African students in the German Democratic Republic (GDR) often belonged to national student clubs (NHG) that were arranged for them by the East German government. Many were also members of an umbrella organization for all African students and workers in the GDR (UASA). While the GDR authorities thought that the NHG and UASA would adopt political positions that reflected those of the GDR, this article demonstrates that the students instead used them to criticize both their own governments and their host country. It shows that the students often held positions contrary to the GDR's, and were not shy about expressing them. Although they were usually unable to organize as openly as students in the West, African students in the GDR held meetings and wrote letters to protest about a variety of issues, including Sékou Touré’s repression of a teachers’ strike in Guinea, the Biafran crisis in Nigeria and ethnic separatism in Kenya. They also took the GDR to task for the racist behaviour of East German citizens. The GDR's Socialist Unity Party claimed that the country was anti-racist and anti-imperialist, and that all vestiges of Nazism had been expunged; the students, however, were able to point out multiple racist incidents, and through the UASA demanded that the GDR address its racism problem.

This article is intended primarily as a contribution to the study of the village headman in British Central Africa. While most reports from the area have paid attention to the headmanl's structural position, this has been specifically considered by Gluckman, Barnes, and Mitchell in ‘The Village Headman in British Central Africa’ (Africa, xix, no. 2, 1949) and, more recently, by Mitchell in his forthcoming analysis of The Yao Village. The closely related question of the values attached to village life has received attention notably from Prof. M. Wilson in Good Company.

Nationalist assertions among the Bakongo have been at the forefront of the active resistance movements which ultimately led the Belgian Government to grant the Congo its independence. These reactions to the Belgian presence, which can be traced back to the early twenties, expressed themselves in highly diversified forms and with varying degrees of intensity. From the early days of the Belgian rule, however, a duality of tendencies has been apparent in the Mukongo cultural heritage. The acceptance of certain Western innovations, on the one hand, combined with a manifest attachment to their cultural background, on the other, accounts for the presence of modernist and traditional strands discernible in present-day attitudes towards authority.

The present notes concern the Lwena, Chokwe, and Luchazi immigrants of the north-west of Northern Rhodesia, commonly referred to as the Balovale tribes. Like other Central African Bantu they are animists, and their ancestors through the ancestral cult form an essential element in the community of the living and the dead. The spirits of the ancestors are of communal significance to the kinship group to which they belong, and they are also of individual significance to living individuals within a kinship group.

Most people are aware that Nigeria is named after the river Niger, but many may be surprised to hear that the word Niger is not derived from the Latin adjective niger meaning ‘black’, but from a Libyan and Sudanic root, meaning ‘water“or ‘river’. This word was used by the geographer Ptolemy some 1,800 years ago in the Greek form of ‘Niγɛιρ’, and it is used to-day by the tribes of lake Chad in the form of njer. But Pliny employed the form Nigris, and from very early times the land of the Niger was called Nigritia. The modern name of Nigeria was only invented forty-six years ago by Miss Flora Shaw, who became, quite appropriately, the wife of Lord Lugard, the master-builder of Nigeria. In a letter to The Times, written in 1897, Miss Shaw said, ‘It may be permissible to coin a shorter title for the agglomeration of pagan and Mahomedan States which have been brought, by the exertion of the Royal Niger Company, within the confines of a British Protectorate.’ Her suggestion that the new title should be Nigeria was at once accepted. But it did not receive official recognition until the territories of the Royal Niger Company were formally taken over by the Imperial Government in 1900, and were formed into the two administrations known as Northern Nigeria and Southern Nigeria. Fourteen years later these two administrations were amalgamated into a single Nigeria, which then became, next to India, the most populous dependency in the British Empire.

Sous l'impulsion personnelle du Gouverneur Général M. J. Brévié et avec l'aide éclairée de M. l'Inspecteur Général de l'Enseignement Charton, la Fédération Française de l'Ouest-Africain prend résolument une orientation nouvelle qui mérite d'être signalée. Un programme remontant déjà à quelques mois en fixe les grandes lignes, définissant ainsi les trois aspects du problème à résoudre.

‘Au point de vue social et administratif, il s'agit de préparer et de former, par une sélection attentive, les cadres indigènes nécessaires à la vie économique du pays, d'accroître, par une éducation appropriée, la valeur des futurs chefs indigènes et de consolider leur autorité traditionnelle.

‘Au point de vue économique, il s'agit de former des cadres économiques et la main d'œuvre qualifiée, indispensable à la bonne marche de l'économie africaine.

‘Il s'agit enfin par une action sur la masse et une orientation franchement pratique donnée à l'enseignement, de préparer les conditions sociales et psychologiques de la mise en valeur rationnelle du pays par l'indigène lui-même, de créer un enseignement populaire éducatif et pratique, qui dirige dans son cadre traditionnel le progrès de la société indigène.’

The Zimbabwe culture of present day Southern Rhodesia and Mozambique, of which the main occupation at the nuclear site of Great Zimbabwe dates from the twelfth to the fifteenth centuries, is best known for its external trade in gold, ivory, and copper and for its monumental stone ruins. But while important in terms of prestige exchanges at the diplomatic level, mining and trade seem to have been seasonal occupations fitted in round the annual cycle of subsistence cultivation dependent upon the rains (Barreto 1667: 489–92; Mudenge 1974; Phimister 1974). Patron–client relations between Shona-speaking groups were expressed by limited, symbolic tribute in agricultural labor, military service, gold, ivory, livestock, wives, slaves, local produce, and other prestige items (Barros 1552:271; Conçeicão 1696: 66; Andrade 1955: 306, 310–11), but until recent times basic control over social and political groupings was probably exercised through belief in various levels of spirit cult, ranging from the grass-roots system of individual guardian spirits (mudzimu, sing.) in the ancestral cult controlled by village elders in the extended family and descent group, through a hierarchy of ritually senior, loosely territorial land spirits (mhondoro) holding sway over the progressively larger land shrine realms (nyika) of neighborhood leaders, petty chieftains, chiefs, and paramounts. Leaders at each level influenced a following of both spirits and living people who were interconnected, and the fluctuating network of alliances that existed between leaders was symbolized and kept going by an intermittent traffic in tribute, diplomatic missions, and religious congregations coming to the shrines and leaders located at the various headquarters (zimbabwes) of the confederacy. When the confederacy was large and free from civil wars and secession, the system sometimes culminated in a unifying central cult devoted to a supreme spirit (such as Mwari Nyadenga, Leza or Mulungu) supporting a Mambo, whom the Portuguese called King or Emperor (Santos 1609: esp. 196–9; Abraham 1966; Bullock 1928; Garbett 1966, 1969; Holleman 1953).

In this paper we shall be concerned with the Yoruba systems of terminology towards kin and affinal relations, as exemplified in the community of Oshogbo. Our main interest will be the extent of the correspondence between the kinship system and the nomenclature and we shall attempt to show that while terminology and behaviour are never incompatible, in certain situations the correspondences are more detailed and precise than in others.

Roads and automobility on the African continent are commonly encountered with a rather ambivalent stance, both by Africans and Africanist scholars. This ambivalence emerges from what Adeline Masquelier describes as the ‘profoundly contradictory nature of roads as objects of both fascination and terror’ (2002: 381). In her widely received article on ‘road mythographies’ surrounding Niger's Route 1, Masquelier draws a vivid picture of the ‘contradictory aspects of the road as a space of both fear and desire’ (ibid.: 831). She highlights, in particular, how roadside residents perceive automotive travel as ‘a process fraught with risky and contradictory possibilities’ (ibid.: 832). A ‘pioneering study in the ethnography of roads’ (Campbell 2012: 498), Masquelier's account of people's profound ambivalence towards roads, mobility and transport in post-colonial Niger has been a source of inspiration for a range of scholars who have explored in a similar vein the intricate entanglement of people with (auto)mobility, space and modernity, both in Africa and elsewhere (see, for example, Khan 2006; Klaeger 2009; Dalakoglou 2010; Hart 2011). Five articles in this volume press ahead with the analytic theme of the ambivalence of roads. Through their historic analyses and ethnographic observations, the assembled case studies from Senegal, Ghana, Sudan, Kenya and Tanzania give a strong sense of how the perils and possibilities of roads, roadsides, traffic and transport have been and continue to be embraced in the everyday lives of colonial and post-colonial subjects.

The emergence of biodiversity standards in the nature conservation literature requires that we consider the interactions between conservation and local practices from a new angle. The coastal forest of Monogaga, a protected area inhabited by a local population, is an ideal terrain for comparing the impact of local agricultural practices and the activities of Sodefor, the government agency charged with the management of this conservation area. The discourses and uses of forest resources of these two actors allow us to compare the biodiversity of forest cover categories recognized by peasant farmers and Sodefor, using the standard statistical methods for measuring biodiversity (the Shannon and Weaver index, species richness, number of special status species).

For Sodefor, it is the most dense forest ecosystems (the ‘black forests’ ) and the lands that they occupy that constitute the area's natural heritage. The agency believes that these forests must be protected from all human uses, especially farming, if the forest is to be transmitted to future generations. In contrast, Wanne farmers view the old forests (kporo) as long-term fallows (teteklwoa) or reserves of fertile land that will be cleared when there is a need for more farmland in the future. For them, patrimony is constituted by the intergenerational transmission of a bundle of resource access and farming rights within lineages.

With regard to biodiversity, a comparison of the two types of resource management practices (Sodefor and farmer) gives nuanced results. The farmers' areas are more diverse than those of Sodefor when considering the Aké Assi threatened species list. For the Sassandrian species list, both management types maintained the same quantity of species. For endemics and the IUCN red list species, the spatial units controlled by Sodefor show more diversity.

This article takes issue with ahistorical typologies that depict all slaves as ‘dishonoured’ persons. It demonstrates that royal slaves in Kano emirate of the Sokoto Caliphate were initially valuable to the elite because they were indeed dishonoured outsiders. But, over time, slaves tried to limit their exploitation by developing their own systems of honour and status. The article traces when, where and how royal slaves in Kano acquired and attempted to acquire ‘honour’ as officials, kin and members of a broader social world. However, it concludes that, although slaves did indeed develop systems of honour, their ability to acquire an honourable identity was nonetheless limited by their status as slaves, which they remained despite their power and position.

One problem that besets students of society is how best to combine a study of change through time, with emphasis on the flow of time, and the detailed analysis of relationships; how to write a social history with sufficient detail on all the aspects of relationships—economic, legal, ritual, ideological—to satisfy the anthropologist. Static models are too far from reality to be useful, but how can one create a model that moves? The difficulty consists first, in discovering the relevant facts and second, in integrating them into an intelligible account.

The purpose of this article is to contribute some facts from Mendi life to the problem of differentiation and uniformity in primitive societies. As this problem is closely connected with the wider and controversial issue of the place the individual occupies in primitive group life, a few remarks will precede our facts.

The Azande are one of the best-known peoples of Africa. Much was written about them by European travellers in the second half of the last century, and there are books on them by de Calonne-Beaufaict, Hutereau, Mgr Lagae, the present writer, and Mr. de Schlippe, as well as a considerable number of articles by various hands, notably by Major Larken. A summary of what is known about them and a full bibliography are contained in The Azande and Related Peoples, by P. T. W. Baxter and Audrey Butt, International African Institute, 195 3. It is therefore unnecessary for me to speak about them in a more general way before discussing the particular topic or this paper. I have only to observe that very little information is to be found in the literature on the subject of border raids and to state that my own research in Zandeland, carried out between 1927 and 1930, was mainly restricted to that part of it which comprised the kingdom of Gbudwe.

This discussion grows out of an attempt to account for the presence among the Suku of Zaïre of a rather common but somewhat puzzling feature of African ‘ancestor cults.’ For all the importance of ancestors in African traditional life and thought, there is surprisingly little elaboration of the mode of their existence in the other world. In a masterly discussion of ‘ancestor worship’ in Africa, Fortes (1965: 126ff) notes this fact but does not attempt to explain it. To be sure, the issue is distinctly secondary to his main concern—the sociological matrix of ancestor cults. In sociological perspective, what matters about ancestors is their social role in this world, not their style of life in the next. This sociological perspective is in tune with African ethnographic fact: like Fortes, African informants are primarily interested in the social relationship of the ancestors with the living and they show little sympathy with the ethnographer's occasional curiosity about the details of the ancestors' own existence.

There are two methods by which facts concerning the unrecorded past of a language may be recovered. The first may be labelled the external method. By confrontation with comparable facts of other languages to which it is related, we may reconstruct in some measure the past of a particular language. This is the familiar comparative method. Sometimes, however, another procedure, that of internal reconstruction, may be applied, independently or as a supplement to the comparative method. The facts of the language as described at a given time suggest certain hypotheses regarding its own past. The present study involves a combination of these two methods. An interpretation strongly suggested by the Masai language in its present form receives further confirmation and elucidation by the subsequent application of the comparative method.

The Anuak are a Nilotic people of the south-east of the Sudan and adjacent Ethiopia. They may number between 30,000 and 40,000 people, of whom at least two thirds live in Ethiopia, where a number of difficulties prevented me from visiting them. As described in Professor Evans-Pritchard's writings, two somewhat different political systems and forms of rule and leadership are found in the villages of Anuakland. In the south-east, several ecological and other circumstances have favoured the spread of the influence of a noble clan, members of which reign in villages which, according to tradition, were at one time politically isolated from each other and autonomous under local headmen. These villages of the noble clan are drawn, through the nobles associated with them, into competition for the acquisition of a single set of royal emblems, of which the most important are several ancient bead-necklaces. It seems that the influence of this noble clan has spread and is even now spreading farther among the villages of Anuakland, though in the land as a whole most villages are still under the sway of headmen chosen from lineages which traditionally provided them. It is with the organization of these villages, and the way in which their members change their headmen, that this paper deals.

In recent decades, Kinshasa and Brazzaville have given rise to movements of prophecy, messianic fervour and revival (Pentecostalist in nature) in the field of religion. The patterns of liberation and deliverance that can be discerned here reflect forms of identity politics in which Africanity, in the ethnic and national sense, is not only a major issue, but a component that is increasingly associated with armed conflict. These processes express a radical paradigm shift that we place within the context of the relationship between Africanity and religious pluralism that has become evident in these two religious areas in recent years. The term ‘Mboka Mundele’ (the village or country of the Whites) points to an experience of ‘colonial modernity’, and allows us to describe in objective terms the current urban context in which these ‘businessmen of God’ emerge. Fernando Kutino, Ntoumi, Yaucat Guendi and Ne Muanda Nsemi are four major politico-religious figures who embody an ideology of Africanity related to complex types of ‘magic’ and processes of pluralization.