How sensibly can one talk of industrial sociology in a non-industrial continent? Industrial sociology has been called the ‘special’ sociology whose task should be to carry through scientifically the analyses of the social relationships and interactions present within the industrial organisation in all its theoretical depth and breadth.1 Raif Dahrendorf, for instance, in Industrie und Betriebssoziologie (Berlin, 1962), whilst accepting industrial sociology as one of the ‘special’ sociologies, makes the reservation that it is concerned with the industrial society. But since the whole process of industrialisation was a historical one, the limitation of industrial sociology to any specific period must be an open question, especially since every kind of society requires the production of goods and services through industrial organisation. Elsewhere I have questioned the premises and validity of Dahrendorf's assertion;2 but it must be admitted that in its present form this special sociology has little or no meaning for the pre-industrial societies largely because they have not yet been exposed to it as a scientific tool. Nevertheless, sociological researches in pre-industrial societies can demonstrate the operational use of industrial sociological categories, such as performance efficiency and incentives, managerial techniques, industrial commitment, and the effect of industrial work on personality, as will be shown below by surveying the work of C. H. Northcott, W. Elkan, and Y. Glass in pre-industrial societies of Africa.

Amílcar Cabral, a little-known revolutionary intellectual and head of the major nationalist movement fighting the Portuguese in their territories of Portuguese Guiné and the Cape Verde Islands, has experienced considerable success as leader of an African independence struggle. His political thought has guided the African response to Portuguese rule for more than a decade. It has developed through the successive phases of his career, as a student in Lisbon (1946–1950), as an agronomist who surveyed agricultural resources for the Portuguese Government (1950–1956), and as a nationalist leader and a revolutionary (1956 to the present).

The general assumption often made by writers that the ex-soldiers played a significant role in the politics of Nigeria breaks down when subjected to critical analysis.1 It is true that these men were potentially excellent material, who could have been effectively utilised in the struggle against colonial rule because of their training, their newly-acquired confidence, and their experience of the outside world. However, certain factors rendered their role as a group insignificant in the history of the nationalist movement in the country.

Since programmes of government lending to African businessmen are widely relied upon as a means of stimulating economic development, some analysis of their efficacy is clearly needed. Peter Marris's article ‘Lending Money’ made an interesting contribution along these lines;1 but it was undermined by a fundamental flaw in his delineation of the problem. The present article has two fundamental purposes. First, it presents what the writer believes to be a more adequate analysis of the basic predicament of lending agencies in Africa. Secondly, it attempts to show that the nature of the problem calls for changes in the usual approaches not only to (a) lending programmes, but also to (b) the family of programmes to aid indigenous business (of which loans schemes are one member), and beyond that to (c) the still broader issue of policies to accelerate the growth of the directly productive sectors of the economy.

For many years very little attention was paid to scientific research in Madagascar. To be more precise, the public authorities considered that this problem should be left to private initiative, or at least to the initiative of certain key individuals concerned with research in their own special field. Another sign of the times was that it long appeared useless even to envisage any co-ordination.

Writing in 1962, Professor Roland Young of Northwestern University observed, with reference to both rural and urban Africa, ‘In carrying on research in African politics an area which compels attention is the local community, defined however one wishes: tribal cluster, village, or adrninistrative district. One might wish that political scientists had become interested at an earlier date in the study of small political systems indigenous to Africa.’1 There should be little doubt that local government is important in Africa because its operations are more or less coterminous with the rural areas in which the majority of Africans live. Indigenous Africa does not lie in the westernised cities but in the rural areas, where central governments appear remote, impersonal, and incomprehensibly awesome. Because of its closeness to the community, local government is one of the most realistic agencies for the transformation of rural Africa. Local governments are thus strategically placed to playa crucial role in the politics of development.

A recent trio of books by Professor Ali Mazrui deals largely with the phenomenon and impact of Africa's emergence into independence. The Anglo-African Commonwealth (Oxford, Pergamon Press, 1967) argues the fertilising influence of English and English liberal ideas on the growth of African nationalism, and explores the changing character and role of the Commonwealth due to its progressive ‘Africanisation’ over the past decade. On Heroes and Uhuru-Worship (London, Longmans, 1967) is a collection of papers on ‘the politics of African independence’.

Scholars have very little information on inter-regional economic relations within African countries. This article focuses on patterns of inter-regional and socio-ethnic group migration and business relations in Nigeria,1 with special reference to entrepreneurs who make or deal in footwear. The material presented refers only to the two-year period prior to the coup d'état of January 1966.

The Research Institute for Tropical Agriculture and Food Crops was created in 1960 as an independent organisation for technical assistance and cooperation in the field of tropical agricultural research. It has its headquarters in Paris and some laboratories in Nogent, in the suburbs. There can be found not only its administrative staff, but also a group of agronomists specially prepared and trained for overseas work; they spend most of their time travelling to the different countries where I.R.A.T. has been asked to work by and for the governments concerned, giving advice to their fellow agronomists on problems in which they have specialised, or following for several months a particularly interesting study. But, of course, most agronomists are permanently assigned to the different stations where the assistance of I.R.A.T. has also been requested officially. Some of these are quite important centres—for instance, Bambey (Senegal), Ambatobé, near Tananative (Madagascar), and Boukoko (Central African Republic), with more than 20 scientists at work in each. But in several other countries, only two or three people are working in a station, and it is here that more help is needed from the central scientific team.

The theory of the African revolution, which is still in many respects only in its initial stage, found a most powerful inspiration in the West Indian psychiatrist, Frantz Fanon. His writings were at first confined to the French-speaking public, and even after their initial translation into English (published by Présence africaine) they remained almost unknown. But the growing race tensions in Africa and the United States are drawing more and more attention to this original thinker.

In connection with the reform of higher education in the D.D.R. [East Germany], the Afrika-Institut and certain other regional institutes concerned with developing countries were recently incorporated under common control, when a Section for Asian and African Studies was established in 1966 at Karl Marx University, Leipzig. This increased the scope of interdisciplinary and interregional academic co-operation.

Neither in Switzerland generally nor in Geneva in particular did there exist an Africanist tradition when the Geneva–Africa Institute was created in 1961. The Swiss, of course, had been in Africa—as merchants, missionaries, gunrunners—but this Swiss presence did not add up to a focus of study, nor did it create the geographical areas of special interest that had shaped African studies in France, England, or Belgium. Nor has the teaching staff of the Institute been entirely Swiss. As befits an international city such as Geneva, there have been French, Italian, Hungarian, Dahomean, and American as well as Swiss members of staff.

The need for systematic research into African problems was, in the Netherlands as elsewhere, increasingly felt after World War II, when the non- industrial world began to grow in importance. As a result, the interdisciplinary Africa Study Centre was founded in Leiden in 1947; it became a national foundation in 1958. The aims of the Study Centre are: (a) to promote the study of Africa, especially in the field of the humanities; (b) to promote the co-operation of all Dutch institutions engaged in the study of Africa; and (c) to promote the spread of academic knowledge about Africa.

This Administrative Research and Study Centre—a part of L'Ecole nationale d'administ ration de Tunisie—was set up by a law of 1964, which also reorganised the whole structure of E.N.A.T. The first priority was to open up a training programme for different categories of civil servants corresponding to the needs of the Tunisian administration. So it was not until April 1967 that the first research projects got under way. In one year, several publications have appeared and several others are in progress. The rapidity with which the Research and Study Centre has expanded its production is largely due to the original conception. At present, once the pump has been primed, the essential task is to build up the Centre in such a way as to increase production and to improve the quality of the studies and research work carried out.

Despite the superb hospitality of the President of Sénégal and his Government, and of the rector and staff of Dakar University, the second meeting of the International Congress of Africanists in December 1967 must be accounted a disaster on such a scale as to endanger the whole future of the organisation. Intending participants were given wholly insufficient notice to produce papers worthy of such an occasion, and those who nevertheless complied with the invitation were cruelly disappointed to find on arrival that their contributions had not been translated or duplicated for circulation in advance of the sessions at which they were to be presented. Neither a programme nor even a provisional list of participants was available in advance of the meeting. Even so, there were persons billed as chairmen of sections and leading speakers who failed to put in an appearance. As a result, most of the discussions at most of the sessions had to be improvised. True, one of the admirable team of U.N.E.S.G.O. interpreters was heard to say ‘J’ai vu pire’, but when pressed he could think of only one worse example. No doubt individual participants could point to fresh contacts which made the occasion not wholly a waste of time, but there must be few who could conscientiously ask their employers to provide the expenses of attending another meeting without the assurance that it would be of a very different character from this one.

The African Training and Research Centre in Administration for Development (C.A.F.R.A.D.) was established at the suggestion of King Hassan II. This royal initiative helped to give concrete form to the resolution proposed by Morocco and adopted at the 12th session of the U.N.E.S.C.O. General Conference, which authorised the Organisation to co-operate in establishing such an African regional institution with its headquarters in Tangier. The guidelines for the project were laid down in a provisional agreement between the Moroccan authorities and U.N.E.S.C.O., signed in May 1964.

The construction of educational buildings has been given special attention by the general conference of U.N.E.S.C.O. at several sessions. Resolution 1. 221, passed at the 13th session, reads as follows: ‘Member States are invited to develop educational building programmes to meet their needs as part of their overall economic and social development, and in particular to establish, where appropriate, national educational building centres, and to ensure close co-operation between national and appropriate regional centres in matters relating to the development of techniques and procedures concerning educational buildings.’

The Regional Group for Educational Planning and Administration was instituted by U.N.E.S.C.O. at the end of 1965, to help produce and train educational planners and administrators in Africa south of the Sahara, and to encourage research, exchanges, and co-operation in this field. Established at Dakar, the Group is working directly under U.N.E.S.C.O.'s Department of Educational Planning and Finance and is co-operating with the International Institute for Educational Planning in Paris, the Regional School Building Centre for Africa at Khartoum, and other regional groups for educational planning established elsewhere in the world.

This year it was the turn of Dar es Salaam to act as host to the social scientists, now numbering nearly 200, from the three constituent colleges of the University of East Africa, together with visitors from the Universities of Malawi and Zambia, from Tanzanian government ministries, and places as widely separated as Kinshasa and Leeds. As at last year's conference (reported by Martin Lowenkopf in The Journal of Modern African Studies, IV, 4, 1966), the discussions were trans-disciplinary, even if the tight timetable of parallel disciplinary panels prevented delegates from taking full advantage of this. This reporter was unable to range far beyond the history meeting-room.

This colloquium, which followed that held in Bucharest in 1966, was organised by one of the five working commissions of the International Union Architects (U.I.A.). Its theme, ‘Housing for the Majority, with special reference to developing countries’, was studied by over 80 participants from 22 countries.