Organised and sponsored by U.N.E.S.C.O., this seminar brought together, perhaps for the first time, experts and others interested in family planning, sociology, and mass communication. Delegates at the seminar did not represent their countries; rather they represented fields of interest. Medical practitioners, family planning workers, mass media experts, and sociologists came from many countries—India, Japan, Chile, Argentina, Ghana, Pakistan, Korea, Algeria, Great Britain, Nigeria, France, and the U.S.A. There were also observers from the United Nations and a number of its agencies.

F.A.O.'s Indicative World Plan for Agricultural Development is an effort to analyse the major problems which will confront agriculture in the developing countries in the 1970s and early 1980s, and to suggest the most important ways in which national and international action can solve them.

Faced with declining earnings from the export of agricultural products, with rising population, and with an urgent need for accelerated economic growth and structural change, many African countries are today searching for new channels through which they can supplement their foreign-exchange earnings. One source of rapidly growing importance is tourism, which already plays a decisive role in the economic development of some countries.

This conference was held at Makerere University College under the auspices of the World Order Models Project, in association with the World Law Fund. Those who presented papers came from Canada, Congo-Kinshasa, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Nigeria, Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda, U.S.A., Zambia, the East African Community, and the U.N. Economic Commission for Africa. Distinguished visitors included Professor W. Abraham, the Ghanaian philosopher, and the noted African poet, Okor p'Bitek, who both came from the United States.

This two-day conference, sponsored by Stanford's Committee on African Studies, was possibly the first gathering of its kind outside Liberia since the American Colonisation Society ceased sending emigrants to the West African Republic at the turn of the century. It was organised by Dr Martin Lowenkopf, and was attended by over 40 social scientists, including six Liberians at present studying in the United States.

As the economic development of a country occurs, and its income per capita rises, an economic transformation takes place. The importance of both production and employment in agriculture, as proportions of total production and total employment, declines. This structural transformation of the less-developed economy from one dominated by agriculture to one dominated by non-agriculture has occurred in every country which has experienced a sustained rise in income per capita. Because the transformation has occurred in every successful development effort so far, we have reason to suspect that structural transformation is a concomitant of economic development, and will occur in the future as the less-developed countries experience economic development.

About one hundred members of the A.S.A., predominantly from British universities, assembled at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, for a full day's discussion of some two dozen papers and notes concerning current research on Southern Africa. The papers came from Afrikaans and English-language universities of South Africa, as well as from those of the United Kingdom.

At the outset of the 1970s it is estimated that there are upwards of one million refugees in Africa, with about equal numbers from independent African states, and from non-self-governing and minority-ruled states. The largest single group are the Angolan refugees in Congo-Kinshasa, now estimated to number 400,000. Other large groups of refugees are from Rwanda, Sudan, and Guinea-Bissau. There are also smaller groups from Congo-Kinshasa, Ethiopia, and Zambia, as well as from Mozambique, South Africa, Namibia, and Rhodesia.

It would be naïve to suppose that any one variable could ensure the success of planned change. The factors contributing to failure and success are numerous, and the possible interrelations between them immensely complex. The acceptability of the innovator is therefore no more than a small part of the success of a development project. But, if the analysis of one specific example of this single factor allows a better understanding of one necessary condition of change, it will also increase the possibility of control over one potential area of failure.

The eighth inter-African public administration seminar, sponsored jointly by the Government of Liberia and the Ford Foundation, was attended by 37 leading civil servants from English-speaking Africa, as well as by observers from I.D.E.P., C.A.F.R.A.D., and U.N. E.C.A.

President Tubman delivered the keynote address, in which he recognised the need for regional economic co-operation, urged the investigation of the problems and difficulties on the way, and stressed the essential role of civil servants in bringing about such co-operation. In the discussion that followed many participants expressed the view that goals and objectives must be denned as carefully and realistically as possible if both short- and long-term results are to be achieved. It would also be important to take into account the current level of development in African countries.

Lagos, the capital of Nigeria since 1914, was in 1954 declared Federal Territory under the direct administration of the central Government, in order to satisfy demands that it should not, like some other federal capitals, be controlled by any of the constituent units. But, when new States were created in 1967, this Federal Territory was merged with neighbouring areas to become Lagos State, with headquarters in Lagos, which was retained as the Federal capital. This development raises again the issue of protecting Nigeria's capital from control by any of the constituent units of the Federation; should this be done by declaring Lagos Federal Territory again? or by choosing another site? These questions involve a consideration of the process by which Lagos was chosen as the Federal capital, of its effectiveness under present conditions, and of the location of a possible alternative, neutral capital of Nigeria.

Few socio-economic problems in tropical Africa evoke greater concern than that of providing youth with training in skills and profitable opportunities for work. The increasing number of unemployed young people in towns and cities doesn't make sense, particularly when intensified development is being hoped and planned for. Everyone recognises the urgent need to look into this paradox, to diagnose the problem in its local variations, and to do something about it. Rising population and labour force, the impact of wide-spread primary education, heightened expectation, migration to cities, the low labour absorption of modern and semi-modern establishments, falling productivity in some rural areas—these are some of the elements involved.

Much of the literature, scholarly and journalistic, about certain aspects of the United Nations operation in the Congo has been marked by the twin short. comings of a lack of authentic information on the one hand and the ignoring of such information, even where it is readily available, on the other.

There is not much that can be done for the time being about the lack of information, especially in view of the confidential relationship of the United Nations Secretariat with Member States, which inevitably means that the Secretary-General's position often to some extent goes by default before public opinion. This is a pity, but the Secretariat obviously could not operate if governments could not rely on its discretion, which they are entitled to take for granted.

For some time I have been trying to study the origins of the customary practice of dowry in East Africa. There are, as one can imagine, tremendous variations in the details of traditional procedures from one tribe to another. But in spite of these variants there is one common characteristic: the fact that money, goods, manual labour, or symbolic articles are provided by the bridegroom (or his family) and pass into the hands of the father of the bride. The purpose of my research has been to discover the factors which have motivated the transaction to take place in this particular way.