ABSTRACT
One of the most striking features of African politics is its extraordinary informality. In sub-Saharan Africa the ordered, formal, routinised, institutionalised aspects of political life are less salient, and arguably less important than they are in Europe or North America. In Africa, social formations characterised by mobility and migration, articulation, semi-peasantisation and proletarianisation, and finally de-agrarianisation have been associated with subjects of distinct sorts. This chapter presents a sketch of economy and accountability in African history. It then argues that in pre-colonial Africa production, persons and identities were mobile, with accountability being secured primarily through the threat of flight. Historians agree that pre-colonial Africa was marked in most places by an abundance of land. The difficulties poor people face in acting collectively to hold leaders to account, a phenomenon traceable to the multiple identities of a fluid social formation, hold important implications for some of the suggested remedies to the African crisis.
