In the course of several field studies carried out during 1978–9 on behalf of the Working Group on Recurrent Costs established by the Comité Inter-états de Lutte contre la Sécheresse dans le Sahel and the Club du Sahel, it became clear that imperfect functioning of domestic capital markets hampers the efforts of Sahelian governments to raise domestic non-tax resources for budget finance. Inasmuch as the operation and maintenance of development projects compete for a severely limited pool of uncommitted government revenues – that is, revenues not committed to debt service, meeting the civil service payroll, and other inflexible obligations – reforms that augment this pool are of particular interest from the viewpoint of ensuring that these projects function properly once established.

A University must grow from seed. It cannot be transplanted from England or Germany in full leaf and bearing … When the American University appears, it will not be a copy of foreign institutions but the slow and natural outgrowth of American social and political habits.

This quotation from C. W. Eliot, who was President of Harvard University nearly 100 years ago, provided Sir Eric Ashby with the starting text for his recent Godkin Lectures at Harvard, which have since been published under the title African Universities and Western Tradition. Ashby is concerned with the process through which the universities in Africa, still very much western transplantations, will develop into genuine national universities. He seeks to extend Eliot's prophecy to the universities of Africa, to test there its applicability and its implications.

With respect to investment in education, two important questions need to be examined. The first is concerned with the amount to be invested in primary and secondary schools, and the institutions of higher learning, and the second relates to the distribution of total costs among the state, private institutions, and those who receive education.

This short article first evaluates the existing formal educational system in Sierra Leone with the help of the cost-benefit technique. In order to obtain guidelines for future investment policies the internal social rates of return are computed for the various levels of education. Then the supply and demand of trained personnel are estimated for the period 1975–9 on the basis of the following classification: (i) high level (those with university education), (ii) middle level (those with some secondary education and technical/vocational training), and (iii) primary- and secondary-school teachers. The projections show that shortages will occur in all three groups during the next five years, above all at the middle level where a 70 per cent increase in the expected supply will be necessary to meet the requirements.

It would be naïve to suppose that any one variable could ensure the success of planned change. The factors contributing to failure and success are numerous, and the possible interrelations between them immensely complex. The acceptability of the innovator is therefore no more than a small part of the success of a development project. But, if the analysis of one specific example of this single factor allows a better understanding of one necessary condition of change, it will also increase the possibility of control over one potential area of failure.

The concern with the impact of industrial property legislation and practices on the developing countries, at both the national and international levels, has so far been confined almost entirely to patents and patent-related transactions. This focus on the protection of knowledge concerning production processes reflects, on the one hand, a preoccupation with the terms and conditions which owners of technology may be able to obtain for its sale or lease, when their proprietary position is reinforced by legal instruments; and on the other hand, a recognition that unless the developing countries can themselves control the generation of a significant proportion of the technology they employ, it is unlikely either that appropriate technology will be produced, or that good use will be made of what is already available and relevant.

This paper seeks to broaden the framework for understanding the many different roles that traditional leaders play in their communities in sub-Saharan Africa. Using data from an original public opinion survey along the Ghana–Togo border, we find that one of the most important roles of the chieftaincy is to maintain law and order: resolving disputes and keeping the community safe from crime. However, we also find considerable variation in what chiefs are expected to do, how effective they are performing their various tasks, and how much authority they wield in doing so – both over their own subjects as well as over local government officials. We explore several potential sources for this variation, finding that chiefs in Ghana, a former British colony, are expected to do more jobs, are perceived to be more effective, and hold more upward power over local state officials compared with their counterparts in Togo, a former French colony.

On 11 November 1965, the Government of Rhodesia, firm in its resolve to maintain minority racial rule by persons of European descent, abrogated the colonial constitution then in effect and declared its independence of Great Britain. The works under review in this essay examine the dilemmas of Zambian leaders, on the one hand, and loyalist members of the Rhodesian judiciary as well as the loyalist governor of Rhodesia, on the other.

This article examines aspects of Zambian industry, particularly the difficulties caused recently by its high level of dependence. Around 1975, problems of output and employment became acute, and the manifest cause was insufficient foreign exchange. Copper sales still provide almost all of Zambia's foreign exchange; the price fell dramatically in 1970, and recoveries throughout the decade were short-lived or partial.1 At the same time, Zambia's major industries – mining, manufacturing, and commercial farming – have developed with a crucial dependence on both imported inputs and expatriate skills.

Bang in the middle of a dialogue now going on about African culture—its roots, its contemporary values and relevance, and its future—Chemchemi Creative Centre has been born. This has come into our midst as a sister to the three Mbari writers' and artists' clubs in Nigeria; it will be inspired by the same aims, although the methods of achieving them will obviously be guided by local national conditions.

Of all works of literature, the novel is the most referential, the most discursive, and the most elusive. According to Philip Stevick's analysis, the novel, more than any other genre, is capable of containing large, developed consistent images of people, and can give form to a set of attitudes regarding a particular society, history, or the general culture of which it is an important part.1 David Daiches is accurate in pointing out the closeness of this relationship between the novel and its milieu: ‘Civilization is the attitudes and actions of people, and fiction uses these… as the raw material out of which to construct the kind of pattern we call a novel. No other art does this quite so directly.2