EDITORIAL 
MUCH DEBATE AND activity in Africa in the last decades has dealt with 
questions of land use and land ownership; revolving around matters of 
equity, productivity and economic stability in the individual countries. 
It is unnecessary to repeat well-known general facts about the impact 
of colonialism on patterns of land ownership (though less is known of 
its impact on productivity): what is now of interest is a careful, empirical 
examination of the detailed ways in which the different systems, land 
reforms, agricultural extension strategies and methods of agricultural 
production over the centuries have affected, for better or worse, the 
social welfare of the people. 
Those who like to think of the African experience as a timeless 
repetition of the same practices will be surprised to learn that Africa has 
never, in recorded history, been short of experiments—whether homegrown 
or imposed—on systems of land tenure and agriculture. No 
country lacks this history, although some still have to excavate it with 
painstaking care and draw the relevant lessons. 
Kassa Belay shows that a variety of approaches to providing 
extension services in Ethiopia have succeeded each other, resulting in 
a less than optimal use of resources and organization of inputs'; to the 
alienation of both extension workers and the farmers whom they are 
supposed to support. Research and extension work has been 
inadequately co-ordinated and the lack of a genuine participatory 
approach in providing extension services, together with structural 
shortages—in particular, access to land and the shortage of working 
capital—has alienated farmers from modern agricultural methods. 
Dondeyne et al., researching in south east Tanzania, provide a study 
of the interface between cultural, matrilineal patterns of access to land 
and the development of social and economic stratification in the area 
under study. Dondeyne starts by pointing out that secure access to 
land is one of the most important features underpinning sustainable 
agricultural practices. This security is not always obtained when 
customary systems of tenure apply, particularly when people of different 
ethnic backgrounds are living and intermarrying in a relatively small
area. The Tanzanian case is of great interest to social reformers, having 
undergone not only the imposition of British land tenure systems but a 
long period of socialist reform—villagization—and, subsequently, a 
number of further policy changes. The study focuses on the access to 
land of women who are thought to be particularly disadvantaged by the 
current mSlee of land tenure systems. Nevertheless the authors conclude 
that women appear to be discriminated against, not as far as access to 
land is concerned, but more often by having to move away from their 
homes (in the case of marriage, divorce or widowhood), thus losing 
control of their lands to other kin. They warn, however, that as population 
density increases, access to land is increasingly difficult and the strong 
clans are more likely to control the land in their territory, thus increasing 
social stratification. On the other hand, they predict that if current 
legislation results in greater security of tenure, this may also lead to 
more sustainable use of the land. 
This latter conclusion points to a more general and poignant 
observation: that the different goals—equity and productivity—may 
be in serious conflict: improving equity may reduce productivity; and 
vice versa. 
Participatory development is the subject of Blessings Chinsinga's 
article. His starting point is that the debilitating effects of structural 
adjustment policies has been the focus of donor-driven poverty 
alleviation programmes meant to develop the capacity of reforming 
societies to deal with poverty and related social stress. Chinsinga points 
out that it is now commonplace that the success of these programmes 
depends on their being rooted in participatory local development. In 
this strategy, planners and officials have to surrender their authority 
and leadership to the local group, whose task it is to define the objectives 
and management structures of a particular programme. If such 
programmes are to succeed, experts and donors can be involved only 
as facilitators and resource-persons. Within this context Chinsinga 
proceeds to examine the 1994 poverty alleviation programme in Malawi, 
documenting the complete failure of senior officials to take the role 
proscribed. Poverty alleviation in Malawi, as elsewhere, will be 
successful only if senior government officials are able to institutionalize
it at grassroots and to do this they need to understand the concept as 
transformational in intention. 
Two studies from Botswana are included in this issue. Barbara Ntombi 
Ngwenya shows that funeral societies in Botswana can be seen as 
much richer institutions than a mere form of economic support during 
times of bereavement. She analyses the ways in which different burial 
societies are organized to support the ceremonies, discussions, 
donations, needs and capabilities of different members of the social 
group (particularly close family members) that take place around a 
bereavement and how they reduce the anxiety of bereaved kin members 
by taking on a "co-parenting" role. She describes how sibling groups in 
the bereaved family support each other, enhancing social ties and bring 
about new sensibilities of caring and compassion. Far from seeing death 
as an unmitigated source of stress, then, Ngwenya shows some of the 
ways in which it can used to heal and enhance social relationships 
within a group. 
Modie-Moroka's article continues her study of women prisoners in 
Botswana with a discussion of the socio-demographic characteristics 
of her sample of women in prison—their age, marital status and level of 
education, their work history, the reasons for their imprisonment, their 
experiences of violence and substance abuse and their physical and 
mental health. Like other contributors to this issue, Modie-Moroka uses 
both qualitative and quantitative date in her research, arguing that life 
histories gathered using open-ended interview techniques are necessary 
to understand the quality of the subject's experience. This is particularly 
important in studying women, whose conception of the self is relational 
and less bounded than that of men. She uses her findings to argue that 
there is a network of social, cultural, economic and ideological factors 
that puts poor and marzinalized women at risk of criminal behaviour. 
Two articles on quite different matters conclude this issue. One is 
Kaseke's conceptualization of the lack of access to formal social security 
as a form of social exclusion. Formal social security systems introduced 
during the pre-Independence period were designed to benefit wageearners 
who were white. Although at Independence these systems lost 
their racist character, they continued to exclude non-wage earners: that
is, the majority of the country and nearly all women. As the numbers of 
the unemployed and those in poverty have grown in overwhelming 
numbers the last 20 years, more and more people are excluded from 
social security. Kaseke argues that a radical policy-shift must take place 
to incorporate all members of the society into a tiered pension scheme 
providing different kinds of cover. 
Chuks Mba notes that many countries in Africa suffer from a lack of 
demographic data that is not always reliable, up-to-date or sufficiently 
rich for many uses. Demographic information is important to planners 
and policymakers and a host of scholars, including social scientists 
and students of social change, economics and history. As the accuracy 
of age reporting forms the cornerstone of the usefulness and reliability 
of this data it is possible to form a general opinion of the reliability of 
census data if age reporting appears to be accurate. With this preamble, 
Mba focuses on Lesotho, an country remarkable in Africa for having a 
history of regular census-taking that dates back to 1875. Using a variety 
of statistical analytical tools, Mba examines the age reporting for 
Lesotho and finds that, while there are some distortions, the data are 
fairly accurate and there has been a modest improvement in age-sex 
reporting over the ten years from the 1986 to 1996 censuses. 
Acknowledgements 
The editor thanks Nyovani Madise and Gary Craig for their assistance 
as consultants and referees for this issue of the Journal of Social 
Development in Africa