The mission was designed in part as a follow-up and in part as a complement to Professor Philip D. Curtin's research liaison visit to western Africa in 1965 on behalf of the Association. Senegal, Liberia, Ivory Coast, Tchad, and Cameroun were revisited. The previously unvisited Central African Republic, Dahomey, Niger, and Upper Volta were added to the itinerary. Difficulties in flight scheduling and unexpected delays during the trip ruled out the planned visits to Gabon and Togo.

The goals of the mission were as follows: (1) to establish or renew contacts with universities, research institutes, appropriate government authorities, African and expatriate researchers, and American scholars currently engaged in research in Africa; (2) to make known the existence of the Research Liaison Committee (and sometimes, as it turned out, of the ASA as well) as a two-way clearing house for Africanist research information; (3) to establish more regular means of exchanging information with institutions in Africa on current and planned research, so as to make possible some informal coordination of research plans among scholars; (4) to determine the existing formal procedures (if any) for researchers from abroad; and (5) to convey back to the Africanist community in the United States some of the feelings, attitudes, and suggestions from these countries.