L'institut International Africain me fait un grand honneur en m'invitant à prendre la parole ici. J'y suis très sensible. Je ne saurais mieux vous remercier qu'en célébrant la mémoire de Lord Lugard.

Il y a quelque trente ans, dans la seconde décade du XXème siècle, un jeune administrateur des colonies françaises qui était désigné pour servir au Territoire du Niger, recevait par là même un rare privilège: celui de traverser la Nigéria britannique, du sud au nord, de Lagos à Kano.

The society to which this paper refers is a Nilo-Hamitic tribe of north-western Kenya among whose people, the Pokot, I carried out field-work for a period of approximately 6 months in 1947. For the opportunity to do so I am indebted to the Government of Kenya.

The population of West Suk does not exceed 25,000 but is dispersed over an area of 1,810 square miles. The eastern and western sections of this tribe are composed of semi-nomadic pastoralists, the pi-pa-tich (cattle people) who live in arid and often semi-desert plains. Between the plains rise the Suk Hills, inhabited by the pi-pa-pagh (people of the grain) who, in certain areas, practise intensive irrigation agriculture and in others follow the usual ecological pattern of the mixed-economy Kipsigis and Nandi. The hill people have close cultural affinities with the Nandi group, while the pastoralists have been strongly influenced by their Karamojong and Turkana neighbours.

The Ethiopian script as known to us today is a quasi-syllabic script, each character consisting of one consonant followed by a vowel (or zero). This system developed in the 3rd and 4th centuries A.D.; we are, however, in possession of some inscriptions in which the early purely consonantal form of the Ethiopian alphabet has survived.

When the Semites from South Arabia crossed the Bābel Mandeb and immigrated into that part of North-East Africa which is today the Tigre province of Ethiopia and Southern Eritrea, the South Arabian alphabet which they brought with them was, perhaps, the most important innovation they introduced into Africa. This South Arabian alphabet belongs to the Southern branch of the Semitic script, but we are still not quite certain at what time it severed its connexion with the Northern alphabet.

Les Nkundo ou Mɔngɔ forment une ethnie importante de la cuvette centrale du Congo beige. Ce sont des patriarcaux. Pendant vingt ans j'ai habité parmi leurs tribus du centre-ouest.

The Institute's Executive Council met this year in London and, in more than one respect, this occasion was a notable one. 1951 being the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Institute's foundation, it was felt that the event called for celebration and commemoration, and this note was struck by the Minister of State, in opening the proceedings of the Council, by the Chairman and by the Administrative Director in his report on the Institute's activities, which is published in full below.

This year we celebrate the twenty-fifth anniversary of our foundation, and it may be appropriate to offer a brief survey of the development of the Institute, and of the manner in which, during these years, the aims of its founders have been pursued. Those aims were set out by Lord Lugard, our first Chairman, in an article printed in the first number of Africa (January 1928).