The growth of exploration for oil in Africa has been phenomenal. Until the late 1950s the continent was considered to be devoid of any large hydrocarbon deposits; indeed, in 1957 the total production of oil amounted to only 2·7 million metric tons, or 0·3 per cent of the entire world output. Since then, however, the rate of growth has been very rapid, and by 1976 had reached 279·5 million metric tons, accounting for 9·8 per cent of world production.

The dynamics of world neutralism, either as an international doctrine or as a state policy,1 have witnessed variable responses from African states since the inception of the ideology known as peaceful coexistence. Between 1920, when Lenin talked of a ‘peaceful cohabitation with the peoples of all nations’, and 1961 when the Communist Party defined peaceful coexistence – by an official imprimatur – as ‘an objective necessity for the development of human society’, and denounced ‘war as a means of settling inter-national disputes’, the chrysalis of classical neutralism could be said to have spanned the decade between the close of World War II and the Bandung Conference of 1955.2

The implementation of the principle of legality in public administration depends upon the existence of a number of factors. Most important among these are a government which is more or less committed to upholding the principle, a citizenry which is both aware of its legal rights and prepared to resist attempts at infringing them, and institutions through which such challenges can be prosecuted.

The Objective of this article is to reassess the influence of the Muslim brotherhoods on politics in Senegal. In 1965–6 I undertook a study of the subject, but the resultant publication was not the first, nor indeed the most in-depth, research on the topic which has attracted the attention of scholars for many years.1 Beginning with the colonial administrator Paul Marty, and including the noted scholar Vincent Monteil, French observers have documented the peculiar organisation, power, and influence of the Muslim confrérie2 – the tariqa or sufi order introduced from North Africa to Senegal during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.3 Since independence in 1960, interest in the brotherhoods has intensified as the pattern of relationships became clear between modern African politicians and traditional Muslim leaders. Most notable were the marabouts heading the Murddiyya or Mouride order, 4 centred among the Wolof in the productive agricultural zone of central Senegal where most of the major crop, groundnuts, is produced.

The study of settlement geography in Africa has not only to consider rural–urban and traditional–modern contrasts, but also to place on the appropriate continuum the various communities which have been relocated since World War II. However, the lack of a general theory in this field has led to much wasted effort on the ground, and to the frequent replication of studies in the literature. Some recent contributions endeavour to draw meaningful generalisations from the disparate literature on settlement and resettlement schemes.1 Perhaps because the subject constitutes ‘an academic no man's land’ wherein ‘no single science or study has yet established its claims and each has its limitations’,2 attempts at an overview have inevitably focused on the individual author's specialist orientation. Whatever the methodological paradigm of these overviews, or of the numerous case-studies, they frequently, if regretfully, arrive at a critical conclusion vis-à-vis the limited results of settlement schemes.

With respect to investment in education, two important questions need to be examined. The first is concerned with the amount to be invested in primary and secondary schools, and the institutions of higher learning, and the second relates to the distribution of total costs among the state, private institutions, and those who receive education.

This short article first evaluates the existing formal educational system in Sierra Leone with the help of the cost-benefit technique. In order to obtain guidelines for future investment policies the internal social rates of return are computed for the various levels of education. Then the supply and demand of trained personnel are estimated for the period 1975–9 on the basis of the following classification: (i) high level (those with university education), (ii) middle level (those with some secondary education and technical/vocational training), and (iii) primary- and secondary-school teachers. The projections show that shortages will occur in all three groups during the next five years, above all at the middle level where a 70 per cent increase in the expected supply will be necessary to meet the requirements.

Recent events in Southern Africa have focused attention on the hundreds of thousands of migrant workers in that region, and this short article recalls the role of those from Malawi – before that country became independent – in the strike which held up the construction of the Kariba dam in 1959. As is well known, there had been previous strikes in this area,1 but the Kariba walk-out coincided with an outbreak of opposition to colonial rule in Nyasaland, and prompted the declaration of a state of emergency, perhaps the first unmistakeable sign that the Central African Federation was doomed.

Complaints are frequently heard that the African farmer, the small trader, the everyday person has no means of getting the funds needed to improve his farm, to expand his trade, or to pay his child's school fees. It is often alleged that the low-literacy peasants and workers in a partially-monetised economy have no desire to save, even if there was any surplus money, and that in any case there are no institutions in which to accumulate or to redistribute their savings. It is argued that the banks fail to meet their needs because it is so difficult to obtain loans, while the private money-lenders, often operating illegally, almost always charge exorbitant rates of interest that discourage all but the most desperate of borrowers.