The tribe of economists to which I belong regard concepts as more or less ‘kosher', but not description. Economics, most of them would probably argue, is concerned with analysis and prediction; description is for lesser breeds. For example, students are taught the intricacies of analysing the supply of money, but it is rarely suggested to them that they might reasonably be expected to know how money actually comes into existence, which would involve knowing and being able to describe what a bank is, What it does and how. Confronted with such searching questions, they are therefore generally floored; and last year's students are, of course, this year's professional economists!

Yet description is really of the essence of any subject. We cannot account for economic change in Africa unless we can describe it.

This paper is a slightly revised version of a lecture given on 16th August 1975 at the Somali Institute of Development Administration and Management in Mogadishu. The text of the lecture was published in the same month, as a booklet, by the Academy of Somali Culture in Mogadishu, but in a limited number of copies only. It was also presented, orally and in absentia, at the Symposium held on 19th September 1975 at the Annual General Meeting of the African Studies Association of the United Kingdom.

In order to make the information which it contains accessible to a wider public I now offer it to readers of African Research and Documentation.

Comparative studies in librarianship are new to the curriculum of many library schools, in contrast to Comparative Education, Comparative Linguistics and Comparative Politics which have a long and distinguished history in other disciplines. Librarianship in recent years has become internationalised through the activities of UNESCO, IFLA and F.I.D., by an increasing number of young students from overseas attending British library schools and the readiness of senior librarians to journey to distant places on working or consultative assignments. The effect of international exchanges is to enhance the role of comparative librarianship in shaping the course of studies for British as well as overseas students.

The Foreign and Commonwealth Office provides the means of communication for the discussion and negotiation of all matters within the field of international relations between the British Government and other governments and international organisations. Its diplomatic missions are responsible for protecting British citizens and interests overseas, and for explaining British policies to, and cultivating friendly relations with, governments in foreign and Commonwealth countries. The F.C.O. is also entrusted with the discharge of British responsibilities in the associated states and the administration of the remaining dependent territories. The primary functions of the Ministry of Overseas Development are to formulate and carry out policies to help the economic development of less developed countries, and to administer the British programme of development aid.

I must emphasise at the outset that the views expressed here are those of someone who had never visited Nigeria, or indeed the African Continent, until last year. I am all too conscious of the fact that much of what I say will be self-evident to many of you, who must know that Continent from the inside, and possibly naive, or even completely wrong.

If my views have any value this must in fact be due to this, to the newness to me of Africa, to my uncontaminated, if you like virgin, state, to my hitherto clearly circumscribed Library vision. British and Germanic speaking libraries of Europe pretty, well sums up my library experience, a thoroughly parochial background in the context of the Third World. I was, as it turned out, only superficially prepared for what one of my new-found colleagues in Zaria termed “cultural shock”, the impact of Nigerian life on the raw European visitor.

The twentieth century will go down in history as the century of explosions. Within living memory the world has witnessed several of these: the splitting of the atom and the neutron, with the subsequent release of so much energy that mankind faces certain extinction through its misuse. The knowledge explosion has been with us all of the second half of this century; and the latest, and certainly one of the most problematic, is the population explosion and the global attempts being made to prevent homo sapiens from any further literal interpretation of the biblical exhortation of God's chosen people to “be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth …” All available human resources have been marshalled against the destructive elements in these forces. Efforts have been geared towards containing them within reasonably safe bounds, so that the good in them could be employed fully and more profitably for the further development of our world.

The activities of nineteenth-century explorers in Africa fascinated contemporaries, and the public greeted each chapter in the unfolding saga of African reconnaissance with enthusiasm. In his inimitable way, that prince of Victorian travellers, Sir Richard Burton, explained the appeal and aura of romanticism that surrounded exploration: “The theme has remoteness and obsurity of place, difference of custom, marvellousness of hearsay; events passing strange yet credible, sometimes barbaric splendour, generally luxuriance of nature, savage life, personal danger and suffering always borne … with patience, dignity, and even enthusiasm.” Even today, the subject retains much of its intrinsic interest, as is, exemplified by the veritable flood of books and articles marking the recent centenary of Dr David Livingstone's death. Moreover, Africanists in many academic disciplines are keenly aware of the important information to be found in the various records the explorers left to posterity.