This is indeed a momentous and historic day for Africa and for all Africans. We stand today on the stage of world affairs, before the audience of world opinion. We have come together to assert our role in the direction of world affairs and to discharge our duty to the great continent whose 250 million people we led. Africa is today at midcourse, in transition from the Africa of Yesterday to the Africa of Tomorrow. Even as we stand here, we move from the past into the future. The task on which we have embarked, the making of Africa, will not wait. We must act, to shape and mould the future and leave our imprint on events as they slip past into history.

The purpose of this article is not only to explain an African constitution, but also to examine, in that context, certain general ideas about constitutions and politics. The Ivory Coast, a former French West African colony, gained full independence as late as 1960. As a newly independent state, with a population of under four million, the Ivory Coast is participating in a nation-building experiment which the flood of new countries has made a widespread phenomenon of our times. The experiment is doubly meaningful for other countries. First, its results will weigh significantly in the balance of world power; secondly, as Ivorians look to the western example in pursuing their experiment, the West can see, reflected in Ivorians' words and deeds, a new and different image of itself.

The chain reaction set off in Paris by the Franco-Moroccan Declaration of 2 March 1956 still reverberates in the politics of north-west Africa. On that day, France ended 44 years of its protectorate over Morocco, restored to Mohamed V full sovereignty over 162, 120 square miles of land and some seven million people, and pledged ‘to respect, and see to it that others respect, the integrity of Moroccan territory, as guaranteed by international treaties’.1

In January 1963 the London talks on Swaziland's proposed constitution ended, as expected, in a deadlock. It had long been evident that the demand for equal (50–50) white and Swazi representation as advocated by the Swazi National Council (S.N.C.) and the European Advisory Council (E.A.C.) could not be accepted by the representatives of Swaziland's emerging political parties. This formula, which would give the country's 9,000 whites an equal voice with the nominees of the S.N.C., who were supposed to speak for the 270,000 Swazi, was vigorously denounced by all progressive elements in the country.

Throughout West, East, and Central Africa today—at a time when all these countries want to quicken the pace of development—masses of young people drift from rural areas to the cities in search of work. Mainly primary school leavers with an aversion to traditional farming, they set out hopefully to become first-generation wage-earners. But neither the jobs nor the vocational training exists that could meet their demands. And, as each year passes, the numbers of unemployed in the cities swell.

Before 1960 there was little general interest in the Belgian Congo, and the published material available on any aspect of its development was extremely limited. The accession of the Congo to independence in July 1960 and the prolonged crisis which followed has, however, completely altered this situation, and in the last three years more books and articles have been published on the Congo than on any other country in Africa. The purpose of this article is to list and evaluate at least some of this material and to suggest the main sources which exist for a study of the various aspects of the Congo crisis.

The Institute was founded in January 1963 as a department of the Haile Selassie I University, for research in all fields relating to Ethiopia. It is at present organised in three main sections, the Amharic collection, the library, and the museum. The Amharic collection, a unique assortment of books, pamphlets, and periodicals published in this language, is under the charge of Mr Stephen Wright, a life-long specialist in Ethiopian affairs. Mr. S. Chojnacki is responsible for the Institute's valuable library of books on Ethiopia, and for an ethnological and a small but growing historical museum.

The University introduced area courses on the Middle East and North Africa into its regular offerings in the academic year 1960–1. This Program is a part of the School of International Relations, and focuses on contemporary area problems, in contrast to the more traditional approach of oriental studies. It also differs by concentrating on both the Mashriq (East) and the Maghreb (North Africa), rather than solely on the eastern Mediterranean. The community of interests, language, and culture of these two regions, plus the increasing importance of North Africa in world affairs, emphasises the practicality of this treatment.

Historically, Japan has had neither political nor cultural contacts with Africa. During the latter half of the nineteenth century, however, Japanese scholars took some interest in the European ‘scramble for Africa’, and some works by explorers and administrators in Africa were translated; the emphasis was placed upon colonial policy, rather than upon Africans themselves. The first Japanese report of a visit to Africa was Afurika isshu by Naokichi Nakamura and Shunro Oshikawa, published in 1910. Soon afterwards, economic development in Japan stimulated the search for new markets, and many fact-finding missions, both official and unofficial, were sent to South and East Africa. A Japanese consulate was opened in Cape Town in 1917; a shipping service to East Africa was inaugurated in 1926, and others to West and North Africa in 1933. During the 1930's further translations were made of European works on African arts, sociology, anthropology, and geography. By this time, there was a professional chair of colonial policy in most Japanese universities.

The rich history and original culture of the peoples of Africa have long attracted attention in Russia. The first Russian books on Africa appeared as far back as the end of the eighteenth century. Since then about 600 books on Africa, including fundamental monographs, special anthologies, and booklets, have been published in our country; but the new encyclopaedia, Africa, is the first comprehensive reference book on this subject to be produced in the Soviet Union. It has been sponsored by the Africa Institute of the U.S.S.R. Academy of Sciences and the ‘Sovetskaya Encyclopaedia’ State Scientific Publishing House, with research assistance from several institutes of the U.S.S.R. Academy of Sciences and other educational and scientific institutions.

This Committee was incorporated as a non-profit organisation under the laws of New York State in September 1953, and began to appoint some full-time staff two years later. It was founded by a small group of individuals who felt the need for an American organisation which could give expression to the liberal American tradition in support of the African peoples struggling for freedom, equality, and independence. At the same time the Committee aimed to interpret the meaning of African events to the American people, and to introduce African leaders to the public.

‘Bread … before politics’ was the aim set for this session of E.C.A. in an early address by the Commission's retiring chairman, M Oumar Baba Diarra of Mali. Fittingly enough, these words were attributed to Cyrille Adoula, whose host government had been striving to transform those energies yielding Congolese friction into efforts to satisfy the basic needs of human existence, so appallingly evident on every hand to guests in Leopoldville. The conference agenda prepared through the initiative of E.C.A.'s secretariat was laden with economic questions of both short-and long-term significance.

Dakar, Senegal, 26–30 March, and Freetown, Sierra Leone, 3–8 April 1963. These two conferences—both sponsored by the Congress for Cultural Freedom—arose out of an earlier meeting on inter-university co-operation held at Fourah Bay College in December 1961. The aim of both was to persuade African universities to integrate the teaching of African literature in French and English into their regular syllabuses, and to ensure that it is studied as literature, not for its curiosity or ethnographic value.

A panel of international economists recently assembled at the University of Ghana in response to a unique invitation to discuss the draft of Ghana's latest Development Plan. The distinguished guests included Professor C. Z. Bobrowski (Poland), Professor J. Bognar (Hungary), Professor H. C. Bos (Netherlands), Professor A. O. Hirshman (United States), Mr N. Kaldor (England), Professor W. A. Lewis (West Indies), Dr Abdel Rahman (Egypt), Professor K. N. Raj (India), Mr Dudley Seers (E.C.A.), Mr J. Weeks (Liberia), and Dr Abdullah Sikta (Libya). Their informed criticism and advice, based on wide experience of developing economies, will go a long way to ensure that the optimum use is made of Ghana's extensive economic resources to achieve rapid growth.

Without political freedom there can be no cultural freedom; a programme of cultural emancipation is dependent, therefore, on national liberation, and one would like to believe that this ‘therefore’ influenced the determination by the American Society of African Culture to focus more sharply not only on cultural exchanges but on the political battle for the mind of southern Africa. This fourth international conference, held at Howard University under the title ‘Southern Africa in Transition’, was ‘aimed at focusing widespread attention on the complex and difficult problems being faced by those struggling for freedom in this troubled area’. It was attended by an impressive group of Afro-American, white American, and European Africanists, together with African leaders of countries from the Congo to the Cape.

The African countries, most of them having only recently acceded to independence, are now confronted with the task of achieving economic development in the face of immense problems arising from an acute shortage of trained and skilled personnel, lack of managerial skills and entrepreneurship, scarce capital resources, and grossly inadequate infrastructure. The old highroad to economic development through exports of primary products can no longer serve in the contemporary world as it now confronts the African countries. In the face of the new circumstances, planned development and industrialisation are imperative. But national boundaries are unsuitable to provide balanced markets and supplies to permit of planning on purely national scale for industrialisation and the necessary increase in the efficiency of primary production, beside the building up of an economic infrastructure. Import substitution on a purely national scale would often lead to uneconomically small or under-utilised industries—in either case a drain on scarce resources rather than a basis for further progress. African markets for some time to come. Though given countries may succeed without joint efforts and regional co-operation, most African countries would find it impossible to industrialise and secure the necessary markets, acting individually. The present cash market of most African countries is not larger than that of a moderately-sized European town.1 In other words, in addition to the maximum utilisation of outside markets for traditional and new products, larger markets must be developed within Africa.