Two factors govern the acquisitions policy of West Africana in Birmingham University Library: the teaching and research programmes of the Centre of West African Studies, and participation in the SCOLMA area specialisation scheme.
The Centre of West African Studies was set up in 1963, in the words of its Director, Professor J. D. Fage, ‘as the happy coincidence between thinking in the University…and the University Grants Committee’. Begun and maintained as an interdisciplinary centre, and supported by earmarked Treasury grants as recommended by the Hayter Report in 1961, it has developed during its first ten years into one of the main centres of African studies in the United Kingdom. The interests of its members have always been centred on Nigeria, Ghana and Sierra Leone, with a certain amount of research interest in the French-speaking areas also.