Since the first Africa grants were made in 1958 ($ 300,000 distributed amongst Nigeria, Uganda, and what was then Tanganyika), The Ford Foundation has invested more than $ 56 million in African development, including nearly $ 34 million in African education. In recent years, educational support grants have been made in seventeen African countries, although major commitments have been concentrated in a half dozen of these: the Federation of Nigeria, the Republic of the Congo, Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, and Ethiopia. In each of these, the Foundation has been concerned in an important way with university development and frequently with the educational system as a whole.

Of the total Ford Foundation investment in African education, approximately $ 14 million has gone into West Africa, $ 3 million into Central Africa, and $ 8 million into East Africa. An additional $ 9 million has supported educational projects of a Pan-African or regional nature. In a majority of instances, these grants have been accompanied by technical assistance projects and the provision of advisory personnel.

All of this represents a very considerable private effort, but it is small when measured against needs. Indeed, to face the massive educational problems of the new African states, even from the outside, is a somewhat harrowing experience. For all practical purposes, requirements in terms of both money and manpower are infinite. Nowhere in the world is the gap between aspirations and the means to realize them so great; and where so much has been left undone for so long there is a credible impatience with delay. This situation--and the political pressures to which it gives rise--confronts Ministries of Education with a whole series of Hobsonesque choices. It also raises problems of priorities in a particularly acute form for external assistance agencies, including foundations.

The conference, sponsored by the African Research Committee and the African Studies Group of the University of Wisconsin--Milwaukee, was held June 2-4, 1966, at the Kenwood Conference Center, Milwaukee. Conferees were as follows: D. W. Griffin (University of California, Los Angeles); Peter C. W. Gutkind (McGill University): Ruth Simms Hamilton (Iowa State University); George Jenkins (University of Wisconsin--Milwaukee); G. Wesley Johnson (Stanford University); John Paden (Northwestern University); Michael Safier (University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee); Henry J. Schmandt (University of Wisconsin--Milwaukee); W. M. Swanson (Yale University); and Alvin Wolfe (Washington University).

African urban studies are on the verge of escape from scarcity into bulky unintelligibility. At least sixteen books are being prepared by Americans for publication; most of them are single-instance studies by junior scholars, although six of them will present comparable materials gathered according to the “Bohannan plan.” (See African Urban Notes, I [April 1966], 1). In addition, some thirty Americans and Africans are presently in Africa or writing dissertations based on field research, and at least twenty more Americans are planning field research. Furthermore, the ARC conferences on unemployment, the West Indian Ocean area, geography, and migration have recommended still more urban research. Although this does not mean that a surfeit is threatened in any sector of urban studies, African urban research will probably be marked for some time by increasing descriptive affluence and continuing theoretical poverty. The essential need in this area of African studies is to provide for more meaningful development of a sizable movement whose momentum seems assured for the immediate future.

This article, the first of a series of three, is a checklist of French institutions outside of Paris which undertake research or documentation activities on the African continent. The second article will list institutions in the Paris area; and the third, unaffiliated periodicals.

Although many of the scholars and librarians interviewed expressed a growing interest in other parts of the continent, the major focus of activity remains “Afrique francophone,” i.e., the former French colonies south of the Sahara and Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia. A few centers, following the lead of the Secrétariat d'Etat chargé de la Coopération, are also interested in the former Belgian colonies.

The material is based on a series of field trips to Le Havre, Lyon, Marseille, Aix-en-Provence, and Bordeaux between September 1965 and April 1966, extensive correspondence, and research in relevant reference works when necessary. The centers visited were without exception extremely helpful and were interested to know more about research on Africa in the United States.

The earliest interest in Africa among institutions of higher education in the United States was probably that of denominational colleges which trained missionaries for Africa and other areas. But their motivation was to bring the fruits of Western civilization to non-Western areas, and this had no effect on the college curriculum of the nineteenth century. The missionary interest has continued in at least one major African studies program. The Hartford Seminary Foundation offers courses on missionary problems, African religions, and Christianity in Africa. It also teaches several African languages.

Northwestern University has had an interest in African anthropology which dates back to 1927. No available information, however, has revealed whether courses then offered included the study of Africa.

During World War II, there was an abortive attempt to organize an International Conference on Africa, and just after the war, an instructor at Colby Junior College included the study of African literature in an English course. The Carnegie Corporation aided the development of African studies by extending their grants for area studies to the African field, giving funds for fellowships and sending small groups of scholars to Africa for “look-see” tours. Superficial as these tours may have been, a number of their participants later became Africanists.

Bibliographical research on Mali must begin with the monumental Bibliographie générale du Mali, prepared by Paule Brasseur (Dakar, IFAN, 1964). The present essay is in no way a substitute for such a basic volume. It is an attempt to introduce the reader to some of the best and most important works concerning Mali, at the same time stressing materials that have appeared in English or since the publication of the Brasseur work.

Neither the Brasseur bibliography nor this essay takes adequate account of the manuscript sources in Peul and Arabic concerning the western Sudan. Still in private hands or in the archives of Paris, Dakar, Zaria, Kano, Ibadan, or Timbuktu, these manuscripts are largely unclassified and unstudied. Once analyzed, they will provide an important source for the study of Malian history. Vincent Monteil, “Les manuscrits historiques arabo-africains,” Bulletin de l'IFAN, série B, XXVII, No. 3-4 (July-October 1965), 531-542, surveys efforts being made to collect and classify such manuscripts in West Africa. H. F. C. Smith, “The Archives of Segu,” Bulletin of News of the Historical Society of Nigeria, Supplement to Vol. IV, No. 2 (September 1959), presents a brief analysis of some of the great collection of manuscripts captured by Archinard in 1890 and now in the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris. In addition, in “Source Material for the History of the Western Sudan,” Journal of the Historical Society of Nigeria, I, No. 3 (December 1958), 238-248, Smith surveys significant materials from the Gironcourt Collection, in the Institut de France, Paris. This is updated by him in “Nineteenth-Century Arabic Archives of West Africa,” Journal of African History, III, No. 2 (1962), 333-336, a brief listing of literary works, diplomatic correspondence between West African emirates, etc.