Jean-Claude Willame is a professor at the Catholic University of Louvain (Leuven), where he teaches political anthropology and African politics, and a director of the Institut Africaine--CEDAF in Brussels. After receiving his doctorate in political science from the University of California--Berkeley in 1971, Willame served as a professor at the National University of Zaire in Lubumbashi and director of its Center for Sociopolitical Studies of Central Africa (CEPAC). Since then, he has taught in Boston, Antwerp, Brussels, and Louvain. Willame is widely acknowledged for his expertise on the economies, societies, and politics of Central Africa, and he has participated in many international study groups and missions. He has published extensively, with dozens of articles and several books to his name. Recent books include L'épopée d'Inga: Chronique d'une prédation industrielle (Paris: Editions l'Harmattan, 1986); Patrice Lumumba: La crise congolaise revisitée (Paris: Karthala, 1990); and L'automne d'un despotisme: Pouvoir, obéissance, et argent dans le Zaire des années 80 (Paris: Karthala, 1992).
Hugues Leclercq is a specialist on monetary and fiscal policy of sub-Saharan countries. He was a professor at the University of Lovanium--National University of Zaire from 1958 to 1975 and at the Catholic University of Louvain-la-Neuve from 1976 to 1994 (he was made professor emeritus in 1995). Throughout the 1960s he was director of the Institute of Economic and Social Research of the University of Zaire, and from 1963 to 1968 was appointed to the Bank of Zaire as an IMF consultant. Between 1977 and 1981 he was adviser to the Bureau of the President of the Republic of Zaire. He has served on several occasions as a consultant for the Belgian Aid Agency and the European Commission. He is coauthor (with Christian Comeliau) of Nonmarket Economy and Development (Paris: Editions Mouton); his latest publication is "Macroeconomic Aspect of the Informal Economy in Kinshasa," which appeared in the April 1994 issue of Les Cahiers du CEDAF.
Peter Rosenblum is project director of the Harvard Human Rights Program of Harvard Law School. Until recently, he was program director for the International Human Rights Law Group, based in Washington, D.C., where he initiated and oversaw projects in the fields of law reform, judicial assistance, and human rights development. Educated in political science and law at Columbia University, Northwestern University, and the University of Paris, Rosenblum has taught at Fordham University, has served as staff attorney for the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights, and has acted as a consultant to NGO projects on Romania, Zaire, Rwanda, Burundi, and the Congo. His publications include articles on Zaire for Africa Watch and a report--Ethiopia in Transition (1994)--for the International Human Rights Law Group.
Catharine Newbury is an associate professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Educated at Willamette University and the University of Wisconsin--Madison, where she earned her doctorate, Newbury has researched and taught at a variety of institutions in Africa and North America. She has also conducted extensive fieldwork in Zaire, Tanzania, and especially Rwanda. Active as a speaker and a writer, Newbury has contributed articles to many journals and edited volumes. Her book The Cohesion of Oppression: Clientship and Ethnicity in Rwanda (Columbia University Press, 1988) was a finalist for the 1989 African Studies Association Herskovits Award.
