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.

Sociolinguistics is a recently developed subject of interdisciplinary study in the social sciences. Joseph H. Greenberg has indicated the scope of this field and its relevance to African studies in general in his contribution to Robert A. Lystad's The African World: A Survey of Social Research (New York, Praeger, 1965; p. 427). He includes in sociolinguistics such topics as “the relation of language differences to social class; the differential social roles of different languages co-existing in the same society; the development and spread of lingua francas as auxiliary languages in multilingual situations; the factors involved in the differential prestige ratings of languages; the role of language as a sign of ethnic identification; language in relation to nationalism; and problems of language policy, e.g., in education.” Africa, with its emerging nations, is an ideal area for such research, since the development of new nations entails problems which sociolinguistic studies are particularly fit to solve. Much of the linguistic work done in the colonial era and even in more recent years is inadequate, because of lack of reference to the relevant social context. With regard to this situation, the Committee on Sociolinguistic Research in Africa of the ARC considered it advisable to include in the January conference some topics which are usually handled under the headings of ethnolinguistics and psycholinguistics, e.g., the changes induced in one language by contact with another in the context of the general culture-contact situation, including its nonlinguistic aspects, and the problems of attitudes and behavior toward language.

Mr. President, members of the Association, and guests: I regard it as a very great honor to be asked to address this Association. I know what a deep interest you hold in the continent of Africa and of the good that the members of the Association can do in publicizing the needs of and developments in African states. I also appreciate that many of you have personal knowledge of the African scene and I must refrain from the all top usual but reprehensible habit that some politicians indulge in of stretching the truth to suit their own ends. With such a well-informed audience before me, I shall take no risks.

Mr. President, the subject on which I am best qualified to speak is Bechuanaland, and today I would like to talk a little of the current position of Bechuanaland and of our hopes and ambitions for the future.

By September 30, 1966, Bechuanaland will be an independent country. I fear we are going to add to the confusion of the students of geography by following the fashion of changing the name of our country.

The people of Bechuanaland are certainly a “new” nation, as that term is now used. The country, according to its present boundaries, was created a mere seventy years ago. And for the bulk of these seventy years the local African inhabitants played little or no part in the administration of the country. For many years, of course, it was expected that Bechuanaland, along with Basutoland and Swaziland, would become an integral part of the Union, now the Republic, of South Africa. However, the people of Bechuanaland made it quite clear that they had no ambition to become politically integrated with the Republic of South Africa, and although I still occasionally hear it suggested that our future would be best safeguarded if we should become a Bantustan, I can assure you all that that is not where our future lies.

Ours is an association organized on an areal basis. What we have in common is an interest in a particular portion of the earth's surface. Yet every member of the society whether a practicing academician or not bears an affiliation of a different order, namely, membership in one of the standard academic disciplines--sociology, history, anthropology, or some other. This is formally acknowledged by the placing of an appropriate letter abbreviation after each name in our membership list, and it can normally be assigned without hesitation. The latter basis of group identification, that of discipline rather than area, seems in a real sense to be primary. It is older and better established, and, above all, it supplies the very framework of American academic organization, that into departments which normally are distinguished along the lines of division of the disciplines.

True, there are programs of African studies in a number of universities, just as there are other programs, both areal and nonareal. But after a period of initial enthusiasm in some quarters following World War II for the training of areal specialists as such and without primary reference to traditional disciplinary affiliation, it became evident that if a scholar was to be, for example, an Africanist and a sociologist, he should receive his higher degree in a sociology department. He would thus be a sociologist in the broadest sense of the word, but one with a special interest in Africa rather than an Africanist with a greater interest in the sociological than the other aspects of African life. Area study programs thus failed to shake the fundamental organizational basis of American academic life. In fact, today most African programs are interdepartmental as well as interdisciplinary and their staff members are usually at the same time members of established academic departments.

Independence broke the formal political connection between the new African states and their former European colonial administration. The change did not terminate the significance of the ex-colonial language within these African countries. The colonial power had, by both design and necessity, woven its language tightly into the educational and administrative structure of the countries. Even after independence the difficulties facing the adoption of some vernacular seemed insurmountable. Choice of any African language would not only have exacerbated already centrifugal tribal tendencies within the complex racial and linguistic divisions of the country but also have spelled virtual isolation from international affairs. It has generally been accepted in Africa that the use of a European language as the national one does not constitute a neocolonial threat but is essential to the national development.

One of the interesting aspects of the decision to retain a European tongue as a second language has been the beginning of new national literatures--African in theme and content yet utilizing the literary resources of the European language of the country, primarily English and French, to some extent Portuguese. In the case of the English language especially, this is not a new thing. Already there is evidence of a worldwide literature of similar nature from India, from the Philippines, and from the Caribbean. The geographic range and the quantity of such writing are far greater than the uninitiated might conceive.

The African Studies Association was formed in 1958 by thirty-five founding fellows. At that time, African studies in the United States were just beginning to reach hesitantly beyond the half-dozen pioneer university centers in this country. The movement toward African independence was in full swing, but the political future of Africa was still uncertain. A few African universities were already in operation, but the great increase in their numbers was still to come. Even those that did exist were run almost entirely by an expatriate staff and followed European curricula. African participation in African studies was very small indeed. Now, some eight years later, the total membership of the Association is more than 1,200. Universities have sprung up all over Africa, and independence has brought an increasing rate of Africanization both in staff and in curricula. All the older African universities now have some form of African studies center, and the more recent ones were often founded with a built-in emphasis on research and teaching based on their own environment.

These dramatic changes were among those that prompted the President and Board of the Association to seek closer ties with Africanist scholars in Africa. In the summer of 1965, they sent an exploratory mission to Africa to examine possible avenues of cooperation with the Africanists in Africa. The Ford Foundation generously financed the project, and Professor Greenberg appointed two members of the Policies and Plans Committee to undertake it: Professor Hance for Eastern Africa and Professor Curtin for West and West-Central Africa. This report is designed to convey to the membership the findings and recommendations.

The conference was sponsored by the African Research Committee and was held at the Minnowbrook Conference Center of Syracuse University from October 30 to November 2, 1965. The disciplines represented were social and cultural anthropology, musicology, sociology, social psychology, political science, and history. Participants included Philip Allen (Department of State); Frederick Burke (Syracuse University); Remi Clignet (Northwestern University); L. Gray Cowan (Columbia University); Norma McCloud (Tulane University); John Middleton (Northwestern University); Allen Rawick (Library of Congress); Aidan Southall, Chairman (Syracuse University); and Peter Wilson (Yale University).

The conference concentrated its efforts on seeking and sharing a common understanding of the social background of the diverse ocean and island region that includes Madagascar, the Comoros, Mauritius, Réunion, and the Seychelles and on exploring precisely the extent to which linked interdisciplinary and comparative studies would be fruitful. The conference came to a strong and unanimous conclusion that the Western Indian Ocean Region offers the challenging possiblity of a real breakthrough in a number of dissimilar but closely interlocking research interests.

The main recommendations of the conference are as follows:

1. That a rather informal clearinghouse should be established which would institute and maintain contact between social scientists interested in the region and keep them up to date on all relevant plans and work in progress.

2. That a careful and detailed application should be drawn up to obtain funds for carrying out a series of well-balanced and integrated studies, attracting graduate students and training them for further work, securing library resources, and forming appropriate ties with interested scholars and academic institutions overseas.

The area of international programs, as part of a rapidly developing university, has become increasingly important to Michigan State University, in East Lansing, in the last two decades. Faculty research abroad has been a primary factor in the growth of private and federal agency-sponsored technical assistance programs in educational activities overseas. Projects in Turkey, Pakistan, India, Thailand, Vietnam, Taiwan, Okinawa, Guatemala, Colombia, Brazil, and Nigeria have been and are being conducted in the fields of business administration, public administration, agriculture, community development, education, and general university development. Continued outside financial assistance has enabled further enlargement of such programs on the campus as a whole.

The initiation of the African Studies Center at Michigan State University in 1960 owes much to an offer from the U.S. Office of Education to support the teaching of West African languages on campus. By coincidence, this occurred at the same time that the University was engaged in two closely related projects: the ICA (AID) contract of establishing and developing the University of Nigeria at Nsukka and the initiation of a Ford Foundation-supported research program for African studies.

New courses and additional teaching staff now allow for specialized courses in the departments of linguistics and Oriental and African languages, political science, history, anthropology, and geography. Much research is emerging from the Center's activity. In 1963-1964, for example, field research was under way in education, fisheries and wildlife, political science, economics, history, and geography, and there were four projects in the area of languages and linguistics.

The Africa collections at Stanford University are housed largely in the University Library, the library of the Food Research Institute, and the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution, and Peace. Although the major portion of the material is found in the Hoover Institution, the other two libraries constitute important resources. Special collections are located in the Branner Library (Geology), the Cubberley Library (Education), the Lane Medical Library, and the Law Library. The curator of the Hoover Africa Collection assists all university libraries by recommending titles of old and new items so that the various collections develop in all fields.

The University Library buys widely in the African field but accepts primary responsibility for all African material before 18 70 and in the areas of art, ethnography, geography, linguistics, literature, religion, sociology, statistics, and technical documents. The Government Documents Division receives general statistical annuals and bulletins from all African countries and statistical reports of foreign trade from most countries. An effort is made to acquire all census and development-planning material. Most departmental reports are also received. The Documents Division was long an official depository for British government documents and thus contains an outstanding collection of parliamentary debates, blue books, command papers, Foreign Office papers, and annual reports of the Colonial Office from the early nineteenth century. For France the debates of the Assemblée Nationale are held from 18 71 and the Journal Officiel from 1914; for Germany the Reichstag debates are complete from 1867. These together with the depository publications of the United Nations make a substantial collection of material relevant to Africa.

Inquiries to: Dr. Darrell Randall, Chairman, African Area Studies Program, School of International Service, American University, Washington, D.C. 20016.

Faculty: Frank Lorimer, demography; Emmet V. Mittlebeeler, political science; Harvey C. Moore, anthropology; Matthew F. Norton, geography; Oliver A. Peterson, economics; Darrell Randall, political science; Absolom L. Vilakazi, anthropology.

Courses: Undergraduate courses; graduate degree in African area studies or in one of the following disciplines: anthropology, economics, sociology, history, government and public administration, philosophy and religion, international relations and organization, languages.

Main subjects: Political science, anthropology, history, geography, economics.

Main features: African studies may be taken at the School of International Service of the American University in cooperation with other departments and schools of the University and with other universities in the Joint Graduate Consortium of Washington, D.C. This means that a graduate student can work for a degree in African studies at the American University and take approved courses in any of the following universities: Howard University, Catholic University, Georgetown University, and George Washington University.

Cooperative study with other area programs: Unusual opportunities exist at the School of International Service, American University, for relating African interests to other area studies programs, such as the Middle East, Asia, Latin America, Europe, and Communist areas of the world.

Inquiries to: Department of Anthropology, Brooklyn College of the City University of New York, Brooklyn, N.Y. 11210.

Faculty: Robert W. Ehrlich, anthropology; Nathan Greenspan, political science; Dorothy Hammond, anthropology; Alta Jablow, anthropology; Joseph Jablow, anthropology; Albert McQueen, sociology; Benjamin Rivlin, political science.

Courses: Interdisciplinary courses, at undergraduate and graduate levels.

Although there are no area studies programs, more than twenty of the Institute's science, engineering, humanities, and social science faculty have an interest in Africa, and many of these have done serious African research in recent years.

A limited number of humanities and social science bachelor degrees are awarded. There is no formal graduate work in the social sciences, and there are no fellowships. African library materials are good. A small number of students have gone on to doctoral work in African studies following their strong science background at Caltech.

During 1966/67 an interdisciplinary seminar, “Science and Development,” will be offered by Professors Huttenback (history), Munger (geography), Oliver (economics), and Scudder (anthropology). This seminar will emphasize development problems in Africa by using visiting African experts as well as members of the faculty.

Faculty: Douglas Ashford, business and public administration; William H. Friedland, industrial and labor relations; Milton R. Konvitz, law; Alexander H. Leighton, social psychiatry; Victor W. Turner, anthropology.

Courses: Regular undergraduate and graduate degrees in departments.

Main subjects: Anthropology, economics, political science, psychology, sociology.

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.

The appointment in March 1966 of Kwame Nkrumah as honorary president of Guinea was ostensibly made on the basis of an agreement signed by Nkrumah and Sékou Touré in 1958 which founded the Union of Independent African States (UIAS, Ghana-Guinea, 1958-1960). The UIAS, subsequently the Union of African States (UAS, Ghana-Guinea-Mali, 1960-1963), has not been of great importance in the development of Pan-Africanism. Nkrumah's recent appointment probably caused more publicity for the UIAS-UAS than any other event in its history, with the exception of its founding in 1958. Because of the quiet functioning of this organization, declared as no longer in existence by Touré in 1963, very little has been written about it. Thus a student of Africa is reduced to dependence upon short newspaper accounts of the various meetings of the leaders of the states involved, to brief references in more general works on African unity, and to conjecture.

Yet there are several bibliographic sources which are useful. Among these is Peter Duignan, “Pan-Africanism: A Bibliographic Essay,” African Forum, I, No. 1 (Summer 1965), 105-107, a brief survey of the most important works on Pan-Africanism. The subject is divided into three phases--the American reaction to racism, the drive for African independence, and the dream of continental unity. For materials concerning Ghana, the best reference is Albert F. Johnson, A Bibliography of Ghana, 1930-1961 (Evanston, Ill., Published for the Ghana Library Board by the Northwestern University Press, 1964). Of a more general nature are W. J. Hanna and J. L. Hanna, Politics in Black Africa (East Lansing, African Studies Center, Michigan State University, 1964); the annual United States and Canadian Publications on Africa, for years from 1960 (Washington, Library of Congress, 1962; Stanford, Calif., Hoover Institution, 1963-), an excellent source for references to periodical materials; and International Committee for Social Sciences Documentation, The International Bibliography of Political Science (Chicago, Aldine Publishing Co., 1952-).

The African Studies Center at UCLA will offer a special NDEA summer program in African languages and area studies for undergraduate, graduate, and postgraduate students. Five intensive language courses will be offered during the eight-week summer session from June 20 to August 12, 1966 (the first six of which will be coterminous with the regular six-week summer session). Introductory courses will be offered in Afrikaans, Hausa, and Zulu, and both introductory and intermediate courses will be offered in Swahili. Area courses in anthropology, education, geography, and political science will be offered during the first six-week summer session, and courses in education and history in the second six-week session. The area courses will be open to students enrolled in the eight-week language program. Each language course will include three hours of classroom instruction and one hour of work in the language laboratory each day, five days a week for the eight weeks. Classroom and laboratory hours will be conducted jointly by a linguist and an informant. The language courses are 6-unit courses, and the area courses are 2-unit courses.

A limited number of language fellowships for undergraduates will be available under the NDEA Fellowship Program. Inquiries should be directed to the Student Support Section, Graduate Division, Administration Building, UCLA.

The tuition fee for the eight-week summer session will be $130 and will also cover enrollment in any courses offered in the first six-week session. There will be no out-of-state fee.

The present review continues the series of annual surveys of South African reference literature and in general follows the pattern of the previous review.

An atlas not confined to South Africa but rather covering the whole of Africa has now been completed in ten parts. Africa: Maps and Statistics (Pretoria, Africa Institute; R9-50; overseas R12-50 including binder) presents a statistical survey of Pan-African territories in map form with an explanatory text. Subjects covered include population, vital and medical aspects, culture and education, and political development.

The reviewer's Guide to South African Reference Books (Cape Town, Balkema; R2-50) was published in an extensively revised fourth edition in 1965. This edition has an innovation in the inclusion of guides to reference material about four territories which are much in the news, namely, South-West Africa and the High Commission Territories of Basutoland, Bechuana-land, and Swaziland. An important bibliography concerning Bechuanaland also appeared in the year under review. This is C. Middleton's Bechuanaland: A Bibliography (Cape Town, University School of Librarianship). It has 155 entries covering administration, development, history, missions, native races, and other topics and complements an earlier bibliography by P. E. Stevens published by the same university in 1949. Further progress was made with the publication of South Africa's union list of serials. Letters J and K of Periodicals in South African Libraries (Pretoria, Council for Scientific and Industrial Research) were published in 1965.