DURING the late 1950S and early 19605, Israel mounted an active campaign of aid to Africa, which took three main forms: technical help in agriculture, joint commercial ventures, and military assistance. Of the three, the military and quasi-military programmes made the most considerable mark in Africa;1 they were also an important part of Israel's overall foreign policy, in an attempt to gain political influence through military aid, and thus to help overcome her isolation in the Middle East. Israel's military assistance to Africa illustrates several important aspects of foreign aid. This article deals mainly with the political motives of the donor country, and the various ways in which it may be concerned to influence the actions of the recipient government. Later, there is some discussion of the social and cultural barriers to the transfer of military and para-military organisations from one culture to another.

Social scientists studying the development of Liberian political and social institutions have frequently viewed the country as fitting the model of a plural society. M. G. Smith has defined such a society as the differential incorporation of two or more collectivities within the same society… presum[ing] significant antecedent differences of institutions, culture and ethnicity between the collectivities concerned and…restrict[ing] their assimilation by preserving or promoting the institutional distinctness.

In many West African countries there are large numbers of foreigners who have settled down to live and work or who come periodically to help harvest the crops. These aliens may be seen, from one point of view, as a useful and willing labour force, and a politically passive group requiring little in the way of services, or, from another viewpoint, as an insupportable drain on an economy which is not able to supply jobs for local people, and a source of political conflict because they have no allegiance to the ruling government. The growth in the economic power of Lebanese businessmen and local reactions to this competition have been ably discussed;1 this article will be concerned with African aliens, who are present in far greater numbers than the Lebanese and whose position has become increasingly insecure in recent years.

Land has had great prominence in Kenya politics throughout the country's colonial and post-colonial history. The purpose of this article is to advance a preliminary political analysis of the impact of two major land reforms undertaken in Kenya within the last 15 years. One of these, begun during the ‘Mau Mau’ rising in the mid-1950s, enabled Africans to consolidate and gain individual legal titles to their land holdings and subsequently to participate in the production of lucrative cash crops. The second reform enabled Africans to buy land from European farmers, many of whom wished to liquidate their holdings as far as possible before independence occurred in December 1963. Both land reforms are still in progress, for the Government is seeking to maximise the economic productivity of those who have benefited from them. Simultaneously, it is seeking to extend land consolidation and title registration to thousands of farmers who have not yet been affected.

Few authors have been able to write on Africa without making constant reference to ‘tribalism’. Could this be the distinguishing feature of the continent? or is it merely a reflection of the system of perceptions of those who write on Africa, and of their African ‘converts’? Objective reality is very difficult to disentangle from subjective perception, almost in the same way as concepts in the social sciences are hard to purify of all ideological connotations. Might not African history, written, not by Europeans, but by Africans themselves, have employed different concepts and told a different story? If so, what would have been the theoretical explanation? Are things what they are called, or do they have an existence which is independent of the nomenclature that attaches to them? When it comes to Africa, answers vary independently of whether the observer is a liberal idealist, a Marxist materialist, or an African ‘convert’.

On 11 December 1969 representatives of the Governments of Botswana, Lesotho, South Africa, and Swaziland signed a Customs Union Agreement, replacing that of 1910.1 Preliminary negotiations had been protracted. Bipartite discussions had begun some six years before, between South Africa and Britain, as the colonial power responsible for Bechuanaland, Basutoland, and Swaziland; but South Africa suspended the talks early in 1965, pending a reappraisal of her relationship with the three territories concerned, made necessary by their rapid constitutional advance, which led to complete independence. Negotiations were not resumed until mid-1968; several quadripartite meetings took place in Pretoria during 1968–9, including one at ministerial level. Eventually the detailed draft of the treaty was agreed.

Unemployment – and underemployment – of large proportions of the labour force is a central factor in almost all of today's developing countries. For many, this situation has steadily worsened despite the achievement during the last decade of relatively high rates of economic growth. Poverty and malaise characterise wide areas of the countryside as well as large sectors of major cities. These problems were explored by the eighth in the series of international conferences on development, sponsored by Cambridge University Overseas Development Committee. Key questions were posed: What are the facts of unemployment and underemployment? What are its causes? What measures should be taken to generate more employment opportunities and to reduce, simultaneously, the more glaring inequalities in the distribution of income?

The attention of many Africanists is now absorbed by the extraordinary rate of social-demographic development in the countries of tropical Africa during recent decades, the rapid change of the demographic balance between town and country, and the intensive growth of towns. Africa is now ahead of all other continents in the rate of urban population growth, as indicated by Table I; this shows ten-year rates of growth in the total population of towns with over 20,000 inhabitants, for eight major regions and for the world as a whole. Africa is the only region whose rate of urban growth has accelerated from decade to decade since 1920; during 1950–60, she overtook Latin America, and her growth rate of 69 per cent was well above the world average.

‘African Dance as Human Behaviour’, an intensive lecture–film-performance institute initiated and directed by Associate Professor Judith Lynne Hanna at the Lincoln Center Campus of Fordham University, was the first programme of its kind devoted to African dance. The 24 participants, who met each weekday evening during this fortnight, received up to four college credits for their work. Among them were six college teachers and nine graduate students – mainly from the New York area, but some from as far afield as California and Louisiana – two school teachers, and four professional dancers–teachers. The disciplines represented were anthropology, dance, education, folklore, humanities, literature, physical education, social studies, sociology, and theatre arts. Motivations varied: some participants were adding a new dimension to their scholarly work, some were artists seeking to draw inspiration from African dance as an aesthetic form, and others were delving into an aspect of their own cultural heritage.

Historians, political scientists, and scholars in other fields will be occupied for years to come, seeking to understand why and how the Biafra conflict began. Clues and anticipations will be sought in antecedent events and, at present, the Kano riots of May 1953 are generally regarded as having been the first major outburst of violence between Northern Nigerians and those who later assumed the name of Biafrans. Without wishing to detract from the enormity of the Kano events, I feel it is necessary to place on record the following neglected episode in the history of conflict between these peoples.

The year 1966 was the first for which Tunisia prepared an annual economic plan, as it has done every year since then. These plans are published, usually in April for the year concerned, the latest available at the time of writing being Rapport sur le budget économique de l'année 1970 (Tunis, 1970). Such documents are in the nature of forecasts, and experience has taught that plans are not automatically achieved. But the full report on implementation does not appear until two years later; for example, Rapport d'execution du plan pour l'année 1968 (Tunis, 1970). Meanwhile, in order to know whether in reality things are moving as foreseen in the annual plan, monthly data have been collected since 1968 concerning a number of important economic indicators, including government capital expenditure, drawings on foreign project loans, levels of domestic production, imports, exports, and the finance received by private enterprise from banks and government subsidies.