The struggle for African independence was waged under the banner of the right of self-determination, and today African states and the Organisation of African Unity give financial and diplomatic support to the liberation movements of Guinea-Bissau, Angola, and Mozambique. Yet the same African states and the O.A.U. denounced Biafra's attempted withdrawal from Nigeria and similar struggles in Southern Sudan, Chad, and Eritrea, without reference to the possible merits of their peoples' claims to the right of self-determination. Biafran secession, in particular, was condemned as a priori detrimental to African interests: it was incompatible with the goal of African unity and would set a precedent that could lead to the further balkanisation of the continent.

The idea that Russia was the first underdeveloped country has begun to gain currency among political scientists. It implies that social processes in Russia may be profitably compared with more recent developments in the Third World. In this article I would like to test this hypothesis with respect to an important ideological controversy which took place in Russia during the nineteenth century by examining it alongside discussions among French-speaking West Africans in the period after World War II. More particularly, I would like to compare what might be called the neo-traditional themes and anti-western patriotism of the Slavophiles with the intellectual position taken by the early spokesmen of négritude.

Integragation has been a topical issue in inter-state relations in post-independence Africa.1 The most radical of the three suggested strategies is to bid for immediate continental economic and political integration.2 A more popular view is to seek a gradualist approach to pan-African unity via regional economic co-operation;3 this could range from a free trade area, customs union, common market, and economic community, to ultimate political fusion.4 The third, less-studied strategy is for African states to lay the basis for regional economic integration, and even ultimate continental unity, through functional co-operation, for example, in transport, industrial development, trade, and monetary policy.5 This article examines the prospects and problems of co-operation on a regional basis, with particular reference to West Africa, in a specific economic field – namely, seaport development. See Map I, page 399, below.

It is known that the forms of physical education practised among ancient Greek communities reflected the differential importance attached to military and artistic activities.1 Similarly, today, variations in the relative pre-eminence of collective over individual sports are likely to reflect contrasts in the socio-economic and cultural profiles of contemporary societies.2 Moreover, modes of social participation in a particular game should be affected by the patterns of interaction prevailing in the society at large.

This article was written before information on the great Ethiopian famine of 1973 had reached the outside world. Since I was not then aware of the catastrophe, the facts given here should not be regarded as a reconstruction of the causes of the famine. On the contrary, the deterioration in the conditions of the indigenous inhabitants had been known for some years – in fact, since the beginning of the capitalist offensive in the north-eastern lowlands of Ethiopia, namely the Awash Valley. I had already predicted the famine in late 1971 in two reports,1 and in discussions with officials of the Ethiopian Government.

After many years of poverty and neglect, Mali is today faced with a unique opportunity to develop its rural economy. The rapid expansion of demand for beef in some of the coastal regions of West Africa has recently caught up with the available supply from the interior, and cattle prices have increased dramatically. This price rise has been accentuated by the effects of recent drought which seriously depleted the herds. Consequently, there is enormous incentive for interior regions to find new ways of increasing production which, at the same time, take pressure off their overburdened range-lands. Mali is fortunate in having a resource endowment which has considerable potential in this respect.

The English-speaking independent countries of Central and Southern Africa, with widely different economies and natural resources, face at this stage in their development very similar manpower and educational problems. Shortages of skilled technical workers are still acute in Botswana, Lesotho, Swaziland, Zambia, and Malawi; and shortages of educated people, particularly those with professional or degree-level qualifications, are obvious. Most of the countries in this region, therefore, are still at a stage where the output from schools and universities has not yet been sufficient to localise many skilled posts, particularly those in the private sector. So although unemployment is beginning to appear at the junior secondary levels, the crucial questions as seen both by ministries of education and by planning units still tend to revolve around the central dilemma of ‘How fast ought we to expand?’ In this sense the priorities are different from many countries further north in Africa where surpluses of secondary and higher educated workers have been apparent for some time.

The emergence of a literature in English in Nigeria is usually described as a rapid post-war phenomenon, an unexpected flowering of creative energy which took scarcely more than two decades to produce rich, ripe fruit. According to most published reports, this literature was born suddenly in 1952 out of the pregnant thumb of Amos Tutuola; was nursed through a wobbly infancy by Cyprian Ekwensi, T. M. Aluko, and Onuora Nzekwu; was guided through a magnificent adolescence by Chinua Achebe, Wole Soyinka, J. P. Clark, Christopher Okigbo, and their numerous university-trained followers; was tested by a civil war which left several casualties but no diminution of the will to write; and was later restored to normal prolificacy by the assiduous application of old and new talents.