Their sons and daughters educated as accountants lawyers and businessmen are bringing together the old and the modern

Their sons and daughters, educated as accountants, lawyers and businessmen, are bringing together the old and the modern and forming new networks o f power and influence.In Uganda, the recently re-established court of the Kabaka is resurfacing as a political power base. In Nigeria, the Obas and Emirs and other local kings, always discreetly powerful, are becoming more open and public in their exercise of influence. In South Africa, following the restoration of power to the Zulu king, there are a host of other kings and chiefs stretching their political muscles.The problem of these informal states is that too often they depend on a single man. Because of the nature of the extended African family, when a man dies scores and sometimes hundreds of relatives descend for their cut - and are paid off. It is exceedingly difficult for a financial empire - or a political one - to be handed down to a single successor.

In some African kingdoms, the death of the king was followed by chaos in which the potential successors fought each other until one killed or drove out all his rivals.Central governments will have to deal with these new power bases. They may fight them or they may establish written or unwritten agreements with them, but in a few years' time, when a stranger travels through Zaire, for example, he may need not only a visa from central government, but he will also need the blessing of the local chief, warlord or king. A company that wishes to do business in Africa will pay tax not only to the central government but to the local chief as well. It will be messy and complicated but in many places it is already happening. Only companies who know how the system works, modelling themselves on Tiny Rowland's Lonrho, will be able to operate there.Without investment, economic development will have to emerge from within.

This may not be the obstacle it sounds, since many of the families who are carving out empires for themselves in Africa are very rich indeed. At present, however, they prefer to put their money in banks in Europe because of instability at home. The stability they might themselves provide could induce them to bring back some of their funds as local investment.Alongside these new power bases, trading patterns are developing which appear on no World Bank statistic. Some are old routes suppressed by imperial borders, others are new; but Africa's hidden market makes the continent far richer than official figures suggest.Many of these new informal states and trading routes cross the state boundaries. How will that affect them? Sierra Leone, for example, might have ambassadors posted throughout the world, even though the government in fact controls little more than Freetown. It could also be that when one crosses the border from Sierra Leone into Guinea, there would be a man with a stamp who checks your passport and takes money. Whether that money goes into his own pocket, or to a local baron, or to the central government, would depend on local political circumstances.