Direct military intervention, aimed at unseating civilian governments and replacing them with ruling councils drawn largely from the army, is a relatively recent phenomenon in Africa. With the exception of the Sudan, where officers led by General Ibrahim Abboud seized control in November 1958, no supplanting of civilian authority by a military junta occurred until 19 June 1965 (Algeria). Then, in rapid succession, the Governments of Congo-Kinshasa (25 November 1965), Dahomey (22 December 1965), Central African Republic (1 January 1966), Upper Volta (4 January 1966), Nigeria (15 July 1966), Ghana (24 February 1966), Nigeria once again (29 July, 1966), Burundi (28 November 1966), Togo (13 January 1967), and Sierra Leone (23 March 1967) fell victims to coups d'état.

The new nations of the world hold many expectations for their education systems. They expect that schools will produce the labour force for their manpower requirements, the leadership for their bureaucracies, and the citizenry for an enlightened social order. In pluralistic countries, governments expect also that schools will assist in integrating sub-populations fragmented by religious, linguistic, or ethnic differences. This article will examine the theme, ‘education and national integration’, in Nigeria, whose federal form of government was erected in recognition of profound cultural disparities.

The press in Tanzania mirrors the political consciousness of a newly independent state and reflects some of the ambiguities that accompany political articulation in a one-party democracy. In this analysis of the four daily newspapers, special attention has been given to the ‘news geography’ which is presented in an attempt to anticipate the world image or ‘psychological geography’ which results from reading the daily newspaper. For even the selection of what news to print reflects the tensions and conflicts between an ideal news policy and the limitations imposed by the lack of funds, personnel, and the influence of the western news services.

At midnight on the evening of 3 October 1966, the former British Protectorate of Basutoland attained its political independence and assumed the new title of Lesotho. From that time, after a period of nearly 100 years of colonial administration, the British Government officially relinquished all its formal, direct, legal and financial control of the country. Although this has not meant, as some have suggested, the complete rejection by Britain of any financial assistance and responsibility to its former dependency, it has nevertheless forced Lesotho to become to an even greater extent than ever before the economic hostage of South Africa. In the context of the present good relations between South Africa and Lesotho, the term ‘hostage’ is perhaps the wrong one to use, conveying as it does fairly strong emotional overtones. But it is clear from even the most cursory examination of the economic situation that Lesotho will become more and more economically dependent upon South Africa—irrespective of the political party in power. As an enclave of South Africa, Lesotho has always been closely integrated economically with the Republic by virtue of its peculiar geographical position.1 This, together with the country's extreme climate and inhospitable terrain, enforces an external dependence which makes nonsense of political desires for complete self-sufficiency.

FOR understandable reasons, the foreign policy behaviour of African states is only now emerging as a subject of investigation. Most of the new states have been politically independent for less than a decade and their international character is not yet clearly established. On occasion, observers are frustrated by actions which they do not approve or understand, and are tempted to depict African foreign policy as less than responsible. Keeping in mind that any interpretation must remain tentative at this time, there have been none the less a number of international events which yield significant material for evaluation as case studies. One such event, the subject of this study, was the fracas which followed the arrest, in October 1966, of a party of Guineans by Ghana authorities.

Israel shares the distinction, together with only a handful of other nations, of being a ‘newsworthy’ country. Even before the recent war, hardly a week passed without at least a reference to Israel in either the daily or periodical press. Various American, British, and European weeklies consistently carry articles on Israel. On a per capita basis, probably no other country receives as much world press attention as Israel. Yet, despite this profuseness of printed material, very few articles and fewer books present competent analyses of the Israeli polity and foreign policy.

Two years after the centenary of Heinrich Barth's death on 25 November 1865, a big volume dedicated to him was published in Germany. Seven West German scholars, two East Germans, one Austrian, three British, and two French contributed to this book:— Heinrich Barth, ein Forscher in Afrika. Leben-Werk-Leistung Eine Sammlung von Beiträgen …, edited by Heinrich Schiffers (Wiesbaden, Steiner Verlag, 1967, pp. 540). A British centenary edition of Heinrich Barth's Travels and Discoveries in North and Central Africa (London, Cass, 3 vols, 1965) actually appeared in the centenary year.

C.A.S.H.A., the African Centre for Applied Humanities, was founded in 1961, with the assistance of the general planning commissariat of the French Republic, as a non-profit-making organisation. Its aims are to undertake and to promote, chiefly in Africa, inter-disciplinary research into economic and social development and the related policies for action, building up a research machinery capable of responding to the specific problems of the developing countries. Its operations are safeguarded by agreements with both public and private bodies, having regard to the objects of the Association and its appropriate tasks.

This seminar, sponsored and organised jointly by the International Labour Organisation and the U.N. Economic Commission for Africa, was convened on the recommendation of the Fourth Conference of African Statisticians, November 1965, and was held in two stages; the first stage, in Dakar, was for participants from French-speaking African countries, and the second, in Addis Ababa, for participants from English-speaking African countries.

The full title of this seminar, sponsored by the Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation, was ‘The Use of Correspondence Instruction in Adult Education: means, methods, and possibilities’. The 21 participants came from ministries of education, universities, and other official institutions in Ethiopia, Kenya, Sudan, Uganda, and Zambia, and from the U.N. Economic Commission for Africa; during the initial phase, U.N.E.S.C.O. was represented by an observer. The seminar was led by a directorate of three: Miss Renee Erdos from Australia, author of a U.N.E.S.C.O. source book on correspondence education, Roy Prosser, Edinburgh University, formerly director of extramural studies, Nairobi, and Dr Lars-Olof Edström, educational adviser, Swedish International Development Authority.

The research conference syndrome has finally reached Liberia. Heretofore, Africa's oldest republic has been one of the least researched countries on the continent, and in terms of scholarly inquiry remains one of the least known. Not that there are not a number of books about Liberia; but there are so few by serious scholars, and of those even fewer of recent vintage. As Professor Warren D'Azavedo, one of the conference organisers and its chairman, pointed out, there is a dearth of basic ethnographic studies; in fact, we still do not know the delineations of Liberia's tribal map—nor, it may be added, its complete physical geography.

The purpose of this seminar on the planning of rural development—organised by the African Institute for Economic Development and Planning—was to permit an exchange of views and experiences by teachers from various African countries. Twenty members of the teaching and research staff of 18 universities and research institutes, from 14 countries (seven English-speaking and seven French-speaking) attended the seminar, which was the fourth of its kind held in Dakar.

By mid-1965 the tensions which had always existed in the East African Common Market and Services had not been solved—nor even notably alleviated—by the 1961 Raisman Commission fiscal measures or the (largely unimplemented) 1964 Kampala Agreement, which had aimed at a programme of trade balancing and industrial allocation. Many observers expected as a result a speedy and bitter dissolution of the de facto East African economic community. The common currency was ending, the joint navy and tourist promotion body were liquidated, quota restrictions on regional trade were being imposed by all three states—but most widely by Tanzania—strains were evident in the University, and an atmosphere of growing gloom and complaint was evident.