Before Sir Alec Douglas-Home made his extended visit to Salisbury in November 1971, an advance British team led by a noted lawyer, Lord Goodman, had made at least four trips to Rhodesia to discuss with the Smith regime the general points which would then form the basis for a settlement. With both Britain and Rhodesia eager to settle the six-year old dispute which had caused injury to the former’s international image (particularly within the commonwealth) and had brought Rhodesia to the brink of economic disaster, Goodman’s mission seemed destined to succeed. In fact, during and following his talks, a lot of optimism said to be founded on leaks of information from well-placed sources in both Salisbury and London was expressed.

Support for academic African language programs (ALPs) in the US began at the national level with the National Defense Education Act of 1958 (renamed the Higher Education Act of 1965). The goal of this legislation was to establish a world-wide language and area studies knowledge base that could be called upon in the event of conflict, but in addition it has provided generations of students a wealth of knowledge about the less commonly taught languages (LCTLs) and the communities where they are spoken. Although the Africa region’s share of this support has hovered around 12%, its effect has been substantial. For example, based on a world-wide listing of Africanist linguists, approximately half of these specialists live in Africa, with the remainder being equally divided between the countries of Europe and the US, a remarkable fact given that the US has no colonial legacy in Africa. Title VI of this legislation supports a set of National Resource Centers (NRCs) that promote language and area study of a specific region including Africa.

A social scientist once described Nigerian political behavior and culture in terms of a continual ability to move dangerously closest to the edge of disaster before pulling back just in time to avoid falling into the deep. Nigerians in high and low places have a passion for insisting on the absolute rightness of their positions and claims sometimes with little regard to the consequences for others as well as for themselves. Sometimes groups in the nation act as if they will rather be dead right than heed the political necessity of mutual accommodation and prudent compromise. The Daily Times Opinion of April 29, recalls Thomas Hobbes, the English philosopher (1588-1679) when it declared that “Nigerians are brutish and nasty. They are contentious and cantankerous. They are irreverent. And they are ungovernable. . . . [They] are an intensely political people, the more so today, when the promise of a return to civilian government has understandably led to the flexing of muscles by all manner of interest groups.” This is national high-wire politics at its best! But it is also dangerous politics at its worst. It reflects an ingrained political attitude about which more should be learned.

South Africa’s system of apartheid and policy of separate development is unique among nations. Apartheid is the pervasive institutionalization of discrimination by law on the basis of race; separate development would deny South African citizenship to the blacks of South Africa. A central goal of U.S. policy with respect to South Africa is to encourage that country to end apartheid and grant full political participation to all its peoples. This key policy is diametrically opposed to the position of the government of South Africa.

Despite the increasing effort of Africanist scholars, and particularly historians, to decolonize African history by focusing greater attention on the role of Africans than Europeans in the unfolding of African history, historical interest in the influence of Europeans in Africa remains. This is perhaps reflected in the continuing appearance of studies devoted to European activities in Africa. However, there are those who, perhaps justifiably, question the need or value for such studies, given the trend in African studies today to de-emphasize imperial history and to accent “real” African history (Ranger, 1979; Bennett, 1981). Yet there are others who argue, rather persuasively, that studies of European activities in Africa should still be encouraged either because we do not as yet know all that we need to know about Europeans in Africa (Ranger and Weller, 1975), or because we now have ample data with which to reconsider aspects of European presence in Africa (Hopkins, 1976). Indeed, seen from this perspective of revisionist historiography, some of the recent studies of Europeans in Africa not only enhance our knowledge of the dynamics of African and European interaction but also enable us to either reject or modify many of the familiar assumptions and theories about Europeans in Africa (Hopkins, 1976; Ranger, 1979; Igbafe, 1979; Newbury, 1978).

It is indeed against this background of revisionist historiography that this present essay is attempted. It seeks, on the one hand, to reconsider the popular image of European colonial administrators as men who were characteristically genial, kindhearted, and unselfishly dedicated to the welfare of their African wards (Burns, 1949; Heussler, 1963; Bradley, 1966; Gann and Duignan, 1978).

Most of the Fellows of the African Studies Association have participated in at least one Peace Corps training program, so that they have an interest in, and opinions on, this subject. The present article summarizes the major factors of training programs, outlines the main characteristics of the projects in Africa and of the volunteers, and then considers some aspects of the relationship between the Peace Corps and the universities. Finally, there is a detailed summary of all Peace Corps training programs for Africa, from the first one in June 1961 through the summer of 1965. Forty-four different universities, colleges, or other organizations have produced 132 programs for 19 different African countries, and some 6,000 volunteers have successfully completed the training and gone to serve with the Peace Corps in Africa (the usual service period spent in Africa is two years).

The first step in the establishment of a training program is a discussion between an interested university and the Training Division of the Peace Corps, followed by a series of negotiations which culminate in a formal contract. The contract specifies the duration of the program, the number and educational background of trainees, the faculty who will participate, the details of phases of training, and the country and project for which the trainees are being prepared. An important part of the contract is the budget, the cost generally being a little more than $200 per trainee per week.

The African student studying about Africa in the United States participates in two communities. The first community is the academic one in which studies of Africa are pursued; the second community is the existential one with which the individual identifies outside academe—most often the country of origin or the continent in general. (By existential community I mean the community to which the student has profound personal ties, such as family and friendships, and an enduring commitment.) Each community has its own values, commitments, and immediate agendas. As a member of the academic community, the African student must contribute to theoretical advancement; and, as a privileged member of an existential community, he or she must contribute to the development process.

The situation of human rights in Africa evokes the image of a parasitic vine, growing rapidly, its tentacles reaching into every crack, to wedge it open further, its broad leaves shading the ground and preventing healthy plants from maturing. This vine of human rights violations has its main root system in the epoch of colonialism and it is fed abundantly by the waters of neocolonialism. In order to cut back this tangle of violations, to eradicate it so that human rights and the rule of law and justice can flourish, it is not enough to hack at the branches. We must discover its roots and pull them up.

Traditional African art for the most part was more closely integrated with other aspects of life than those which might be described as purely esthetic. Art for art's sake — as a governing esthetic concept—seems not to have existed in Africa. Indeed, the more closely an art form is related to a major non-esthetic aspect of culture such as religion, the more distant it is from such separatist philosophical concepts.

In fact traditional Africati sculpture might best be described as based on a concept of art-for-life's sake. It was, in most cases, closely allied to those cultural mechanisms dedicated to the maintenance of order and well being. In short, sculpture was oriented to those social values upon which depended the sense of individual and tribal security.

These values were often formalized in exceedingly practical and commonsense terms, as is demonstrated in this Bambara prayer addressed to the ancestors:

I sacrifice this hen to you in the name of my children and myself. Protect us from all evil. Give us rain at the time the rains begin; give us a good harvest, a happy old age, women, children and the health to cultivate our fields. Do not be angry with us. We love you, we honor you. Be happy during your sojourn in Lehara, the realm of the invisible. (Kjersmeier 1935: 15).

Sierra Leone is one of the more important rice-producing and consuming countries in West Africa. Sierra Leone was an exporter of rice in the early 1950's. Since 1955 the agricultural sector has not been able to meet domestic needs; Imports from 1960 to 1970 averaged $2.7 million annually (USDA 1968, p. 18). The need to import rice has continued in spite of governmental efforts to increase domestic production through a price-support program, fertilizer subsidization, land clearing, a heavily subsidized mechanical-plowing scheme, and the development of the Rice Corporation, which is legally responsible for controlling imports, providing for adequate distribution of rice throughout the country, establishing centers for collection, purchase, storage, and sale of rice, and setting the price for imported rice.

Self-sufficiency in rice production has become the central focus of the national agricultural policy as established by the Government of Sierra Leone. With this as a policy framework, this paper first summarizes recent research related to the economics of rice production in Sierra Leone. Second, it outlines four possible strategies to increase rice output, in the context of both micro and macro costs. The four strategies examined include (1) improved extensive cultivation with existing levels of capital inputs, especially tools and equipment; (2) extensive cultivation based upon the broader development of rice lands suitable for partial mechanical cultivation; (3) intensive cultivation of inland-valley swamps developed primarily with family labor; and (4) intensive cultivation of mangrove and associated swamps requiring external expenditures for land development.

Higher education in Africa has gone from favored focus to disparaged wastrel to development engine in two decades.

—Joel Samoff and Bidemi Carroll

First and foremost, this is an impressive piece of scholarship. It provides an invaluable framework for the study of the ever-evolving relationship between universities in Africa and the diverse, not to say motley, set of external institutions (academic and financial) that have worked with them from the time of independence to the present. As a comprehensive and largely descriptive account it covers rather fully the variety of issues that have emerged in the course of these relationships and pulls together much important information and many of the sources from which future scholarship can depart. It represents in itself a major and impressive piece of research and compilation and goes far to fulfilling its expressed aim: “to provide the foundation for frank debates about the merits, modes, and pitfalls of partnerships” (p. 72).

The report is analytical in the sense of identifying issues, but judicious in seeking balanced comment, and because it is careful to avoid judgments, it steers clear of provocation. For this reader, and no doubt for others who lived and worked throughout much of the period being described, it also has an inevitable biographical quality. For that reason I had expected to be taking issue with some, if not a great deal, of its content. Not so! Because of the circumspection, the balanced perspective, and the careful restraint with which issues are presented, it is hard to disagree fundamentally with much of the account.