After many years of poverty and neglect, Mali is today faced with a unique opportunity to develop its rural economy. The rapid expansion of demand for beef in some of the coastal regions of West Africa has recently caught up with the available supply from the interior, and cattle prices have increased dramatically. This price rise has been accentuated by the effects of recent drought which seriously depleted the herds. Consequently, there is enormous incentive for interior regions to find new ways of increasing production which, at the same time, take pressure off their overburdened range-lands. Mali is fortunate in having a resource endowment which has considerable potential in this respect.

Most attempts to explain the slowness and perversity of change in Southern Africa are deficient because not enough attention is paid to regional interactions. This review suggests that it is time to correct the over-concentration on the national or global relations of this international sub-system by the adoption of an intermediate level of analysis. We cannot understand the coexistence of confrontation and co-operation in Southern Africa without an examination of the patterns of dependence and interdependence among its black- and white-ruled states. The adoption of a regional approach here is particularly promising and suggestive as it indicates the need to revise the established conceptual framework for the study of subordinate state systems.

This article represents an attempt to bring together and survey the diverse techniques devised by individual scholars and institutions for the purpose of measuring comparative economic development. Any merits it therefore possesses must rest in its clarifications rather than in its inspirations. However, so many techniques exist, founded upon so many theoretical bases, that a concise overview would appear to be justified.

The past five years have seen a dramatic increase in the attention paid to the African military by scholars, journalists, and policy-makers. This trend is the direct result of the orgy of coup d'états, beginning in 1965, which have toppled governments of all political hues in every major region except white-dominated Southern Africa. As this article is written, well over one-third of the O.A.U.'s membership is under military rule, and there is little reason to believe that army officers will lose interest or effectiveness in the political arena.

An idea which has recently gained acceptance is that peasant cultivators do in fact act in an economically ‘rational’ manner to maximise profits. It can be shown that ‘rational’ economic behaviour is characteristic of traders also. But not all the shibboleths associated with beliefs to the contrary have been swept away. In a well-known textbook on economic development Everett Hagen stated that, in order to make the shift from ‘bazaar’ to ‘fixed- price’ retailing, traders ‘must adopt a set of techniques and risks new to [them] ‘2 Here it will be evident that some of the business techniques long familiar to Accra market women have equal utility for petty retailing or wholesale dealing based on a fixed place of business. The difference between ‘bazaar’ and ‘fixed-price’ retailing is not clearly definable in terms of techniques employed. Also, education in Ghana in its present form does not ‘increase the ability of [traders] to receive information concerning improved methods and improved opportunities’, as Hagen would have it.3 Rather, the disadvantages of illiteracy are more than offset by techniques imbued by a long-established apprenticeship system for women traders.

The culture of a country, or a society within it, provides the context for education. The planning of education should therefore start with a consideration of the cultural background, and this is especially true of those countries in Africa which are predominantly Islamic. However, when an attempt is made to follow this line of approach, the complexity of the situation soon becomes apparent; and it is necessary to bear in mind several themes that constantly arise.

The English-speaking independent countries of Central and Southern Africa, with widely different economies and natural resources, face at this stage in their development very similar manpower and educational problems. Shortages of skilled technical workers are still acute in Botswana, Lesotho, Swaziland, Zambia, and Malawi; and shortages of educated people, particularly those with professional or degree-level qualifications, are obvious. Most of the countries in this region, therefore, are still at a stage where the output from schools and universities has not yet been sufficient to localise many skilled posts, particularly those in the private sector. So although unemployment is beginning to appear at the junior secondary levels, the crucial questions as seen both by ministries of education and by planning units still tend to revolve around the central dilemma of ‘How fast ought we to expand?’ In this sense the priorities are different from many countries further north in Africa where surpluses of secondary and higher educated workers have been apparent for some time.

The creation of an international secretariat is ‘the innovation that transforms a series of conferences into an organization’1 The signing of the Charter of the Organisation of African Unity by representatives of 30 independent states in the early hours of 26 May 1963 at Addis Ababa was certainly intended to transform a multiple series of international conferences—including rival meetings of the ‘Monrovia’ and ‘Casablanca’ states in particular—into a permanent regional organisation whose membership embraced all independent African states. To this end the O.A.U. Charter provided for a General Secretariat, to be directed by an Administrative Secretary-General and one or more Assistant Secretaries-General.

Post-World War II French colonial reforms, most notably those of the 1956 loi-cadre, began the process of decentralising political authority to the territorial components of the Fédération d'Afrique occidentale française (A.O.F.),1 and the Fédération d'Afrique equatoriale française (A.E.F.).2 By 1958 most of these French colonies had become autonomous Republics within the Communauté franco-africaine. Although only Guinea had opted for complete political independence in the Gaullist referendum held that year, pressures were clearly mounting in that direction for other members of the now defunct Federations.

The emergence of a literature in English in Nigeria is usually described as a rapid post-war phenomenon, an unexpected flowering of creative energy which took scarcely more than two decades to produce rich, ripe fruit. According to most published reports, this literature was born suddenly in 1952 out of the pregnant thumb of Amos Tutuola; was nursed through a wobbly infancy by Cyprian Ekwensi, T. M. Aluko, and Onuora Nzekwu; was guided through a magnificent adolescence by Chinua Achebe, Wole Soyinka, J. P. Clark, Christopher Okigbo, and their numerous university-trained followers; was tested by a civil war which left several casualties but no diminution of the will to write; and was later restored to normal prolificacy by the assiduous application of old and new talents.

As towns, industries, agricultural developments, and the green revolution come to Africa, social theorists are beginning to write about the emergence of a peasant class. In addition, they are relating the concept of a peasantry to the growing patterns of capitalism and socialism which are to be found throughout the continent, albeit for the most part asserting that contemporary social systems are built on tribal rather than feudal foundations. What is remarkable from this perspective is that as Africanists turn their attention to these issues, and discuss rigorous conceptual problems regarding the terms ‘peasant’ and ‘feudal’, they continue to be almost unaware of Ethiopia.

In the past decade Africa has experienced a dramatic decrease in the number of national democratic institutions. Parliaments have not met, parties have declined or been outlawed, and elections have not been held in many states. The situation appears to be similar at the local level. Commenting on this state of affairs, Fred G. Burke observed in 1969: ‘One wonders whether there is to be any future for democratic local government in Africa. One might also wonder whether there should be any future.’2

Population mobility in its various forms has long been recognised as a major determinant of social and economic policies in many transitional, which is the stage in a country's economic development that has been defined by W. W. Rostow as the ‘transitional era when a society prepares itself – or is prepared by external forces – for sustained growth’1 Although much has been published about population migration in Africa, little research has been conducted into the nature and frequency of periodic visits by rural inhabitants to the main urban centres. These journeys are of particular interest to those who are engaged in the physical planning of rural settlements as they provide a clue to the identification of those amenities and services that may be required in the future, as well as the level of demands upon the local transportation system.

Jobs and their location provide the key to an understanding of the contemporary thrust of South Africa's ‘separate development’ policy. Within the country's present space economy, dominated by the four metropolitan complexes of the Southern Transvaal, Cape Town, Durban, and Port Elizabeth, this policy seeks to mould a new geography of employment opportunity for the blacks of South Arica. In this process, public policy-makers are attempting to decentralise some economic activities, particularly in the manufacturing sector, away from the nation's metropolitan hubs, and concomitantly to promote new work centres in, or on the borders of, the designated ‘Bantu Homelands’. The current emphasis in the Republic is upon the generation of industrial employment for Africans at selected sites in these Homelands. This short note explores the immediate problems and long-term prospects of this policy with reference to the Bophutatswana growth point of Babelegi.

In March 1961 the Democratic Party won the national elections in Uganda largely because it captured o of the 21 seats within the Kingdom of Buganda. The Buganda Government had ordered a boycott of the elections, because neither the British administration nor the African political parties would guarantee Buganda's future position within Uganda, and all but three per cent of the electorate stayed away from the polls. The Democratic Party took office despised within Buganda because it had defied the Kabaka, and feared by his Protestant advisers because of its predominantly Catholic support.