ABSTRACT
Scholarship on the application of models of dependence to Latin American and more recently African countries has made a very useful contribution to the understanding of underdevelopment in the world context Specialist articles based on micro-empirical research have illustrated the dynamics of dependence in specific contexts, 1 yet within these and more general contributions on theory it is the terms of analysis around which most discussion has centred. And the debate has been dominated by neo-Marxists and (Latin American) structuralists. I do not wish here to summarise the debate (which has been well done elsewhere 2 ), but to introduce a different perspective – one of comparison of two states in Africa which, though they have strikingly different social and economic histories, show a remarkable similarity in current policies and attendant problems. I offer this with a conviction that examining the empirical situation in comparative terms will feed back into a refinement of terms and add perhaps more perspective to the specifically African content of the characteristics of dependence.
