As newly independent states of Africa are coming to grips with the pressing economic problems which they inherited, and as new problems arise, the need for economic co-operation, on a multilateral, regional, or even a continental basis suggests itself with increasing urgency. Some of the existing organisations are making modest headway. Others are encountering severe weather over a variety of issues and difficulties. It was one of the major aims of this international seminar to provide a non-political forum for the fruitful exchange of views, and an opportunity for the continuation of old, as well as the establishment of new, contacts between government officials and scholars from various parts of the world, and to attempt to relate to Africa the accumulated experiences of schemes of economic co-operation in various parts of the world. The seminar was sponsored jointly by the Congress for Cultural Freedom and the host college—University College, Nairobi.

The second biennial plenary conference of the African Studies Association of the United Kingdom benefited greatly from the admirable arrangements made by the Centre of African Studies, University of Edinburgh. The conference was attended by upwards of 100 members and observers. Countries represented, in addition to the United Kingdom, included Canada, Denmark, Ghana, Jamaica, Kenya, Nigeria, Swaziland, Uganda, and the United States.

The Centre africain de formation et de recherche administratives pourle développement (C.A.F.R.A.D.) is an Institute for African Training and Research in Administration for Development, which held its first seminar in February 1966, on the problems of co-ordination of government departments in economic affairs. This led to an examination of the problems posed by the breaking down of administration outside the capital into smaller units, which was the main theme of the November seminar.

A volume is being prepared, under the over-all guidance and editorship of Gottfried O. Lang and Peter F. M. McLoughlin, on progress among the Sukuma, Tanzania's largest tribal group. The book is both historical and interdisciplinary, covering aspects of geography, economics, agricultural economics, anthropology, political science, sociology, and history. Occupying some 20,000 square miles east and south of Lake Victoria, the Sukuma own approximately one-fifth of Tanzania's livestock and produce most of the country's cotton, the second largest export by value. Chapters will pay particular attention to the factors which have been responsible for Sukumaland's positive economic, social, and political changes, as well as to those elements which have precluded or delayed change. The orientation is practical; development experience will be analysed so that current and future policies and procedures may profit from a more precise definition of trends, problems, and prospects. An appendix will synthesise contributors, research methodologies, techniques, and problems.

The eighth in this series of seminars arranged by the International African Institute, with the assistance of a grant from the Ford Foundation, was held at Haile Selassie I University by courtesy of its President, Lij Cassa Wolde Mariam, through the co-operation of the Faculty of Law and the Institute of Ethiopian Studies.

The Standing Conference on Library Materials on Africa (S.C.O.L.M.A.) was established in 1962 to improve the coverage of publications needed for African studies, by co-ordinating their acquisition and facilitating their use through bibliographic and other projects. Surveys in progress of periodicals and debates published in Africa have confirmed that there are substantial gaps in U.K. holdings of African material. Libraries collect the important publications from the regions in which they are interested, and thus acquire a great deal of the same material, but financial and other considerations prevent them from obtaining material which is less important but still of value for research.

The Institute of African Studies at Fourah Bay College organised a symposium on the city of Freetown which brought together scholars from a wide range of disciplines to discuss the history and present social and economic structure of Freetown, under the joint directorship of Professor Eldred Jones, head of the Department of English at Fourah Bay College, and Christopher Fyfe, Reader in African History at Edinburgh University. A similar project on Ibadan was undertaken at the Institute of African Studies at the University there in 1963 and the collected papers are soon to be published by Cambridge University Press under the editorship of Peter Lloyd, Akin Mabogunje, and Bolanle Awe. More recently the University of Dakar held a series of discussions about Dakar and the resulting papers are to be published by Présence Africaine.

This conference was sponsored by the University College Nairobi, with the generous assistance of the Dulverton Trust and the Ford Foundation. The 82 participants included academic staff from the University Colleges of Nairobi, Makerere, and Dar es Salaam, and their associated research institutes, ministers and senior civil servants from the three East African governments, representatives of F.A.O., I.L.O., and a number of national and international aid agencies, and officials concerned with rural development programmes in East Africa, Nigeria, France, Denmark, and West Germany.

The judgment of the International Court of Justice of 18 July 1966 in the South-West Africa case throws revealing light on the role of that Court in the international community. A proper analysis of this case may also help to dispel some of the mystification about international law and the attitude of the new nations to it.

This conference was held at Achimota under the auspices of the three Institutes of Public Administration at Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, at the University of Ife, and in Ghana. The planning committee comprised F. G. Brown (Zaria), R. S. Butler (Ibadan), G. R. Dennison (Achimota), J. Nti (Achimota), and J. H. Smith (Kaduna). Visiting participants came from a number of African countries, including Nigeria, Liberia, Niger, Ethiopia, Sudan, and Somalia. The U.N. Economic Commission for Africa was represented by the Chief of its Public Administration Section. The Assistant Director of the Institute of Public Administration, Dublin, and the Director of Studies of the Royal Institute of Public Administration, London, also attended and took an active part in the conference. Understandably, the largest contingent came from Ghana (27 out of a total of 36), of whom, apart from those associated with the Institute of Public Administration, most were senior civil servants, with a few staff members from the Universit of Ghana and the University College of Cape Coast.

This conference brought together over 70 social scientists from the Kenyan, Tanzanian, and Ugandan constituent Colleges of the University of East Africa (with visitors from Zambia, Ethiopia, Sierra Leone, and Rhodesia) for their annual inter-disciplinary, or rather trans-disciplinary, deliberations. Why ‘trans-disciplinary’? Because the historians discussed nationalism, politics, and church movements; political scientists discoursed on economics, rural settlement, agriculture, and education; sociologists criticised political decisions and economic criteria which hampered their investigations into resettlement programmes; and the economists, while speaking mostly about economics, were represented at virtually all panels, apparently to guard their disciplinary preserve against intrusions, presumptions and, in one case, elision with political science.

Specialised semi-autonomous institutions for the training of civil servants have been set up in almost all independent countries of Africa. They are another symbol of independence, and the goals of independence could not be reached without the African civil servants they train. Because many of the needs of nation-building are the same, there are similarities between the Ecoles nationales d'administration (ENA's) in French-speaking countries and the Institutes of Public Administration (IPA's) in English-speaking countries; but the programmes and organisation of each language group reflect different colonial traditions, educational systems, and current policies regarding civil service development.

The governments of Africa, in planning for economic and social development, have become increasingly aware that they can no longer afford to treat population as an exogenous variable. They have begun to study the component variables of population change, and their interrelationships, and have paid special attention to the critical role of fertility.

This seminar, jointly sponsored by Syracuse University and the University College, Dar es Salaam, was attended by East African civil servants, staff members of the three Colleges, and research workers from the multidisciplinary Syracuse University Village Settlement Project in Tanzania. While some general ideas about rural development were presented, notably by Anthony Rweyemamu in his paper ‘On the Concept of Development from Below’, the main focus was on settlement schemes, in particular Tanzania's pilot village settlements.