In his classic study of African Independent Churches in South Africa, Sundkler distinguishes two main groups. To the first belong the Ethiopian Churches, that is, Independent African Churches which have split off from European Mission Churches because they resented being administered by Europeans, yet did not want to alter church organization and religious teaching. In the second group belong the Zionist Churches which, as Sundkler writes, are theologically ‘a syncretistic Bantu movement with healing, speaking with tongues, purification rites and taboos as the main expression of their faith’. Sundkler states, however, that these categories are not exclusive, because ‘some Zionist Churches are gradually becoming more and more “Ethiopian” in ideology and behaviour.’

Dakar en 1965 offre l'image d'une grande ville, impression que corroborent les données chiffrées: 500.000 habitants, ensemble industriel qui groupe une centaine d'entreprises et 20.000 salariés, trafic portuaire de 2.000.000 de tonnes, administration ne comptant pas moins de 30.000 fonctionnaires. L'urbanisation y est relativement ancienne puisque la création de la ville date du milieu du siècle dernier; de surcroît une longue tradition de relations et d'échanges ont mis en contact de longue date les populations de la Presqu'île avec l'Europe par l'intermédiaire de Gorée et du trafic négrier et avec les anciens royaumes intérieurs du Sine et du Cayor.

The Gurage of south-western Ethiopia possess a form of civilization which is of quite remarkable interest. Their social institutions and modes of livelihood have been well described by Dr. William A. Shack in his work The Gurage (1966). This admirable monograph has received in The Times Literary Supplement a long analytical review (Anon., 1966) couched for the most part in highly laudatory terms with which I readily identify myself. The review concentrates on the principles of Gurage mystical ideology, which is a source of great fascination and the discovery of which stands to Dr. Shack's enduring credit, but it also expresses incidentally certain reservations concerning the ethnographer's analysis of the relationship terminology. The purpose of the present notes is to take up these critical points and to isolate in the terms of social classification a formal feature which makes the Gurage of exceptional sociological interest as well.

In June 1968, in Calgary, a small meeting of Canadian Africanists discussed two papers related to the fields of demography, sociology, and anthropology. This brought together persons from a number of fields—history, anthropology, sociology, statistics, politics—forcing those of us who were demographers to review our objectives and to rephrase them in such a way that we could communicate them to our associates from other disciplines. I had this discussion still very much in mind when I was preparing a review of a book which, although fundamental to the entire understanding of African demographic trends, may be passed over as ‘too technical’ by non-demographers. And this is merely one book to appear in 1968, a fruitful year which has seen a number of major publications in African demography. Yet it seemed possible that our enthusiasm for progress had not been shared by our colleagues, either, as had appeared the case in Calgary, because our aims were not readily apparent to other Africanists, or because little is known among these others of advances in our field. Thus, in this review-article I intend to go beyond a discussion of the books themselves, and to outline some of the problems demographers are studying, our progress to date, and some of our research strategies. In a sense this may appear to be a reiteration of the excellent survey of the field by Lorimer, Brass, and van de Walle in Lystads encyclopaedic volume, The African World. However, such has been the development of demographic studies in the last few years that some sections of their essay are now out of date.