The proliferating literature on the emergent states of Asia and Africa stresses as its theme their newness and lack of political experience. New nation states have arisen often where none existed before, and their leaders have been confronted with a host of problems which they had not faced previously. Nowhere are such states thought to be more novel and inexperienced than in Africa, where a scant half century ago peoples lived in tribal communities, their economic and political context being demarcated mainly by family and kin groups. Lucy Mair's appropriately titled book, The New Nations, puts the problem pithily: ‘The new African governments are recruited from new men…The relationship of the leader with his followers, of ministers with their colleagues, with bureaucrats, with the general public, are new relationships.’1

Countries live in the shadow of their past: responses to current circumstances are conditioned by what has gone before. In developing countries plans for economic growth are conditioned by previous policy – or the lack of it – and by what was done or what was not done in previous decades. In Africa south of the Sahara, with the exception of Liberia and Ethiopia, it is the past history of colonial domination which conditions the present.

Whatever the origin of a federation, whether aggregation or devolution, its establishment at once raises three problems: how to allocate functions rationally; how to allocate taxing powers; and how to share revenue between the governments of that federation. It is for the constitution-makers to settle the first problem, leaving the remaining two to federal financial experts.

Two conflicting views have been presented in this Journal recently concerning the necessity for African countries to restructure their economies and reduce their dependence on exports in order to attain development.1 Rather than attempt to enter into the controversy in detail, I propose to describe the dominant characteristics of the world markets for the major exports of sub-Saharan African countries, which render export expansion by itself unlikely to contribute to higher standards of living for the broad masses of the population.

During the early years of independence, a militant women's equal rights movement has developed in Kenya. Led by urban, educated women, the movement rejects what is now seen as the traditionally inferior role of women. It wants for them an equal share in the responsibilities and the opportunities of nationhood. This article will describe the message, tactics, and leadership of the early phase of the movement.

Third-World co-operation on human rights has manifested itself in many forms during the past two decades, but never more consistently and vigorously than on the South African policy of apartheid. This policy of separate development for each of the four racial groups – African, European, Asian, and Coloured – involves measures to effect a degree of purely local or spatial separation, e.g. with respect to residential zones, public utilities, education, transport, entertainments and public activities, and measures concerning political rights, e.g. separate representative councils; and also territorial separation, i.e. the reservation of specific areas for the exclusive use of one population group.1

In a recent article in this Journal, Vol. VII, No. 4, December 1970, on ‘Developing Countries and International Trade’, Leslie Stein attempts to provide an alternative explanation of the international relations between the developed and underdeveloped countries. He asserts that I argued, in my earlier discussion of ‘International Trade and the Developing Countries’ in Vol. VII, No. 2, July 1969, that the existing trade relations between the centre and the periphery are ‘a major cause’ of the latter's poverty. Consequently, I was led to recommend measures leading to less reliance on the external sector and, more specifically, a programme of ‘heavy industrialisation’. Since Dr Stein feels not only that my policy proposals are detrimental to the interests of the periphery, but also that the statistical findings and the theoretical discussions from which they are derived contain both errors and omissions, he is led to propose an alternative formulation of the international division of labour, which, in his view, benefits the periphery.

In November 1970 a new Nigerian co-ordinating body appeared on the scene linking together the four major central trade union organisations – the Nigerian Trade Union Congress, the United Labour Congress, the Nigerian Workers' Council, and the Labour Unity Front. This was known as U.C.C.L.O. – the United Committee of Central Labour Organisations – and was formed specifically to present a united front to the Adebo Commission set up to review wages and salaries in the Federation.

General Smuts was one of the first to draw attention to the diverse and often conflicting principles applied to Africa by the various European colonial powers. In his Rhodes Memorial Lecture delivered at Oxford in 1929, Smuts made a plea for a survey of the whole situation to find a way to exchange information about Africa. This proposal developed into Lord Hailey's African Survey, published in 1936. After World War II, European governments began to think seriously of co-ordinating their efforts in Africa. In 1945 the French and the British engaged in mutual discussions and were joined two years later by the Belgians, the Portuguese, the South Africans, and the Rhodesians. Scientists working in Africa expressed the need for a framework for co-operation at the Royal Society's Empire Scientific Conference held in London in 1946. This led to the convening of the African Regional Scientific Conference in 1949, where scientists working in nearly every country in Africa south of the Sahara met to review the role, problems, and possibilities of co-operation.2