In the making of a post-independence Namibian society, there are few areas of agreement between the contending parties in the contemporary struggle for power. Nevertheless, both the South-West Africa People's Organisation and the South African-backed Turnhalle groups have expressed the need to establish tertiary-level education in Namibia. The absence of a university and an associated intellectual community means that, in Richard Moorsom's words, ‘Namibian society lacks the essential means either of attracting social concern or transmitting basic information’. The ramifications of this are both sharply apparent and regrettable:

One of the principal tasks of administration in Zaïre is to establish a stable domain consensus, a concept that has been defined as follows: a set of expectations both for members of an organization and for others with whom they interact, about what that organization will and will not do. It provides, although imperfectly, an image of the organization's role in a larger arena, which in turn serves as a guide for the ordering of action in certain directions and not in others.1

This article examines aspects of Zambian industry, particularly the difficulties caused recently by its high level of dependence. Around 1975, problems of output and employment became acute, and the manifest cause was insufficient foreign exchange. Copper sales still provide almost all of Zambia's foreign exchange; the price fell dramatically in 1970, and recoveries throughout the decade were short-lived or partial.1 At the same time, Zambia's major industries – mining, manufacturing, and commercial farming – have developed with a crucial dependence on both imported inputs and expatriate skills.

Since independence from colonial rule, there have been considerable changes in the legal systems of new African nations, reflecting – at least in part – the need to re-establish the position of indigenous customary law in relation to received European law. For many modern Africans, customary law has equivocal significance: all too often, this represents a traditional order, now out of keeping with contemporary social conditions and economic demands, and in addition is imbued with political connotations.

It appears that in order to be a respectable Africanist, by which I mean simply a scholar whose interest, regardless of discipline, is focused on Africa, one must be a Marxist. Let me quickly add that I am, at least in the abstract, not opposed to this, particularly since I like to consider myself in some way part of that intellectual and political tradition. But the growth of the Marxism industry has not been without, to use the jargon, its contradictions.

The fascinating events of the Ethiopian revolution have led to an explosion of papers, articles, and books.1 However, only a few studies published since 1974 are underpinned with original field work. Most are based largely on combinations of deductive logic and newspaper reports, discussions with foreign-service officers, interviews with political exiles and academic visitors, and close reading of officially released government documents. Such methodological approaches have a rational, factual content which should be approached with caution, for lack of access to data may lead to the reification of incorrect facts by subsequent authors who footnote the reports of others. Since there is increasing evidence that Ethiopia will be closed to field research for some time, and that academic involution will occur as scholars convince themselves of the validity of data reported by others, it seems useful for Ethiopianists to remind themselves how close they are to the early commentators on Lenin's Russia, or the China watchers of the 1950s,2 by considering only one of several cautionary tales about facts reported in the increasing number of articles on the Ethiopian revolution.3

The potential for superpower confrontation on the Horn of Africa in 1977 and 1978 focused world attention on Somalia. For a few brief months, the popular press published regular accounts of President Siad Barre's military campaign in the Ogaden desert against neighbouring Ethiopia. The U.S. Department of State heralded the rôle of Soviet and Cuban advisers in the conflict. When Somalia ousted the Russian forces and abrogated the Treaty of Friendship and Co-operation with the U.S.S.R., the move was interpreted as a major diplomatic setback for Moscow. Now, as quickly as it erupted, the news flow about the Horn has halted.

An authentic national liberation exists only to the precise degree to which the individual has irreversibly begun his own liberation. It is not possible to take one's distance with respect to colonialism without at the same time taking it with respect to the idea that the colonized holds of himself through the filter of colonialist culture.1

Disappointed with the development performance of most Third-World countries during the past two decades, many scholars and public officials have looked for a more effective strategy. They are concerned not merely with the extent of growth, but where it has occurred, with evidence that relatively little of the benefits of increased productivity has ‘trickled down’ to the poorer half of the populations of these lands. Capital-intensive methods have raised expectations in both the urban and the rural areas without generating adequate employment opportunities or distributing the benefits of growth equitably. As a consequence, the many poor remain as desperately disadvantaged as they ever were, making a re-evaluation of development priorities, within as well as outside of Africa, of the utmost importance at this juncture.

When Henry Kissinger became Secretary of State in September 1973 he instructed all American embassy personnel to monitor human rights in the countries in which they were serving. President Jimmy Carter was not responsible for America's interest in human rights, only for the policy of affirmative action. When his Assistant Secretary for Human Rights commenced work she found only two members of the State Department permanently assigned to the task, and her sole guideline was the manual for setting up her office.

Throughout Ghana many commercial passenger vehicles bear mottos and names, boldly written on their bodies, usually at the front. The widespread nature of these inscriptions would seem to suggest that they are a part of the occupational sub-culture, namely the distinctive pattern of behaviour, norms, and customs which serves to identify commercial transportation. A general theme running throughout the present study is that this sub-culture reflects not only the unique needs of the drivers, but also the socio-economic and cultural environment within which they operate.

The Lesotho Minister for Agriculture, Co-operatives, and Marketing was reported recently to have shaken the delegates at the World Conference on Agrarian Reform and Development in Rome by his observation on the value of such intergovernmental gatherings on the subject of development: