In the early 1950s it became apparent to the Rhodesia Government that the rapid increase in literacy amongst Africans, due to the increased tempo of education, would present its own problem. This problem can best be summed up in three words, “Literacy without Literature.” Many school leavers only reached primary level and, although literate, were only literate in their own vernaculars, Shona or Ndebele. Unless books in these languages were provided urgently the people would lose their newly attained skill through sheer lack of practice and in many cases revert to illiteracy. Literacy creates its own type of hunger, hunger for books which must be satisfied, or frustration will ensue.

Thus, in 1953, the Rhodesia Literature Bureau was created, (since 1963 it has been part of the Department of African Education) to make available a supply of literature to fulfil these special needs.

Two factors govern the acquisitions policy of West Africana in Birmingham University Library: the teaching and research programmes of the Centre of West African Studies, and participation in the SCOLMA area specialisation scheme.

The Centre of West African Studies was set up in 1963, in the words of its Director, Professor J. D. Fage, ‘as the happy coincidence between thinking in the University…and the University Grants Committee’. Begun and maintained as an interdisciplinary centre, and supported by earmarked Treasury grants as recommended by the Hayter Report in 1961, it has developed during its first ten years into one of the main centres of African studies in the United Kingdom. The interests of its members have always been centred on Nigeria, Ghana and Sierra Leone, with a certain amount of research interest in the French-speaking areas also.

Since 1966 the Brotherton Library has been acquiring material published in and relating to Zaire, Rwanda and Burundi, the African countries formerly administered by Belgium. Acquisition has been concentrated on the social sciences, humanities and official publications. Up to present approximately 250 books and pamphlets have been obtained for the collection, about half of these consisting of items published in the area. This figure does not include periodical volumes and items on microfiche.

(1) Zaïre Publications from Zaïre (formerly Congo-Kinshasa) make up the largest part of the material from central Africa. The bulk of these are publications of the Université Nationale du Zaïre, Kinshasa, especially of its Institut de Recherches Economiques et Sociales. We have also had some success in collecting Zaïrean official publications, particularly those issued by the Office National de la Recherche et du Développement.

East African materials have been collected at the University of Sussex Library with responsibilities in mind both to our own staff and students, particularly those in the School of African and Asian Studies, and to the SCOLMA area specialisation scheme. The basic collection was established by M. H. Rogers before he moved to the library of the Institute of Development Studies, and this has proved a reasonable base from which to develop. We purchase as much current material as funds allow, selecting from LC accessions lists, and maintaining subscriptions to locally published serials. Attempts have been made to use deposit accounts to cover standing orders with local publishers both government and trade; results have been fairly satisfactory in the former case, less so in the latter.

In May 1973 the Centre of African Studies of the University of Edinburgh celebrated the centenary of the death of David Livingstone by a lecture by Professor George Shepperson and a seminar on various aspects of Livingstone's life and work. The lecture and seminar proceedings have now been published by the Centre as David Livingstone and Africa, remarkable value at 50p.

The seminar emphasized the diversity of Livingstone's achievements and the complexity of his character, and again and again the point emerged that one needs to know as wide a range as possible of his writings to assemble adequate evidence to assess his life and work. He was a prolific writer of letters, diaries, memoranda and articles as well as his books, and though much has been published, extensive further material is coming to light from time to time, both in private and in institutional hands.

The International Conference on the Development of Documentation and Information Networks in East Africa, held in Nairobi from 24 July to 1 August 1973, was organized by the East African Academy in co-operation with the German Foundation for International Development and with the assistance of Unesco.

The aim of the Conference was to improve co-operation among institutions carrying out information work and to stimulate a rapid development of the field of documentation in the East African Region. About 25 participants from Kenya, Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia and international nongovernmental and governmental organizations attended the meeting. They were representatives of national research councils and information specialists (either librarians or documentalists) who discussed together the basic problems of selection, treatment and dissemination of information from the contrasting points of view of users and of those responsible for the information flow.