Chinese involvement in Africa may be conveniently dated from the Bandung conference of April 1955, which marked the initiation of a policy of Chinese Communist co-operation with the states of Afro-Asia. Inasmuch as the movement in Africa which resulted in the independence of many states in the next decade had hardly begun at that time, the most significant African contact made by China at Bandung was with President Nasser. The development of contacts between the two states led Egypt in May 1956 to become the first African country to give its official recognition to the Chinese People's Republic (C.P.R.). Thereafter the Suez crisis served to bring the two countries still closer together.

Changes in Africa rarely go by halves – some developments have been spectacularly successful, such as education, but the failures have also been notable, particularly the lack of expansion in employment. In the words of a recent survey: ‘The most disturbing feature of the employment situation in Africa in recent years has been that the absolute level of wage employment has changed so little, despite high capital investment and the rapid growth of the public sector.’1 Table I shows an accurate and general picture of the problem as it confronts Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, and Zambia; this article is concerned to examine some of the dimensions, both economic and political, of its solution.

While independence in West Africa focused academic attention on political parties, the proliferation of military régimes in the late 1960s– by 1970, seven West African countries had experienced military rule — brought two other institutions into prominence: the military and civil bureaucracies. This article seeks to throw some light on the place of the civil bureaucracy in Senegal through a study of the role of bureaucrats in the country's political process.

The connection between economic growth and population growth has been considerably played down by economists in the last hundred years, whereas eighteenth- and nineteenth-century economists seldom discussed development without considering the effect of population growth. The earlier writers were not unanimous – as they are not today – on the optimum size and rate of growth of population and its effect on the gross national product per capita.

Recent years have witnessed a rebirth of interest in the study of local government (or local political systems, depending on one's theoretical orientation). This has been especially true among political Scientists seeking to develop new approaches more readily applicable to the political systems of the so-called emerging nations. It has become apparent to an increasing number of research workers that grandiose macro-theory of the Almond variety, while impressive on paper, may be of very little use in the field.1 Thus an attempt is now being made to return to the micro-level in order to gain greater conceptual clarity, and an understanding of behaviour in political situations. Unfortunately much of the new thrust to develop micro-level theory has been hampered by the continuing use of old, and at least partially outdated, tools, or what I have chosen to call (perhaps unjustifiably) ‘the public-administration approach’.

In spite of the predilections of some development economists, the spate of programmes for industrialisation in develop countries – some times supported or sponsored by technologically advanced countries and international organisations – attests to the current widespread belief that industrialisation is a sine qua non for rapid economic growth of most developing countries. However, unlike Japan's industrialisation, which was achieved mostly by internal reorganisation and the acquisition of knowledge and techniques from abroad, Nigeria's industrial progress has so far been charted largely by foreign capital and expertise, so that planners, although imbued with a religious faith in industrialisation, begin to entertain fears about the country's over-dependence on external sources of capital, high-level manpower, and enterprise.1 These fears found expression in the National Development Plan, 1962–68, thus:

This is a brief, preliminary assessment of two significant developments in the United States — the establishment of the Africa Research Group in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and the publication of Ufahamu, the Journal of the African Activist Association, at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Seven years have passed since the overthrow of the independent Arab government of Zanzibar on 12 January 1964, and the installation of a revolutionary African government. The goals of the revolution at that time were, summarily stated: (i) African majority rule, to be implemented through a one-party system; (ii) the nationalisation of the land and the abolition of what were deemed to be the capitalist, exploitative classes; and (iii) an end to racial discrimination and favouritism, which, in practice, was to mean easier African access to jobs, schools, medical treatment, and land ownership — see Zanzibar Government, 1964–1967: We Have Completed Three Tears: the Fruits of the Revolution in the Islands (Zanzibar, 1967), pp. iii-vi.

This case history, based on fieldwork carried out in 1968, traces the development of two governing élites in the provincial town of Lira, which is located in northern Uganda and has a population of about 5,000 people. It is the administrative and commercial centre for the 353,000 people, primarily members of the Lango tribe, who live in Lango District. The town's population is about 73 per cent African (80 per cent of them Langi), 23 per cent Asian (Indian, Pakistani, and Goan) and 2 per cent European. In 1968 it was the ‘home town’ of the President of Uganda, where the interrelations between local, regional, and national systems of government were particularly transparent.

More and more countries wish to become modernised. Some have less and want more; others have more and are willing to help. Under these conditions, putting ‘western’ aid to work for development should be easy. But, evidently, it has not been. A nation — like an individual — that both recognises the need for help and strives to maintain an identity, finds it difficult to accept foreign aid without reservation. The questions, ‘Who am I?’ and ‘Where am I going?’, concerning national identity and national goals, are still serious issues in development.

This short article has two themes: it is prompted first by a feeling that many African countries, in their natural impatience for maximum economic development in the shortest possible time, are in some danger of getting their strategy and priorities not quite right in regard to the rural—urban, agricultural—industrial balance. More specifically, a plea is made for greater attention being given to traditional food farming (for subsistence or cash), which has been somewhat neglected in research, in spite of the fact that it must inevitably continue for a long time to support increasing numbers.