Placed in the same context as volume one, volume two of the Fifth Congress Proceedings of the Organisation for Social Science Research in Eastern and Southern Africa is focused on political and economic reforms, and transformations and gender issues. The papers included are: culture and productivity, the welfare state on trial, civil service reform in Uganda, traditional leaders in the decentralised process civil society, indigenous populist institutions and implications for political reforms in Uganda,the nature of economic reforms in Tanzania and Botswana, tradition and modernity in our times, economic liberalisation and civil society in Sudan, pauperisation of the middle class in Sudan, authoritarian populism and democratisation in Ethiopia, the political economy of democratisation in Swaziland, political culture and the limits if institutional reforms,incorporating women in development, the participation of women inpolitical activities in Africa, economic structural adjustment programmes in Zimbabwe - their impact on the gender dimensions, the effects of structural adjustment programmes on women's health in Kenya, gender sensitivity and development in health policies, poverty and food nsecurity in Tanzania.