The concept ‘integration’, which came into general usage in the social sciences by way of nineteenth-century evolutionary thought, was eagerly seized upon as an heuristic device for the study of new states because it evoked the fundamental notion of making whole or entire by addition or combination. But the concept wears better as a signal of topical concern than as a building block in a rigorous theoretical edifice. The most obvious problem is that the very richness of suggestion embodied in the word ‘integration’ generates promiscuity.

An example of a long-standing arrangement for economic integration in Africa which operates in a very special environment is the case provided by Botswana, Lesotho, and Swaziland (BLS), the former High Commission Territories. Geographically and ethnically these three independent countries—Swaziland shortly to be so—are closely related to the Republic of South Africa. For many years they have had the closest of economic ties with that country. Indeed, for most of their history as separate territories, it was assumed both by Britain and by South Africa that they would ultimately be absorbed within the latter.

About 70 years ago, the Mahdist or Ansār state, in many ways a traditional Muslim government, crumbled under the fire of the Anglotional Egyptian cannons. On the condominium government that followed fell the task of pacifying the country and introducing western concepts of administration. All Sudanese attempts to defy foreign domination had failed completely by 1924. The British, the stronger of the two partners, had the lion's share in shaping the destiny of the country. Towards the end of World War II, the influential and educated Sudanese, like other Africans and Asians, demanded the right of self-determination. In 1946, in preparation for this, a sample of western democracy was introduced in the form of an Advisory Council. This Council, which was restricted to the northern Sudan, was followed two years later by the Legislative Assembly, which had slightly more powers. Although these democratic innovations were quite alien to the country and were introduced at a relatively late date, they were in keeping with traditional institutions. Until recently, the Sudan consisted of a number of tribal units where no classes or social distinctions existed and the tribal chief was no more than the first among equals; the people were therefore not accustomed to autocratic rule.

The urban explosion is one of Africa's outstanding characteristics. Its many facets provoke a multitude of problems in such diverse yet interrelated fields as administrative efficiency, health control, land values and engineering, juvenile and other crime, prostitution, the provision of housing and educational facilities, efficient traffic flow, and much more.

The intellectual and social origins of those modern movements of political and cultural assertion which are allegedly centred on peculiar African circumstances or peculiar African principles of traditional culture—movements which may be conveniently summed up as ‘Africanism’1—are to be sought in a variety of directions. Factors in the historical and social traditions of the continent in distant centuries have been evoked by some inquirers; while others have listed external influences—emanating in the main from Europe or North America, affecting chiefly those few Africans who travelled overseas, and operating only since the middle decades of the last century—which have directly or indirectly encouraged expressions of Africanism within Africa.

A Year has elapsed since the granting of independence to Basutoland and Bechuanaland and, on an academic level at least, there appears to be no slackening of interest in the problems besetting the new states of Lesotho and Botswana and the remaining territory of Swaziland which is due to receive independence in 1968. Each of the books considered here contributes in varying degree to our understanding of their prospects in an environment in which internal stresses combine with external dependence upon a powerful neighbour to limit the choices of their governments in many crucial areas of policy.

A new department has been established at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem as a joint project of the Institute of Asian and African Studies (formerly the Institute of Oriental Studies) and the Eliezer Kaplan School of Economics and Social Sciences.

Simon Fraser University, located in Burnaby, seven miles from the centre of Vancouver, was established under the 1963 Universities Act of British Columbia, and received its first under-graduate and graduate students in September 1965, into the faculties of arts, science, and education.

When Tanzania and Uganda had gained their independence and Kenya was about to gain hers, it was clear that a large number of Africans would be finding themselves placed in positions of considerable responsibility in the public service before they had had the opportunity to acquire any substantial amount of experience in the management of public affairs. Among those who played a prominent part in considering how this problem could best be tackled was the Secretary-General of the East African Common Services Organisation. A. L. Adu had previously served as Commissioner for Africanisation in Ghana and had later been head of the civil service in that country, and he had considerable experience of similar problems in West Africa. He had also been one of the first Africans to attend the Imperial Defence College in the U.K., and had been impressed by the contribution which training of the staff college type could make to the development of administrative skills in those whose experience at the lower levels of the administrative ladder had necessarily been limited.

The presence of large numbers of refugees in independent African countries is one of their gravest problems. These refugees do not normally come into the countries of asylum in manageable numbers, but enter in tens of thousands, usually totally destitute, into regions poor in communications and social services—even for the local inhabitants—and with little if anything in the way of surplus local food supplies. The logistics and finance of providing immediate succour have presented enormous difficulties, intensified by the need to remove them as far as possible from the frontiers of their countries of origin, in order to avoid political tensions between the countries concerned and to observe the Organisation for African Unity's recommendation of 1964. Their settlement, among people who are only just self-sufficient in subsistence foods, places great strains on the technical resources of countries struggling for a decent standard of living for their own inhabitants, and deeply committed to their own development plans.

Annual meetings of one sort or another are part of the ritual cycle of academic culture. Normally, these are of two distinct structural types: the disciplinary, in which the participants are of a specific group such as anthropologists, historians, political scientists, sociologists, as well as those being enculturated; and the interdisciplinary, devoted to a specific theme or geographical area, in which members and prospective members of the specific disciplines concerned participate. In the second category we may place the annual meeting of the (American) African Studies Association.

In March 1962 the late Dr W. E. B. Du Bois set up under the sponsorship of the Ghana Academy of Sciences a secretariat for an Encyclopaedia Africana, and became the first director. The aim was to compile an encyclopaedia dealing exclusively with Africa, using for the work as far as possible African scholars distinguished in their own fields of study. This does not preclude the use of foreign scholars where necessary, and some are being used.

A research bulletin entitled Rural Africana is now being produced by the African Studies Center at Michigan State University. It is designed to serve as an informal means of exchanging information concerning politics, anthropology, and development economics in the rural areas of independent Africa south of the Sahara. The origin of the bulletin dates from the 1966 meeting of the (U.S.A.) African Studies Association. A small group of political scientists who had for some years emphasised local-level research in Africa met with several anthropologists who had been oriented to the earlier works by Professors Evans-Pritchard, Schapera, and Gluckman. In discussion, it was evident that the individuals in this group, although in different disciplines, overlapped in their area of interest, their theoretical orientations, and levels of analysis. It was suggested that an informal bulletin might serve to crossfertilise ideas in these and related fields, and that the emphasis should be on the rural areas—a sector of or contemporary importance which had been largely neglected save for anthropological research.

An occasional news-letter, monitoring all aspects of urban research in Africa, is at present edited by Ruth Simms Hamilton, George Jenkins, and Edward Soja, and produced under the auspices of the African Studies Centre at the University of California, Los Angeles. Eight issues of African Urban Notes have so far appeared, the first in April 1966 and the most recent in August 1967, together with three bibliographical supplements.

Many of the fundamental data required for the study of history, sociology, politics, or economics in Africa are stored up in the memories of a few elders, chiefs, priests, palace and town historians, and in the general knowledge of the average man and woman. To make such data available, the techniques of questionnaires and interviews are increasingly being employed to tap these unwritten sources. But great care needs to be taken in preparing the questions, studying the problems likely to arise where they are used, and in assessing the results. The care necessary on these matters has been well indicated by Girard: