This article is based on researches, undertaken in 1930-1 at the request of the Nigerian Government, into the magico-religious beliefs of the Umundri group of Ibo in the Awka Division, Onitsha Province, Southern Nigeria. Umundri means ‘children of Ndri’ (a ‘Sky-Being’).

The development of large centralized states in West Africa has long been recognized. The complexity of organization of the few well-known kingdoms, but not their differences in size and structure, is constantly emphasized in the literature. The number and variety of West African groups which have not developed states have, on the other hand, frequently been underestimated. In a comparative review by Professors Fortes and Evans-Pritchard two types of political system, centralized and segmentary, have been described for Africa as a whole, with examples of each in West Africa. A survey of West African societies suggests, however, that finer distinctions are possible and that not all these societies can be placed in one or other of these two categories. In particular, this classification omits consideration of ‘stateless’ societies in which associations, rather than a segmentary lineage system, regulate political relations; and it fails to distinguish different types of authority and political structure in states.

The type of village polyandry described in this paper is found among the Lele, and possibly among other peoples, living between the Kwilu and the Kasai in the western Belgian Congo. The Pende, the Bunda, and the Dinga are reported to have a similar custom. There is a government ordinance prohibiting polyandry among these tribes, and I have followed this legal precedent in calling the practice polyandry, for lack of a better title. The Lele call it hohombe, or ngalababola, which means ‘wife of the village’. As the hohombe institution is closely connected with village life and politics, I shall begin by giving an outline of village conditions.

L'institut International Africain me fait un grand honneur en m'invitant à prendre la parole ici. J'y suis très sensible. Je ne saurais mieux vous remercier qu'en célébrant la mémoire de Lord Lugard.

Il y a quelque trente ans, dans la seconde décade du XXème siècle, un jeune administrateur des colonies françaises qui était désigné pour servir au Territoire du Niger, recevait par là même un rare privilège: celui de traverser la Nigéria britannique, du sud au nord, de Lagos à Kano.

The society to which this paper refers is a Nilo-Hamitic tribe of north-western Kenya among whose people, the Pokot, I carried out field-work for a period of approximately 6 months in 1947. For the opportunity to do so I am indebted to the Government of Kenya.

The population of West Suk does not exceed 25,000 but is dispersed over an area of 1,810 square miles. The eastern and western sections of this tribe are composed of semi-nomadic pastoralists, the pi-pa-tich (cattle people) who live in arid and often semi-desert plains. Between the plains rise the Suk Hills, inhabited by the pi-pa-pagh (people of the grain) who, in certain areas, practise intensive irrigation agriculture and in others follow the usual ecological pattern of the mixed-economy Kipsigis and Nandi. The hill people have close cultural affinities with the Nandi group, while the pastoralists have been strongly influenced by their Karamojong and Turkana neighbours.

The following features of the sapana initiation ceremony were isolated in my first article.

(1) This ceremony is held towards the end of the rainy season as often as there are candidates for initiation; (2) each candidate is, usually, initiated separately; and (3) the immediate effect of this ceremony is not so much to integrate the initiate into a new corporate group, as to permit him to participate in some of the activities of manhood.

The initiated are divided into various ranks of seniority, and passage from the lower to the immediately higher rank is the result of a specific initiation ceremony. The main difference between such a ceremony and that of sapana is that sapana admits initiates to manhood individually whereas the ceremonies which follow it raise a whole group of initiated men through a series of progressively senior age-ranks. They function, that is, as parts of a true age-set mechanism. The moment a man enters one of these strata, his vertical age-mobility is conditioned by their movements, and individual transition is no longer possible.

Dans un article intitule ‘Un Gnomon soudanais’ nous avons relevé l'existence et l'emploi du gnomon chez les Bambara du Soudan Français. Il n'est pas sans intérêt de présenter également la notion que ce peuple a de l'écliptique. Des idées similaires se retrouvent à ce sujet chez les Dogon; sans essayer de faire du comparatisme qui peut être fallacieux, nous mettrons en regard, cependant, cette notion astronomique commune aux deux peuples qui, démographiquement et spirituellement, témoignent d'une même origine.

When the bi-sexual deity of the cosmos Nyame Amowia, visible as the moon, gave birth to the Sun god, she gave him her kra, her eternal soul or life-giving power; hence his name, the Only Great Nyame (Nyame; ko- only; pɔn- great) generally drawn together as Nyankopɔn. The kra is also envisaged as bi-sexual; its female aspect is believed to be the substance or body of the moon and sun, i.e. fire, while its male aspect is the spirit, the essence, the spiritual, or that which is truly divine.

In this article I give an account of some features and forms of sacrifices among the Nuer of the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan. It is intended to fill a gap in a series of articles designed to cover various aspects of the religion of this people. The central act of Nuer religious ritual is sacrifice, and all their sacrifices have this in common, that they are a means of making contact with spiritual beings. Those of which I speak more particularly in this article have further in common that they are made when a misfortune has happened or threatens and with the purpose of propitiating whatever spiritual being is responsible for it, though the sense of propitiation may be more marked in some sacrifices than in others and may combine with other elements in various configurations of meaning.

The Ethiopian script as known to us today is a quasi-syllabic script, each character consisting of one consonant followed by a vowel (or zero). This system developed in the 3rd and 4th centuries A.D.; we are, however, in possession of some inscriptions in which the early purely consonantal form of the Ethiopian alphabet has survived.

When the Semites from South Arabia crossed the Bābel Mandeb and immigrated into that part of North-East Africa which is today the Tigre province of Ethiopia and Southern Eritrea, the South Arabian alphabet which they brought with them was, perhaps, the most important innovation they introduced into Africa. This South Arabian alphabet belongs to the Southern branch of the Semitic script, but we are still not quite certain at what time it severed its connexion with the Northern alphabet.

This paper is concerned with an examination of the usage of a Dinka word, apeth which may be translated either as ‘witch’ or as ‘witchcraft’. These English words, however, only roughly set the limits of its meaning, which are here more precisely indicated by a consideration of the contexts in which the Dinka use it.

Les Nkundo ou Mɔngɔ forment une ethnie importante de la cuvette centrale du Congo beige. Ce sont des patriarcaux. Pendant vingt ans j'ai habité parmi leurs tribus du centre-ouest.

Ankole is a district in the south-west of the Uganda Protectorate. Its inhabitants, as a result of fifty years of British administration, are being gradually welded together into one people, the Banyankole. There are, however, two distinct ethnic groups in the country: the Bantu aborigines who till the soil and the cattlekeeping Bahima. The latter were Hamitic invaders from the north, who brought with them their own long-horned cattle, easily distinguishable from the small shorthorned zebu type found already in the country. Their one aim in life was and is the well-being of their herds.

A Detailed description of a kind of joking relationship among the Ambo is welcome for several reasons. The institution of funeral friendship is found in the cultures of a far wider region than that indicated by the writer. Not only do the tribes of the Bemba and Nyanja groups associate partnership in funeral obligations with freedom of mutual abuse, but this is also culturally accepted widely in Tanganyika and Portuguese East Africa. It seems that from the Zambezi in the south to Lake Tanganyika, and from the east coast to the Luangwa river, are to be found the main elements of the institution described for the Ambo. Hitherto they have been known by their vernacular names: banungwe for the Bemba, uzukuru for the Nyanja, Tumbuka and Lake Shore Tonga, mwilo for the Yao, utani for the Ngoni and neighbouring tribes of Tanganyika. In every case funeral obligations mutually accepted are made the basis of an alliance between persons belonging to different clans, or even to different tribes.

The Institute's Executive Council met this year in London and, in more than one respect, this occasion was a notable one. 1951 being the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Institute's foundation, it was felt that the event called for celebration and commemoration, and this note was struck by the Minister of State, in opening the proceedings of the Council, by the Chairman and by the Administrative Director in his report on the Institute's activities, which is published in full below.

In 1936 the Royal Empire Society of Great Britain published African Native Music: An Annotated Bibliography, by Douglas H. Varley. This work fulfilled a long-standing need felt by ethnomusicologists, and particularly those emphasizing the study of African music, for, carefully, done and well annotated, it provided an excellent reference volume for students in the field. The present bibliography represents an extension of Varley's work, listing the books and articles published on African and African-derived music since 1936, as well as a few references omitted from the original volume. While it can by no means be said that the present work includes all references to African music over the past 15 years, it is felt that the major portion of those works has been listed. At the same time, since the listing is small it has not been classified by problems and areas as was the original compilation.

The subsistence economy of the Yoruba of West Africa, like that of their neighbours, on the Guinea Coast, is based on sedentary hoe agriculture. Hunting, fishing, animal husbandry, and the gathering of wild foods are practised, but the basis of the Yoruba diet consists of starchy tubers, grains, and fruits grown on their farms, supplemented by vegetable oils, wild and cultivated fruits and vegetables, and meat and fish. The commercial economy of the Yoruba is based on cocoa (koko, from English) Theobroma cacao, originally native to Central America, which has become the principal cash crop of the Yoruba during the present century. Today Nigeria's major export, cocoa, is produced almost entirely by the Yoruba. More than 99 per cent, of the total tonnage of Nigerian cocoa graded in 1940-1 was produced in Yoruba territory, only 741 out of 97,862 tons coming from Benin and Warri provinces. First exported in the last decade of the nineteenth century, cocoa has increased in importance until in 1947 it ranked first among Nigeria's exports in terms of value. It is the principal cash crop in Ǫyǫ, Ondo, Ijębu-Ode and Abęokuta provinces and part of the Colony, all of which are inhabited by the Yoruba.