In the early 1960s pan-Africanism was thought by many scholars and leaders of government to be the force which would bring political harmony coupled with rapid economic development. During the last decade a number of regional and sub-regional organisations were developed as first steps towards greater African unity. In English- speaking Africa the East African Community formed by Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda exemplified, with all its frustrations and aspirations, this type of grouping. In French-speaking Africa the limited success of the Union douanière et économique de l'Afrique central, its successor the Union des états d'Afrique centrale, and the Union douanière de l'Afrique occidentale has raised serious questions of whether these organisations, at this point in history, can attain their goals of regional economic integration and development.

This article is based on the assumption that there are worldwide trends towards the more humane treatment of prisoners which have as their principal objective the reform of criminals. These trends are determined by the societies that have evolved them; they trends are not therefore characterised by African aims and they do not express themselves in African forms. So the possibilites of purely African innovation are limited.

The first substantive point raised in the 1972 communiqué issued by Premier Chou En-Lai and President Richard Nixon at the conclusion of their meetings in Peking, was that ‘extensive, earnest and frank discussions were held… on the normalisation of relations' between their two countries.1 In other words, after more than 20 years of non-recognition and hostility, it was agreed to accept areas of disagreement, and to move towards co-operation in matters of mutual interest. There was an implicit acknowledgement of the futility of efforts, either to initiate instant revolution, or to prevent basic changes inside the nation-state system, and of the inevitable need to work within the realities of international power.

A full decade of African administration by Africans has gone by. It will soon be time to examine their achievements and to formulate and explore a number of new questions. What was Africanisation all about? Was it anything more than a localisation of personnel? Have Whitehall attitudes been replaced by Nigerian or Tanzanian, or even African attitudes? Has a newly shaped philosophy of public administration emerged?

The 19605 can be justly described as the decade of great expectations about the developmental potential of education. It started with the historic 1960 Ashby report on education in Nigeria,1 and the equally widely quoted 1961 Addis Ababa conference of African ministers of education; 2 before it expired, over 40 manpower-education plans had been published, not to mention a host of commissions of inquiry and academic studies. In the first five years alone, school enrolment in Africa rose by almost a half; the average proportion of the government budget spent on education jumped from one seventh to over one sixth— the highest for any continent except North America— and the proportion of national income devoted to education increased from 3 per cent to 43 per cent, exceeded only by Europe.3 These rates of growth were almost certainly sustained in the second half of the decade.4

The Generalized System of Preference is composed of various schemes under which donor countries, or regions, offer non-reciprocal and general tariff reductions on the imports of semi-manufactured and manufactured goods from developing countries. The G.S.P. differs from preferences previously granted to African countries by European nations in two ways: first, the preferences granted relate to a broad range of articles rather than relating to specific primary commodities; and secondly, they are non-reciprocal and do not bind developing countries to grant trade preferences on selected imported goods in order to receive them on some of the commodities and food-stuffs that they export.

Botswana, a country of some 648,000 people unevenly distributed over more than 600,000 square kilometres, is an extremely poor nation whose estimated income per capita is less than $100 per annum. It is land-locked and dependent upon transport routes through neighbouring South Africa and Rhodesia. Frequent droughts cause major losses in Botswana's cattle herds, whose meat provides the country with its major export earnings. According to the 1964 census, almost 228,000 of the 250,000 workers were in agriculture, forestry, hunting, and fishing, and a 1967–8 survey found only 28,148 in salaried employment. During 1967 an additional 22,735 Batswana were working in the mines of South Africa. Of the present number of jobs (estimated at 2,000) requiring the minimum educational standard of School Certificate, less than one-quarter are currently filled by Botswana citizens. In 1967 some 258 students – 55 per cent of those who sat for the examination – received the Junior Certificate (after three years of secondary education) and 66 students - 80 per cent of those who sat – received the Cambridge School Certificate (after five years of secondary education).

The Institute of Development Studies organised an international conference on this topic at the University of Sussex, Brighton, from 12 to 16 September 1971. A background paper prepared by the convenors, Richard Jolly and Rita Cruise O'Brien, outlined the purpose as follows:

Urban unemployment in Africa is a theme on which much has been written in recent years but which is still ‘in fashion’ and of considerable importance to a broad range of scholars and policy makers…there is a great risk of dissipating one's efforts over that whole field. In planning this conference, we have tried therefore to be guided by three dominant principles: (a) to restrict the topics for discussion so as to focus on what seem to us important issues, on which further understanding could be generated by a bout of concentrated thought, analysis of data and discussion; (b) to invite a limited number of people engaged in current research or involved on the spot with investigation or policy-making; (c) to request authors of papers to start at what might be called the current conventional wisdom among specialists and to build their analysis from there… It will be assumed that persons attending the conference are generally in touch with recent literature on the subject.

Controversy continues as to the effectiveness of foreign aid and hence whether it is a suitable activity for public financing. Frequently the discussion is in general terms, and country studies are uncommon. Thus, Dr Ozay Mehmet's appraisal of the ‘Effectiveness of Foreign Aid- the case of Somalia’, in this Journal, IX, I, May 1975, pp. 35–47, is Very welcome, particularly since lessons from Somalia's experience are probably applicable elsewhere in Africa. Nevertheless, some of his conclusions mislead on important and au courant issues. Hopefully this commentary will help set the record straight.

Even now, in the last third of the twentieth century, the nineteenth-century dual economy still exists, in effect if no longer in name, over much of the developing world. Although nationally independent — in Latin America for the past 100 years, and now in Africa and Asia — many of the developing nations are still economically dominated by their past colonial masters.

A recent article in this Journal, X, I, May 1972, by Robert E. Miller and Peter R. Carter on ‘A Cost-Benefit Analysis of Liberia’, examined the general cost pattern inherent in concession agreements based upon her ‘Open-Door Policy’, and noted that ‘officials of the Government of Liberia who are responsible for negotiating foreign concessionaire agreements… now recognise this pattern and hopefully plan better bargains in the future’. I wish to focus attention on Liberia's external debts, a particular cost largely resulting from that policy.

As a member of the franc zone, the devaluation of the Ivory Coast currency – the C.F.A. franc – was automatic upon the French devaluation of August 1969. The purpose of this short article is to analyse the implications and consequences of the French action for the Ivory Coast, in the hope that this will throw some light on the pros and cons of such a centre–periphery monetary union.

Most of the co-operative societies registered up to s 964, the year of Zambia's constitutional independence, were producer marketing organisations. By that date, 220 societies of all types were on the official register, claiming a total of 43,697 members and a paid-up share capital of K1.7 million.1

After independence the ruling United National Independence Party made it clear that the majority of Zambians should be involved more fully in economic and social development than they had been hitherto. Co-operative organisation was seen as a strategic way of bringing more Africans into industry, commerce, and non-subsistence farming; ten or more people could apply for registration as a society, and thus qualify for financial assistance from the Government. President Kaunda launched this ‘revitalised’ postindependence co-operative movement personally in January 1965, and called on the unemployed to put their various skills to work on planned agricultural and construction projects: ‘The money is there and the know-how…You an form these co-operative societies anywhere in Zambia and we shall assist you in getting on’.2 He specifically encouraged the formation of vegetable, egg, beef, milk, and road-making co-operatives.

One of the most important issues of political development and nation building in Africa is national integration. One major political institution which the new nations have employed in the pursuit of this goal is the political party. Ironically and unfortunately, political parties stand for division and cleavages. Thus as Seymour Lipset and Stein Rokkan have noted, in Cleavage Structures, Party Systems, and Voter Alignment: an introduction (Glencoe, 1967), ‘“Party” throughout the history of western government stood for division [my italics], conflict, opposition within a body polity. “Party” is etymologically derived from “part” and since it first appeared in political discourse in the late Middle Ages has always retained this reference to one set of elements in competition or in controversy with another set of elements within some unified whole’ (p. 3). These indeed have been the main characteristics of political parties in most parts of Africa. That is, most of them are fragmentary, and thus contribute to national disintegration rather than fostering national integration. In other words, many political parties in most African nations have not functioned efficiently for the good of their respective countries.

Opening the working conference entitled ‘Towards Comprehesive Development in Zululand’, which was held in Durban, from 9–11 February 1972, Chief Gatsha Buthelezi, Chief Executive Officer of the Zulu Territorial Authority, told the 100 delegates that the subject of their discussions was more correctly called KwaZulu. And the map specially prepared by Alan Best (Boston) reminded them that this comprised at present no fewer than 29 areas scattered through the length and breadth of Natal, see p. 302. ‘These ghetto areas’, said the Chief, ‘are overdue for some attention whether one wants to see them as part of the rest of South Africa or as independent states.’

In his recent article on ‘The Uganda Coup – class action by the military’ in this Journal, x, 1, May 1972, Dr Michael F. Lofchie points to two apparent paradoxes in the military takeover: Why did the army move against a regime to which it had previously been loyal? And why, in doing so, did it ally itself with the Ganda ‘civil service and coffee growing elite’ towards which it had shown nothing but hostility in the past? The only adequate explanation, we are told, is that these privileged groups were drawn together by a determination to defend their status against the threat implicit in President Obote's commitment to socialism. Confronted by egalitarian pressures they discovered a basis for common action in a class interest which transcended tribal rivalries.

Did Dr Robert Tignor in this recent article on ‘Colonial Chiefs in Chiefless Societies’ in this Journal, IX, 3, October 1971, not overstate the contribution of certain African chiefs ‘in forcing the pace of social change’?

My aim is to answer this question briefly as far as Ibo chiefs are concerned. It has been argued that they helped with the introduction of taxation, especially since this was not traditional. But the historical records show that most of them were actually opposed to its introduction,1 and that they were not an effective factor in its collection until after the reorganisation of the Native Authority system in the South-Eastern Provinces in the 1930s.2