Africa Spectrum

Agricultural mechanisation promotes continuous cultivation on a piece of land and expansion of the area under cultivation, thereby intensifying competition for land. This impacts the land tenure system based on customary land tenure and communal landholding that thrived under land fallowing. Situated within the evolutionary theory of land rights and adopting an empirical qualitative research approach, this paper examines the effects of agricultural mechanisation on customary land tenure relations in Ghana's Transitional Zone. The paper argues that the widespread adoption of agricultural mechanisation has led to farm extensification and intensification which have engendered intense competition and conflicts over land and trends towards individual landholding. This has provided the arsenals for manipulation by the powerful in society and ushering in a new form of customary land tenure relations that replaces traditional social relations with capitalist relations and creates tension between allodial rights holders and the usufructuary and customary tenancy rights holders

Kwasi Sarfo

Bernard Okoampah Otu

Michael Atakro

Assessing the Implications of Agricultural Mechanisation for Customary Land Tenure Relations in the Transitional Zone, Ghana

评估农业机械化对加纳过渡区习惯土地租赁关系的影响

The article explores regulation practices governing access to the central market of Kinshasa. It argues that, contrary to conventional ideas, urban trading places do not escape state regulation, nor are they outside the realm of legitimacy. These places and the economic activities that take place in them are highly regulated. Yet, their regulations do not always conform to official standards. The dominant binary divide of formal/informal obscures different processes and scales of effective regulation. Hence, to better understand how these places and activities are regulated, it is necessary to go beyond the binary divide. Drawing on practical norms’ literature, the article shows the multiplicity of overlapping norms, their corresponding logics, and how different actors navigate regulation. Regulations can have diverse effects on people. Some deviations from official laws have reassuring effects, leading to forms of organisation that serve traders’ needs or provide them with space for resistance against exclusion. However, certain other deviations serve to extract more resources from vendors and can lead to the (re)production of social inequalities.

Héritier Mesa

Rethinking Regulation beyond the Normative Threshold: Mechanisms of Control and Access to the Central Market of Kinshasa

重新思考超越规范门槛的监管：金沙萨中央市场控制机制与准入

This paper analyses the complexity of regulating the activities of small traders at the Grand Marché in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso. Markets in Africa are places where small-scale trading takes place par excellence, and the traders who work there are generally considered to be self-employed. The plurality of regulations governing commercial activity observed there seems to be particularly conducive to such an analysis. We examine these complexities within the theoretical framework of “social regulation” as well as that of “normative pluralism,” which encompasses both official and practical norms. We show that the work of traders is regulated both by norms issued by the Régie Autonome de Gestion des Équipements Marchands (Independent Management Board for Commercial Facilities) – an official structure – and by traders’ own practical norms, which have both collective and individual aspects to them. The complexities of the relationship between these official and practical norms lie in the fact that sometimes they are not always articulated and may both co-exist and contradict each other.

Sylvie Ayimpam

The Complexities of Regulating Traders’ Activity: The Case of Small Traders in Ouagadougou's Rood Woko Market (Burkina Faso)

监管交易者活动的复杂性：以瓦加杜古鲁德沃科市场（布基纳法索）小商贩为例

This introduction provides an outline of what an approach to work regulation processes beyond the formal/informal divide might look like. The first section briefly reviews the different approaches to informal economies that have been developed since the early 1970s. The second section takes a step back from this literature to draw attention to the intellectual and political weaknesses of the concept of informal economy. Building on this critique, the third section proposes avenues for studying work regulation processes beyond the formal/informal divide. To conclude, the fourth section highlights the contributions that the articles of this special issue bring to the analysis of work regulation and labour dynamics in Africa.

Benjamin Rubbers

Introduction: Studying Work Regulation Processes Beyond the Formal/Informal Divide

引言：超越正式/非正式二分法的工作规制过程研究

Legacies of colonial rule, continuing neocolonial extraction, and excessive carbon dumping have meant that the majority of those living in the Global South experience many of the consequences of climate change more acutely than those in the Global North. As such, several countries in the Global North have committed to providing climate aid to decarbonise and reverse the alarming climate trajectory in the Global South. Yet, climate aid by and large discounts the internal competencies and resources within the Global South and aligns climate policies with neoliberal market agendas. In arguing against what has been called climate aid colonialism, we advocate for South-South solidarity and climate reparations, wherein climate justice articulated and advanced at the grassroots level from within the Global South is attuned to the socio-political requirements of decolonisation. Together, climate reparations and South-South solidarity can address the structures of coloniality that drive both climate change and climate aid.

Nick Malherbe

Abiodun Omotayo Oladejo

Against Climate Aid Colonialism: The Case for Climate Reparations and South-South Solidarity

反对气候援助殖民主义：气候赔偿与南南团结的案例

This article is based on a series of observations made in the offices of the Dakar Labour Inspectorate between 2020 and 2023 and describes how labour is regulated by the inspection agents. The recent developments in the Labour Code deprived the department of virtually all its sanction powers, and the authority of labour inspectors depends on their ability to maintain people's belief in their power rather on than their actual powers of punishment. The work of inspection agents is a function of the law, of course, but it is also the product of the dynamics of the interactions among these agents, workers and employers. This is the only way the state can hope to impose its authority on the heart of labour relations.

Abbreviation
Journal Impact	1.73
Quartiles(Global)	AREA STUDIES(Q1)

ISSN	0002-0397, 1868-6869
h-index	29

Publication Information	Publisher: Institut fur Afrika-Kunde，Publishing cycle: ，Journal Type: journal，Open Access Journals: Yes
Basic data	Year of publication: 2006，Proportion of original research papers: 93.33%，Self Citation Rate:5.30%， Gold OA Rate: 92.86%
Average review cycle	网友分享经验：6 Weeks

Africa Spectrum

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Assessing the Implications of Agricultural Mechanisation for Customary Land Tenure Relations in the Transitional Zone, Ghana

Rethinking Regulation beyond the Normative Threshold: Mechanisms of Control and Access to the Central Market of Kinshasa

The Complexities of Regulating Traders’ Activity: The Case of Small Traders in Ouagadougou's Rood Woko Market (Burkina Faso)

Introduction: Studying Work Regulation Processes Beyond the Formal/Informal Divide

Against Climate Aid Colonialism: The Case for Climate Reparations and South-South Solidarity

Assessing the Implications of Agricultural Mechanisation for Customary Land Tenure Relations in the Transitional Zone, Ghana

Rethinking Regulation beyond the Normative Threshold: Mechanisms of Control and Access to the Central Market of Kinshasa

The Complexities of Regulating Traders’ Activity: The Case of Small Traders in Ouagadougou's Rood Woko Market (Burkina Faso)

Introduction: Studying Work Regulation Processes Beyond the Formal/Informal Divide

Governing Labour Relations Despite the Law: The Routine of Labour Inspection (Dakar)