly than they are to an actual or mythical 'home'. For example, many black British have much stronger linkages with the Caribbean than they do with Africa and we should be wary of essentialising a diaspora experience purely upon the basis of skin colour and assumed 'origins'. All identities are fluid, overlapping and changing so that we should resist attempts, such as those of the more dogmatic Afrocentrists, to find a singular and authentic