Among the problems confronting the developing countries, rural reform has received increasing attention from a variety of social scientists. There are several reasons for this new emphasis. In the pasts decade most of the struggles for independence have ended and the newly formed nations are beginning to focus on the complex issues of political integration and economic growth. Few areas reflect this change as dramatically as the Maghreb.

This article is concerned with an analysis of the causes of the poverty of the developing countries. The decade of the 1960s opened with a new wave of optimistic expectations for the periphery.1 There were, first of all, the massive decolonisation efforts, which to many implied the eclipse of imperialism and the possibility of meaningful economic reconstruction by the former colonial people, now that political power was in our own hands. ‘Seek ye first the political kingdom and all things shall be added unto you’, succinctly if unaptly captured the prevailing mood of the time.

The convening of the constitutional conference on Southern Rhodesia early in 1961 was the summit of the African nationalists' achievement, from which they subsequently declined. The conference took place less than four years after the formation of the first modern nationalist party in the territory and only two years after the Government had banned it and arrested its leaders. The second nationalist party secured, a year after its inauguration and in the face of implacable hostility from the Government, the first of its major immediate aims, this constitutional conference, which its representatives attended with status equal to that of representatives from the government party. The nationalists had the opportunity at the conference to help modify the political system, in existence since 1923, from which Africans had been almost wholly excluded.

Prior to the discovery of rich oil deposits, Libyan development prospects seemed markedly discouraging. In a primarily agricultural economy, cultivation was narrowly confined to two physically separated coastal belts constituting less than 3 per cent of the country's total land area. Under the combined influence of outmoded techniques and the hostility of an arid soil, agricultural productivity was low. Possibilities for developing other forms of economic activity were few and unpromising. Libya seemed destined for an existence of continued dependence upon foreign assistance.

In 1904 just over 6 per cent of South Africa's Afrikaners lived in the towns. By 1936 the percentage had risen to 44, and 1960 to 76 per cent. Slightly less than half of this number live in smaller centres, regarded for census purposes as ‘urban’ although most of them are dorps or hamlets.1 The causes of this demographic revolution go back to the simultaneous crisis of farming and the rise of mining and other industries that led to the growth of towns. Rural poverty pushed people off the land while the possibilities of earning higher incomes drew them to the towns. In the folk-lore of Afrikanerdom, towns—particularly Johannesburg—were evil places: they were regarded as the seats of an ‘English—Jewish’ capitalism that was bent on ploughing the Afrikaner under, and as hotbeds of vice and crime.2

This article explores the prospects for co-ordinated co-operative economic advance in East Africa. Its frame of reference reaches wider than simply an analysis of the 1967 Treaty.1 This broader viewpoint is important for two major reasons. In the first place, there are a number of aspects of economic interdependence which are not covered at all in the Treaty; the implication is that these will be of no direct concern to the institutions of the new East African Community (Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania). For example, the level of the external tariffs of the three countries is obviously crucial to the operation of the Common Market; among other reasons, this is because the maximum permissible transfer tax is defined in terms of the external tariff. Yet the committee responsible for setting external tariffs is not linked in any direct way with the institutional set-up in Arusha; it seems likely that decisions of the tariff committee will not be subject to discussion or appeal through these community institutions.

The phenomenon of trade unionism in tropical Africa has only recently become the subject of serious social inquiry. In the main, academic attention has been focused on labour as a commodity rather than as a social movement. Through the activities of the National Institute for Personnel Research in Johannesburg and the Commission for Technical Co-operation in Africa South of the Sahara, labour research interests have been primarily concentrated on productivity, efficiency, labour turnover, selection, control, and training. The volume of such work has been small compared with similar work in western industrialised countries, but it has been large in comparison with that concerning the collective action of African labour.

During colonial times, Italian studies on Africa were always concentrated within narrow academic limits. Even after the increasing Italian expansion in Northern Africa (Libya) and Eastern Africa (Eritrea and Somalia), when Italian interests in Africa increased considerably, only small groups of scholars focused their studies on the African continent. Today, by contrast, since the independence of the former Italian colonies (and of almost all the European colonies), there is in Italy, as throughout the world, a strong tendency to extend and encourage research work on Africa, and particularly to develop university teaching programmes on Africa.

This Institute was established in October 1965 for the purpose of initiating and directing research on socio-economic and cultural problems relating to the over-all development of Kenya in particular and East Africa in general. Related functions are: to promote and co-ordinate interdisciplinary research programmes; to provide research opportunities and experience for East African students interested in academic careers; to develop instructional materials for university and other teaching purposes; to undertake contract research for, and to co-operate in study projects with, agencies of the Kenya Government; and to provide a centre with which research workers from other countries of Africa and from overseas may be associated.

The membership of the African Studies Association now numbers 1,731— 734 fellows, 618 associates, and 379 student associates. Some 700 of these participated in the eleventh annual meeting of the Association. Although attendance was considerably below the 1,300 registered at the New York Hilton in 1967 and the nearly 1,000 who made their way to the University of Indiana in 1966, there is no indication that this reflects a declining interest in African studies in the United States. Rather, the A.S.A. custom of bringing its annual meetings in turn to scholars in the north-east, on the Pacific coast, and in the Middle West results in predictable fluctations in registration.

This symposium was sponsored jointly by the Society for the History of Technology (S.H.O.T.) and by the anthropology section of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (A.A.A.S.), arising from their annual meetings in Dallas, Texas, in December 1968. The session was clearly exploratory, in that the participants recognised the need for a systematic and integrative study of technology in African history, especially of its importance in defining cultural systems, in role differentiation and the division of labour between men and women in African communities, its interaction with the social and political system of a people—as demonstrated, for example, by irrigation systems—and its interrelationship with social needs and rituals in the evolution of music in Africa.

The secretary-general of the East African Community, Z. H. K. Birgirwenkya, formally opened this year's Social Science Council conference—the largest to date, not only in terms of the numbers attending and the papers presented, but also in terms of the number of disciplines and countries which contributed. In addition to participants from Uganda, Kenya, and Tanzania, papers were presented by academics from Zambia, Malawi, Nigeria, Sudan, Ethiopia, Sierra Leone, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Observers from the Congo (Kinshasa) were also present. Representatives of the three East African governments also participated in several sessions. John Hutton, director of economic research at Makerere, was chairman of the planning committee which organised the over-all framework of the conference, while Mrs Anna Gourlay, as secretary, did immense amounts of work to ensure that all ran smoothly.

One major problem facing the countries of Western Africa is the rapid process of urbanisation and the inability of the towns to integrate untrained and generally illiterate immigrants from the rural areas.

In March 1956, U.N.E.S.C.O. established a ‘Pilot Project for the Application of New Techniques and Methods of Education’; the Dakar seminar was held to discuss the results of this project and, in particular, the use of television in social education. Delegates attended from 11 countries—Congo (Kinshasa), Congo (Brazzaville), Ivory Coast, Dahomey, Gabon, Guinea, Upper Volta, Mali, Niger, Senegal, Togo–together with observers from interested ministries in Senegal, the I.L.O., W.H.O., the U.N. information services, O.R.S.T.O.M. (the French scientific research organisation for overseas territories), the World Association for Christian Radio and Television, the African Union of National Radio and Television Services, and the International Union for Public Health Education. Most strongly represented, of course, was U.N.E.S.C.O. itself, both by headquarters and local staff, and by the experts and consultants at work on the pilot project.

The latest annual session of E.C.A. was also a celebration of the tenth anniversary of the organisation, in the presence of H. I. M. Haile Selassie I, Emperor of Ethiopia, and U Thant, Secretary-General of the United Nations. Only those who were there can hope to evaluate fully the proceedings, but the reflections of one who attended the five previous sessions in a working capacity, and is now able to view E.C.A. from a more distant perspective, may be not without interest.

Malagasy literary output and books about the Republic have already been dealt with in a bibliography of major importance, by Guillaume Grandidier, Bibliographie de Madagascar, vols. I and n (Paris, 1905-6 and 1935), vol. in (Tananarive, 1957), and vol. iv (in preparation). Since 1964 the national and university libraries have been working jointly on an annual bibliography, of which two volumes, for 1964 and 1965, have been published (Tananarive, 1967 and 1968). This short note does not aim to offer a complete bibliographical survey, but to provide for cultivated English-speakers a short but comprehensive list of non-specialised publications which would enable the ‘common reader’ to acquire a respectable knowledge of Madagascar.

Malagasy literary output and books about the Republic have already been dealt with in a bibliography of major importance, by Guillaume Grandidier, Bibliographie de Madagascar, vols. I and II (Paris, 1905–6 and 1935), vol. III (Tananarive, 1957), and vol. IV (in preparation). Since 1964 the national and university libraries have been working jointly on an annual bibliography, of which two volumes, for 1964 and 1965, have been published (Tananarive, 1967 and 1968). This short note does not aim to offer a complete bibliographical survey, but to provide for cultivated English-speakers a short but comprehensive list of non-specialised publications which would enable the ‘common reader’ to acquire a respectable knowledge of Madagascar.