Problems created by boundaries are among the more frequent causes of war, and North and West Africa has some of the strangest boundary problems in the world.1 Unlike many of the world's borders, the boundaries here are not the walls and moats of history, natural defence lines whose traces mark the military conflicts and diplomatic compromises of the nation's past. The only exceptions are one-sided and even ironic: the treaty of Lalla Maghnia of 18 March 1845 defined 100 miles of the Algero-Moroccan border after the Moroccan defeat by France at Isly, and the line dividing Algeria from Mali and Niger was the result of an agreement in 1905 separating French military explorers in North Africa from rival French military explorers in West Africa. There is therefore none of the legitimacy of national history associated with the boundary lines. This has its advantages and disadvantages: the might of conquest and the right of diplomacy have not sanctified the borders, but the Schleswigs and the Alsace-Lorraines are not present either.

The monetary evolution in the less developed countries in recent years has led to renewed interest in the functions of financial institutions, particularly in the potential contribution of commercial banks to economic growth. Since many of the developing countries have inherited banks and banking techniques from highly industrialised countries in Europe the question has been asked whether these institutions are capable of performing adequately the varied functions that the growth-conscious new nations now expect of them.

There are three basic contradictions in the Nigerian political system. They may be stated briefly at the outset. First, the machinery of government is basically regionalised, but the party machinery—the organisation of the masses—retains a strong trans-regional and anti-regional tendency. Secondly, the main opposition party has relied upon the support of a class-conscious regional power group in its drive against the system of regional power. Depending upon a regional section of the political class to effect a shift in the class content of power, it was really asking that section to commit suicide. This contradiction produced a crisis in the Western Region which might easily be repeated elsewhere. Thirdly, the constitutional allocation of power is inconsistent with the real distribution of power in society. The constitution gives dominant power to the numerical majority—i.e., under existing conditions, to the north—but the real distribution of power is determined by technological development, in which respect the south is superior.

The systematic investigation of corruption is overdue. There are three main types of literature in English on the subject: historical studies of corrupt practice in Britain; inquisitional studies, mainly of the U.S.A. and the English-speaking West African and Asian countries; and sociological studies which deal with corruption incidentally. So far as I know no general study in English has appeared.1 One reason for this seems to be a widespread feeling that the facts cannot be discovered, or that if they can, they cannot be proved, or that if they can be proved, the proof cannot be published. All these notions seem dubious. There are nearly always sources of information, some of them—such as court records—systematic in their way, and some of them very circumstantial (like privileged parliamentary debates). Many of the people involved are quite willing to talk. And commissions of enquiry have published large amounts of evidence, obtained by unusual powers of compulsion.

The problem of African advancement has an essentially political side. Since the discussion here is concerned with the overtly economic aspects of localisation, specific mention must be made at the outset of its political implications, especially of the possibility of conflict between economic and political aims. For example, it may well happen that at a given stage of economic development, a country would maximise its rate of economic growth by leaning heavily on imports of capital and skilled personnel, but that this policy is unacceptable on political grounds. Under these circumstances, the country's leaders must decide whether to subordinate economic to political welfare, or vice versa. Economic analysis is not able to offer any guidance on how this decision should be made: except to ensure that if political considerations are to be regarded as paramount, the full economic cost of a politically-oriented decision is known and appreciated.

Since 1950, the rise of African national movements and the attainment of independence has been paralleled by an equally rapid growth in the number and scope of national development plans. Such a plan is viewed by almost all African states as one of the standard attributes of sovereignty.1

True, economic planning preceded independence. Indeed Ghana (then the Gold Coast) had its first, 10-year economic plan in 1919, and the British adoption of colonial economic development planning as a desired standard policy dates back to 1939–40. However, the rapid postwar surge of colonial public expenditure plans was closely related to attempts first to counter the popularity of the nationalist movements and later to strengthen the economic infrastructure during the terminal colonial phrase prior to independence.2

This Project was initiated two years ago with three main objectives: (i) fundamentally, to carry out a coherent set of applied research studies of important economic development problems of the East African countries; (ii) to contribute East African readings and research experience to university teaching of economics; and (iii) to assist the East African Governments in using economic research for development planning. Organisationally, the Project is simply a group of economists working on related topics under the leadership of the director, Professor P. G. Clark. The group forms the economics section of the East African Institute of Social Research (which has similar sections for sociology and anthropology and for political science); the Institute in turn is the social sciences research department of Makerere University College. The four-year project is now in mid-course, and it can be fairly said that at least some progress has been made toward all three objectives.

This Institute is one of those rare projects which both look good on paper and, once initiated, far exceed the hopes of their originators. Starting in Nairobi in October 1963, in a single office, with the publication of a journal and the sponsorship of seminars, it today has five separate departments, all of which are growing rapidly.

The Institute is the result of a meeting held in Berlin in early 1963 between representatives of foundations and a group of prominent East Africans, including Tom Mboya, who wished to establish a private organisation which could serve as a discussion forum on problems of regional public interest. From this idea emerged the East African Institute of Social and Cultural Affairs, which is fortunate to have as its patrons President Jomo Kenyatta of Kenya, President Julius Nyerere of Tanzania, and Dr Milton Obote, Prime Minister of Uganda.

I.N.A.D.E.S. is a research and training institute run by a number of Jesuit Fathers presently depending on the Province of Paris. It was established three years ago at Abidjan; its activities are by no means restricted to the Ivory Coast, but are directed towards the whole of black Africa and Madagascar, although priority is in fact given to the francophone countries.

The Institute now employs eight Fathers in various capacities, according to their respective skills. They are Fr Claude Pairault (director), Fr Albert Hanrion (administrator), Fr Pierre Souillac (executive secretary), Fr Jean- Louis Fyot (deputy-director), and Fathers Xavier Baronnet and Marcel Forey, with Fr René Bureau due later this year. At the moment the team has seven full-time assistants and secretaries.

The Transcription Centre opened in January 1962 with the primary object of designing and making cultural programmes on tape for African radio stations. It was started by Dennis Duerden because he felt that there was room for a new kind of radio service in which there would be greater opportunity for the contact and interchange of ideas between artists, writers, musicians, actors, and critics than is usually afforded by the large broadcasting organisations. It set out to be a cultural centre with a reading room and an informal atmosphere for discussion, to which recording studios were subordinate. From the beginning it worked closely with the Institute of Contemporary Arts (I.C.A.), cultural bodies, and art galleries in Britain and Africa, and was stimulated by constant visitors bringing new ideas and information from many parts of the world. It is a non-profit-making organisation supported by a direct grant from the Farfield Foundation.

The educational problems in developing countries are immense. Not least is the shortage of teachers. This shortage is felt—in Africa certainly—not only in the schools but also in the adult education field. Can the developing countries afford to wait wishfully, in the belief that out of the womb of time a natural solution will one day emerge in the shape of enough teachers to satisfy the enormous demand?

From the very outset, the Lusaka conference on mass media was convinced that the answer to this question is an emphatic no; that the problem of adult education must be solved, not shelved—and that a serious beginning must be made now. The task of the conference was to see how the resources of the mass media could be harnessed in an all-out effort to wipe out ignorance and illiteracy. The conference was short and fruitful, its recommendations practical and to the point.

Robert Delavignette was the chairman for this one-day colloquium organised by the Centre de hautes études administratives sur l'Afrique et l'Asie modernes (C.H.E.A.M.), on ‘The Psychology of the Elites of Black Africa’. There were some 60 participants, including many French specialists on Africa, and African teachers, journalists, and intellectuals. Four papers were discussed, each of which had been distributed to the audience in advance, only a brief synopsis being given at the colloquium to introduce the discussion. Between them they touched on a wide variety of problems connected with the psychology of the élite.

By 1967, when the water level reaches its maximum, the Volta dam will have created one of the largest man-made lakes in the world, thereby completing a scheme which has fascinated government officials, business men, and politicians since the early years of the century. The purpose of the symposium, which was sponsored jointly by the Volta River Authority and the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, was to consider the progress made so far on one aspect of this complex project, namely the resettlement programme. Building the Volta dam has meant flooding some 3,275 square miles, or approximately 4 per cent of Ghana's land surface. In human terms it has meant disrupting the lives of more than 80,000 people, whose homes are being flooded by the rising waters of the Volta lake. The Volta River Authority has been charged with the responsibility of resettling these displaced persons, taking as its guiding principle the ruling laid down by President Nkrumah that ‘nobody should be worse off than before’. Ultimately, of course, the hope is that living standards will be improved very considerably.

The pace of development in Africa makes it necessary for traditional administrative structures, at all levels, to be constantly adjusted and adapted to meet fresh needs. The main objectives of C.A.F.R.A.D. (Centre africain deformation et de recherche administratives pour le développement) are to study these problems, and to encourage and assist African governments and African scholars in doing so.

The Ford Foundation generously provided travelling expenses for 12 law teachers from Basutoland, Ethiopia, Ghana, Liberia, Rhodesia, Sierra Leone, the Sudan, and Tanzania to attend this four-day conference, together with 30 Nigerian participants. It was an attempt, and a successful one, to bridge the gap between law faculties, which revealed many common problems.

The initial meeting produced much agreement concerning the methods of teaching jurisprudence in Africa, a course which has been in some schools a dull and irrelevant exercise for students. No one disputed the value to African students of the classics of jurisprudence, but it was felt that the course should encompass more than a study of legal philosophies developed in other societies. Law students should be acquainted with the data of sociologists, economists, anthropologists, political scientists, and other specialists who have studied African society, and they should be reminded that the legal philosophy of their country cannot ignore the facts discovered by these other disciplines. This philosophy of law will help to determine, and will be partly determined by, the answers given to to such questions as: What is the role of the judge in the one-party state? Does he make law, interpret it, or simply apply it? Or is he only to find the facts in a dispute ? What is the function of law in economic planning, in state management?