What I should like to do today is to examine the evolution of customary law in English-speaking Africa over the last three decades. I have chosen my starting date of 1950 with a clear intention in view; because the developments that we observe currently taking place often find their origins in the colonial period. They do this in two ways. First, the laws which the African countries inherited at independence had been crucially shaped by the colonial experience; and secondly, some of the projects of law reform which have either taken place or are now under discussion trace back to initiatives and discussions which occurred during the latter part of colonial rule. There is a further factor: quite apart from conscious efforts to analyse and change the laws, the laws themselves, of whatever kind, have been exposed to the forces of economic, political and social change, which are continually working away below the surface, sapping the foundations of the existing legal systems.

My own qualifications for this task I do not feel that I should dwell on. However, it is worth remarking, as symptomatic of the profound upheavals which have occurred within the period, that I was appointed to the first post in Britain of lecturer in African law in 1948. This was the period of the immediate post-war reconstruction of the British colonial empire in Africa. Things were not the same as they had been up to the Allied victory in 1945.