This meeting was organised jointly by the Government of Haute-Volta and by the Cultural Division of U.N.E.S.C.O., which had taken the initiative, as part of its preparation for a general History of Africa. In this context one must mention also the recent colloquia held at Niamey and at Timbuktu, the former concerned with oral, the second with written sources, ofAfrican history. This Ouagadougou meeting was essentially logistic in character; having established in principle that it is necessary to collect African oral traditions in order to fill out the outlines of history, the task was to list the problems of all kinds posed by the work of collection, and to consider possible solutions, especially in connection with both national and international research plans.