It is a commonplace of discussions in this U.N. Population Year that in many developing countries the rate of increase of food supplies is barely keeping up with increase in population, let alone exceeding it to allow a higher standard of nutrition. Crop yields per hectare in many of these countries remain low to very low, yet in nearly all the heavily populated areas of sub-Saharan Africa, for example, crop yields on Government-financed agricultural experiment stations are appreciably higher than on farmers’ fields just outside their boundaries. There are, in fact, a number of examples of experiment station yields being up to 10 times as high under conditions where adequate farm inputs are used, such as improved seed, adequate fertiliser and pest control, and adequate farm machinery to ensure all farm operations are done on time.

Why produce bibliographical tools which deal solely with Africa? Some might say that it is passe, or even absurd, to separate Africa from the rest of the world in this way.

But there are several reasons why such bibliographical activity should continue. Firstly, Africana bibliography caters directly for the large community all over the world which studies Africa, namely the Africanist community. Secondly, if a bibliography is confined to Africa, it can afford to be a bibliography in depth. It can afford its own structure and its own classification scheme. A general bibliography or general index can never give the depth or sensitivity that is possible with a completely Africanist bibliography or index. General indexes are bound to be subject-orientated, but an Africanist index provides a list of interdisciplinary references if it has a geographical layout—so important in these days of area studies.

Destinée à la réunion des experts dans le domaine des échanges qui doit se tenir à Vienne en 1972, cette étude est un document de travail dont je tiens à préciser la nature et les limites.

L'expérience que possède le Service français des Echanges, rattaché à la Bibliothéque nationale de Paris, en matière d'échanges avec les pays africains, a paru susceptible d'intéresser tous ceux qui cherchent à établir, non sans difficulté parfois, des contacts avec ces pays. Certes les échanges entretenus avec 96 pays et plus de 1 100 partenaires différents donnent au Service des Echanges Internationaux une expérience étendue et des éléments de comparaison. D'autre part, l'utilisation de la langue française dans une partie importante des pays africains entraifie, entre ces derniers et la France, des relations privilégiées dans le domaine culturel. Enfin, parce que ces territoires ont été longtemps soumis au régime des colonies ou des protectorats, des liens existent depuis de longues années et subsistent dans différents domaines, en particulier ceux de l'édition, de l'enseignement ou des bibliothèques.

The Tropical Products Institute (TPI) helps developing countries to derive greater benefit from their plant and animal resources by dealing with the scientific, technical and economic problems that arise after harvesting. This is done by the provision of an advistory and information service, the supply of experts and training facilities and by carrying out research and development studies. TPI is one of three scientific units of the Ministry of Overseas Development; the other two units are the Land Resources Division and the Centre for Overseas Pest Research. The purpose of this article is to describe the work of TPI's Information Department, particularly the services provided by its Library and Technical Index, and also to indicate the range of publications it produces.

TPI has its origin in the Plant and Animal Products section of the Scientific and Technical Department of the Imperial Institute which began its work in 1894.

Since the beginning of the SCOLMA scheme in the Edinburgh University Library, material has been held in several groups. The government publications of Malawi and Zambia have been kept separately in the Statistical Reference Collection; serial accessions are listed in the Serials Department; non-government publications are catalogued and shelved in the main book stacks by their subjects and no separate list is kept. (These are in most cases material about rather than from Malawi and Zambia.) In additional there is a small collection of vernacular textbooks and pamphlets which is kept separately in the main library. The catalogue of manuscripts includes but does not distinguish those items relevant to Malawi and Zambia. There are also many publications relevant to Malawi and Zambia in the Centre of African Studies library. This means that there is no single collection in which all the relevant publications can be found, and there is no single complete list of the materials held by the University.

King's College London agreed to participate in the area specialisation scheme in 1966, with responsibility for the publications of the Portuguese African territories, principally because of its well established Portuguese Department. The College Library already possessed a strong collection of Portuguese history, largely as a heritage of Professor Edgar Prestage's term of office as Camoen Professor, and this included most of the basic secondary works on the history of the Portuguese in Africa. Established links with Portuguese Government agencies, particularly in the Instituto de Alta Cultura and the Junta de Investigações do Ultramar, brought in, as gifts, a continuing supply of monographs in series such as Estudos, ensaios e documentos and Estudos de Ciencias Politicas e Sociais, many of which dealt with the African territories.

The British Library of Political and Economic Science, at present housed in the London School of Economics and Political Science's main building in Houghton Street, was founded by public subscription in 1896. In 1967 E. C. Blake described the Library's holdings in Library Materials on Africa (Vol. 5 No. 1). He surveyed at some length the books, periodicals, pamphlets and government publications held by the Library that are of special concern to the student of African affairs. However, in the years that have elapsed since the Library's foundation, as well as building up a very fine collection of printed material on the social sciences, it has managed to attract a considerable number of important special collections, of both printed and manuscript material, in its field. The Library's List of the More Important or Interesting Manuscript and other collections in the British Library of Political and Economic Science, published in February 1971 and which may be consulted in the Library, enumerates over seventy such collections.

The Fontes Historiae Africanae is a project adopted by the International Academic Union in 1964, having been originally sponsored by the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences. The first director of the project was the well-known Czech historian Professor Ivan Hrbek. By 1972 pressure of other committments forced him to give up the task and direction of the project was taken over by Professor John Hunwick of the University of Ghana on 3 January 1973.

As its title implies, the Fontes project is concerned with source materials for the history of Africa. The basic concept is the publication of written source materials in their original languages with full apparatus criticus with parallel translations into either English or French accompanied by scholarly annotation and introduction. In this way it is envisaged that material currently inaccessible or difficult of access would be made available to the scholarly world at large.

One major obstacle to the study of Sudanese history before the Mahdist period (1885—1898) has been the seeming lack of any substantial documentation of local origin; nowhere was this more so than in Darfur. But it is now becoming apparent that, contrary to previous assumptions, Darfur and probably also Kordofan are very rich in Arabic documents, preserved as family archives, dating from the pre-Mahdist period.

As part of a continuing programme of research on the history of the Darfur Sultanate (c. 1650—1916), I recently visited Darfur on a trip financed by the Norwegian Research Council and sponsored by the Central Records Office (CRO), Khartoum, who kindly arranged for Sayyid Ahmad Ibrahim Uthman of the CRO to accompany me.

During a period of six weeks spent in the Al-Fashir region i.e. around the province capital, a total of over 200 documents from the Darfur Sultans and their officials, and some from Mahdist officials, were located and photographed.

The IAI was founded in 1926 to promote research and the dissemination of knowledge on African societies, cultures and languages, and to bring about a closer association of scientific knowledge with practical affairs.

The Institute has to date undertaken or sponsored the publication of over 300 original volumes in the field of African Studies, including 60 volumes in the continuing Ethnographic Survey of Africa and 44 annual volumes of the journal Africa. Information services provided by the Institute have included the quarterly publication of the International African Bibliography (now prepared at the School of Oriental and African Studies), the regional and subject volumes of the Africa Bibliography Series, African Abstracts (1950—72), and the 5—volume Cumulative Bibliography of African Studies, published in 1973. The Institute's Research Information Liaison Unit. has compiled and published the International Register of Organisations undertaking Africanist Research (1971), 3 volumes of Current Africanist Research, listing over 5,000 projects under way in the period 1971—3, and the International Guide to African Studies Research (IAI, January, 1975).

It was originally intended that this article would be the result of an informal “sounding” of a few Australian academics. After several such “soundings”, it became increasingly obvious that there was sufficient interest in Africa to warrant a reasonably detailed survey of the existing situation. A short questionnaire was therefore drawn up with the hopes of obtaining the following information:

1. (i) The names of academics and postgraduate students with a research interest in Africa.

2. (ii) The nature of this research and any resulting publications.

3. (iii) Courses taught in Australian universities concerning Africa, or which contained a substantial African interest, and approximate number of students involved each year.

4. (iv) What would be the level of support for the calling of a conference/meeting of academics with an African interest?