The International Conference on the Development of Documentation and Information Networks in East Africa, held in Nairobi from 24 July to 1 August 1973, was organized by the East African Academy in co-operation with the German Foundation for International Development and with the assistance of Unesco.

The aim of the Conference was to improve co-operation among institutions carrying out information work and to stimulate a rapid development of the field of documentation in the East African Region. About 25 participants from Kenya, Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia and international nongovernmental and governmental organizations attended the meeting. They were representatives of national research councils and information specialists (either librarians or documentalists) who discussed together the basic problems of selection, treatment and dissemination of information from the contrasting points of view of users and of those responsible for the information flow.