So to the catalogue in detail. It is divided into seven parts, topped and tailed by 25pp. of introductory matter and 107pp. of index of personal names and principal subjects.

Part 1 contains the bulk of the pre-Federation material. It runs to 103 boxes of which the first nine cover Welensky as Director of Manpower, the Northern Rhodesian Executive Council (mainly commuting death sentences imposed on murderers - or not), the Legislative Council and its committees and the Unofficial Members’ Association and the Liaison Office. Twenty boxes house material relating to boards and committees with which Welensky was involved: Rhodesia Railways (the Board and the Higher Authority), Chilanga Cement Works (a project of the Northern Rhodesian authorities in conjunction with the Colonial Development Corporation; references to a cement pool seem to be to collusive marketing arrangements rather than swimming or the mafia) and the Rhodes Centenary Exhibition (1953) at Bulawayo.

Following Zimbabwe's Independence in 1980, the Government immediately set about rectifying the inherited inequities in the education system. Free access was given to primary education, and enrolment rose from 820,000 to 2.3 million a decade later. Advances at secondary level were even more dramatic: enrolment increased more than tenfold, to over 700,000 in 1990.

There were many logistical problems to be overcome in order to cater for this huge increase in the number of students: buildings, trained teachers, equipment, books and, of course, the financing of this expansion. I shall only focus on books since it is these which we are discussing today.

A tradition of social science scholarly publishing exists in Africa, dating back not only to the establishment of the early university presses such as the University of Ibadan Press in 1951, but rather further back to the anthropological writings and historical, social and economic analyses that characterized the social science disciplines during the colonial period. Although some of these writings were by Africans, the vast majority were by expatriates consisting in the main of colonial officials, educationists, missionaries and the founding members of the faculties that made up the early colleges in Sierra Leone, Sudan, Tunis, Nigeria, Liberia, Senegal, Egypt, Uganda and South Africa.

In general, not much distinction either in origin, class or orientation existed between these producers of social science publications, and quite often they shifted positions between being missionaries, colonial officials, educationists and academics.

I am very pleased to have this opportunity to explain what African Books Collective (ABC) is, our place in the so-called “book chain”, and what services we offer to librarians. The aim of the seminar, as I understand it, is to bring African publishers and UK librarians together to focus on practical issues.

ABC is a unique organization. It is not a conventional commercial distributor. It was founded in 1989 by 17 African publishers who established and own the company. They were responding to the perceived gap in the book chain: on the one hand the lack of effective distribution networks, the inability of individual publishers to afford overseas promotion, and the lack of access to foreign exchange from overseas sales; and on the other, the difficulties of librarians and other book buyers in the North in acquiring African publications, even when they knew of their existence.