With rare and only partial exceptions, research and teaching institutions and individual scholars in these countries welcome the prospect of an increase in the frequency, range, and quality of research by American students of Africa and of greater coordination between them and scholars in Africa. Each government in principle also welcomes researchers who are intellectually, personally, and politically respected and whose projects are thought to be broadly relevant, or at least not antithetical to, the needs of the society. Despite the resemblance among countries in these general respects, each presents a unique cluster of opportunities, research settings, and problems which will be discussed in this report.

The information for this study was collected over a period of six weeks during the summer of 1968. Periods of one week were spent in Khartoum and Addis Ababa and of four weeks in South Africa, Lesotho, and Swaziland. Twenty-three interviews were conducted in Khartoum, twenty-two in Addis Ababa, and fifty-five in southern Africa, including thirteen in Lesotho and Swaziland. Eight of the eleven universities and three of the five university colleges in South Africa were visited. 150 people participated in the interviews. Of these eighty percent were in academic occupation such as university teachers/researchers or administrators, and twenty percent were in government posts (including a few officers in American embassies or consulates), international organizations, or private organizations engaged in or concerned with research.