A retiring Presidential address provides the opportunity, for some personal reflections on the issues and concerns that have preoccupied the Association in the immediate two-year period. Presidential addresses that I have had the opportunity to hear over the last decade have ranged from the chronicling of decline in African Studies in UK universities to analysing of the trends in research across the range of disciplines represented in the Association. The more limited remit for this discussion today is one which I presented to the Council on taking office as an issue that I would wish to pursue during my Presidency of the Association, namely the broader question of collaboration between the UK academic community and scholars in African universities in the pursuit of research, whatever the topic or discipline addressed; and the more detailed practical issues of how such collaboration does and does not work, the constraints and hindrances that get in the way, as well as the best mechanisms for making such collaboration succeed.

Francois Edmond Fortier (1862-1928) was undoubtedly the most prolific photographer working in French West Africa in the first decade of the 20th century. He produced well over 3300 photographs, almost all in postcard form. He was born in France and appears in Senegal around the year 1900. Unlike most of his predecessors who plied the photographic trade in the well established and well to do city of St. Louis, Fortier made his home in the new and expanding capital city of Dakar. He is best described as a “petit colon”, who succeeded in making a living as a professional postcard photographer/editor selling his work from a small Dakar shop and distributing postcards to the towns along the railway line. In later years local advertisements indicate that Fortier's shop catered to the military, bureaucratic, colonial population of the city, offering tobacco, stationary, Senegalese knick-knacks and postcards.