Bjrn Beckman is a professor of Political Science at Stockholm University in Sweden. He has written extensively on African trade unions, state and civil society, especially on Nigerian union politics. He co-authored Union power in the Nigerian textile industry with Gunilla Andrae (Nordic Africa Institute,Uppsala 1998, CRD, Kano 1999) and co-edited Labour regimes and liberalization: The restructuring of state-society relations in Africa with L.M. Sachikonye (University of Zimbabwe publications, Harare 2001). He is a member of the International Advisory Board of the Review of African Political Economy.

Sakhela Buhlungu is a professor of Sociology at the University of Johannesburg and formerly a co-director of the Sociology of Work Unit (SWOP) at the University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa. He has a unionist background and contributes regularly to the field of South African labour studies, including as an editor of Trade unions and democracy: Cosatu workers political attitudes in South Africa and as a joint editor of State of the nation: South Africa 20052006, both HSRC Press 2006.

Lloyd M. Sachikonye is a professor in the Department of Agrarian and Labour Studies in the Institute of Development Studies at the University of Zimbabwe, Harare. He has written extensively on labour and politics in Zimbabwe and Africa, including Democracy, civil society and the state: Social movements in southern Africa (SAPES Books, Harare, 1995), Restructuring or de-industrialising? (Nordic Africa Institute, Uppsala, 1999) and the collection edited with Beckman mentioned above. He is a frequent contributor to the Review of African Political Economy.