This paper attempts to discuss the concept of national libraries and the state-of-the-art in Africa. The role of national libraries and the challenges facing them are also analysed. It has been found out for example, that a majority of national libraries in Africa are found in the French-speaking countries. Other libraries such as public and university libraries are performing this role in the English-speaking countries. It is argued that although there is no alternative to a national library, African countries should make adaptations to suit their circumstances.

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?

It is becoming realised increasingly that the study and collection of historical children's books is an important facet of bibliographical studies (Library Trends, Spring 1979, was devoted entirely to this area of interest). The Library of the School of Oriental and African Studies (University of London) has recently set up a small special collection of boys adventure stories set in areas in which the School has special interest and published between the middle of the last century and the outbreak of the Second World War.

These were the books that were introducing Africa and Asia to the school boys who were to become the colonial administrators and business men responsible for overseeing our dual mandate.

We have spent much of today talking about refugees in southern Africa, refugees who have been spawned by the war in the sub-continent, which has produced its toll of misery and suffering and death. By and large, we have been talking about people who have been displaced from their homes as a result of war and political upheaval, though sometimes it is difficult to separate out the political from the economic. In an immediate sense, of course, South Africa has also generated its political refugees - the thousands of children who fled Soweto after the massacre of 1976 were but the last and the most numerous and most dramatic of the recent refugees to have fled from South Africa for overtly political reasons - some to join the liberation movements and fight from outside, some simply to escape the fate they feared if they remained behind.

The Library of the Royal Commonwealth Society, founded in 1868, has built up a very substantial collection on Nigeria over the years, and therefore had a good basis on which to undertake responsibility for that country, under the SCOLMA scheme, in 1964. A progress report was made in April 1969 and published in Conference on the Acquisition of Material from Africa, I.D.C. 1969, pp.88-90, also R.C.S. Library Notes, new series No.152, August 1969. Many of the problems described therein still apply, but the following summary outlines the position at the close of 1975.

Though the main purpose of the scheme is to acquire material published in the country concerned, the Library endeavours to obtain significant material published outside Nigeria, and this is relatively easy.