KENYA became the 34th independent state in Africa on 12 December 1963, after perhaps the longest drawn-out campaign between nationalism and immigrant interests yet seen in British colonial history in Africa. If this bitter struggle has left deep and permanent scars on the body politic, in the form of racial hatred, entrenched tribalism, and a climate of violence, it bodes ill for Kenya's future. In the belief that an observer may most satisfactorily take a country's temperature, and gauge the condition of such scars, at election time, we have written the following brief study of the elections for the Senate (41 seats), the House of Representatives (129 seats), and six of the seven Regional Assemblies,1 held in Kenya between 18 and 26 May 1963. We hope that our varied experience in Kenya may help give readers a taste of the real flavour of the country at this important juncture, in a way that undiluted tables of statistics could not possibly do.

THIS article attempts to relate some of the ideas put forward by Professor Hans Morgenthau in his Politics Amongst Nations (New York, 1949) to the world position of South Africa, and then essays some more general reflections on the Republic's external situation today.

Such a study should normally begin with an historical introduction, but South Africa's recent history is, perhaps, well enough known for this to be dispensed with, and for my present purposes it will suffice to recall that South Africa was recognised as a sovereign state after World War I, when she was a separate signatory of the Treaty of Versailles and of the League Covenant. There were, of course, constitutional developments after that which led first to the weakening and then to the breaking of the Commonwealth tie, but this did not affect South Africa's formal relations with foreign states. Her relationship with Britain was of great but decreasing importance; but from the standpoint of other powers this importance was political rather than constitutional, for South Africa could be influenced through the British connexion much as Panama can be influenced through the U.S.A.1

If my own experience is at all typical, probably most students concerned with the influence of Islam in the modern world occasionally experience total doubt about their approach to the subject. Can one still justify putting such emphasis on the role of Islam as a historical continuum? Rather, since the nineteenth century, the period of the intensive ‘impact of the west’, haven't there been so many institutional changes that we have reached a real watershed, a breaking point with past history and with past categories of thought designed to explain that history? Shouldn't we de-emphasise Islam as a vital factor in the equation of the modern Arab world and of North Africa? Isn't it a mistake to put so much emphasis on the Islamic heritage?

Tribe is a dirty word nowadays. Not to me of course, but particularly, as you know, to a great many African intellectuals and politicians. No wonder they don't like it when one thinks of the terrifying things that have happened in Kenya and the Congo, with elections in Nigeria going along tribal lines, and in the Republic the Bantustans encouraging the worst kinds of tribalism. There is a positive and a negative kind of tribalism, as Tom Mboya very sensibly says in his book Freedom and After; however, most people concentrate on the negative side. But you and I together might have a look at this word-this concept-and see whether there may not be another and better future for it. You know quite well that part of my feeling about our own tribe comes from my being partly Highland and knowing in myself the warm feeling that we in the Highland area have towards our own and our related clans, however much we may laugh at it and pretend it is all part of a bad past. This warm feeling clears the first hurdle towards mutual understanding, perception, and some kind of loyalty-basic human needs.

The map of Africa was once notorious for bearing the various colours of the European colonial powers. Today the map of post-independence Africa is newly and neatly divided between the 18 independent African states which have chosen to become associated by treaty with the European Economic Community (E.E.C.) or Common Market, and the 16 independent African states which have either rejected such an association or—as with Egypt, Ethiopia, Liberia, Libya, South Africa, and the Sudan—were never offered the possibility of becoming associated.

Although Liberia is the oldest African republic, its economy is still young and growing. The road of independence has been uphill, lonely, and difficult. During Liberia's early decades of independence, the British and French were antagonistic towards what they considered a threat to their colonial ambitions as well as a refutation of the assumption that the black African was incapable of self-government. Across the Atlantic, Liberia's unofficial mother country, the United States, was still in the isolationist period of its history; its gestures of friendship were few and cautious. Nor did Liberia have easy-term foreign aid programmes to provide quick remedies for financial crises. Pleas for aid fell upon the cars of unsympathetic bankers. For the first 80 years or more, each of Liberia's several loans was used to repay the last. The battle was for survival, leaving little opportunity for development.

There was a considerable increase in the number of African countries compiling national accounts during the 1950's; ‘what was once the happy hunting ground of the independent research worker has become the routine preoccupation of official statisticians and international Civil Servants.’1 A comparison of the methods of calculation in use was speeded up when the U.N. Economic Commission for Africa was established, and the International Association for Research in Income and Wealth (made up of national accounts workers in different countries) sponsored a regional conference for Africa in January 1961. Official statisticians at that conference proceeded immediately to a U.N.E.C.A. meeting and considered the role national accounts calculations could play in Africa, and how far a standardised system was possible. This article reviews the published papers considered at the I.A.R.I.W. conference, and other relevant publications recently becoming available.2

The Political Studies Centre is one of the four divisions of the University's Institut de recherches économiques et sociales (I.R.E.S.). The other three are: Le Centre de recherches économiques, Le Centre de études sociologiques, Le Centre d'éperfectionnement en gestion des affaires. I.R.E.S., at present under the direction of Professor H. Leclercq, was founded by means of grants from the Ford Foundation in 1958, but developed into its present form in 1962, with the creation of its four divisions. The Institute publishes. Notes et documents de I's I.R.E.S. (duplicated, 1960 onwards), and a review, Cahiers économiques et sociaux (every two months, 1963 onwards).

Many readers of this Journal will be familiar with the Rhodes-Livingstone Institute, either through personal contact or through its publications. Situated a few miles outside Lusaka, the capital of Northern Rhodesia, the Institute has during the 25 years of its existence become one of the foremost centres of anthropological and sociological research, and by its publications has made Northern Rhodesia one of the best-documented areas in the continent of Africa.

The main aim of the social affairs section of the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa, in organising this workshop, was to analyse the economic aspects of the situation of women in African urban areas, and their importance in general economic development. Twenty-four women had been invited from as many African countries, representing the whole range of modern activities; 14 of them came, with another 10 representing the various regions of Nigeria, and more than 50 observers.

Over the past few years many arguments have been exchanged between partisans of multilateral aid to developing countries and those who prefer bilateral forms of co-operation. Multilateral programmes are often accused of inefficiency and waste owing to international bureaucracy and political complications, and bilateral agreements just as often are suspected of covering up for neo-colonialism. In the meantime a new kind of multi-national aid programme has appeared. Sometimes these are on government level, like the joint educational programmes of the Nordic countries in Tanganyika; sometimes there is co-operation between non-governmental organisations in different donor countries.

The sixth annual meeting of the African Studies Association, the leading American academic society of specialists on Africa, was the first to be held on the west coast. Although attendance could not be expected to match that at meetings in the east, a registration of over 250 testifies to the increasing strength of African studies in America. Quite a few of the founders of the Association were present, but the participation of many newcomers suggested that a second generation of American Africanists was bringing new vigour and insights to the field. Several visiting African scholars made notable contributions to the meeting.

While most African countries have no real cause for alarm concerning narcotic drug addiction and illicit trafficking, the possibilities for the future in such a huge and rapidly changing area call for the utmost vigilance. Only in this way can the tragedy of large-scale addiction which has afflicted other wide regions of the world be avoided. Urbanisation, internal migration, and detribalisation are factors which might well sow the seeds of future trouble. The United Nations therefore organised this regional seminar, the first of its kind in Africa, as part of its programme of technical assistance in narcotics control.

This was the second in a series of three conferences on public policy, organised by the University of East Africa and financed by the Ford Foundation, whose aim is to bring together policy-makers and academics for discussions on major public issues.

In attendance were delegations, of at least a dozen each, from Uganda, Kenya, and Tanganyika, consisting mainly of Cabinet Ministers, parliamentary secretaries, other M.P.s, and civil servants, as well as representatives of public corporations, political parties, and trade unions. Small delegations from Ethiopia, Northern Rhodesia, Nyasaland, Southern Rhodesia, and Zanzibar were also invited. A group of 10 ‘visiting specialists’ from overseas with experience of federal systems and problems elsewhere were invited to take part. Among these were six economists: Ursula Hicks and Arthur Hazlewood from Oxford, Pitamber Pant of the Indian Planning Commission, Vladimir Kollontai from Moscow, Jan Auerhan from Prague, and Benton Massell (who was unable to attend but contributed a paper) from the United States. The others were a lawyer, S. A. de Smith from the London School of Economics, and three political scientists, Arthur MacMahon of Columbia University, A. H. Birch from Hull University, and myself. A group of a dozen ‘local specialists’ drawn mainly from E.A.C.S.O. and from the economists, lawyers, and political scientists at the University Colleges in East Africa also presented papers and played a significant role in the discussions. The total number of participants, including 22 observers, amounted to over 90.

This Survey was requested at an early session of the U.N. Economic Commission for Africa, but it has not proved possible to prepare it until now because of the shortage ofstaff available for research work and the paucity of information. An earlier Survey was prepared in the U.N. Headquarters, on the basis of the material available there—The Economic Development of Africa since 1950— but it took the story only up to 1956, and thus did not cover the main changes at, and after, the achievement of political independence.

Political, social, and economic development take place in space as well as time, but all too often they are written about and studied as though they existed at a point, which, it will be recalled, has position and no magnitude. In a sense, all social scientists are historians, and use the temporal dimension as a framework within which to examine the political, social, and economic behaviour of men. But few feel comfortable trying on the geographer's spatial shoes, and, beyond an occasional location map, hesitate to examine the developments in the dimension that is his particular concern. Part of the trouble, of course, is that the map imposes a stricter discipline upon us than we care to admit: to map anything beyond the merely trivial we have to measure it, while fuzzy but intuitively valid ideas such as economic development, political power, and social integration make us coy, or evoke surprisingly emotional responses that such things are incapable of being measured in any meaningful fashion. But, whether we like it or not, developments of all kinds do take place in space; what, then, can the geographer, with his spatial perspective, contribute to our knowledge of these things?