The origin of the initial African constitutions is easy to establish. While the former British territories “received” their Westminster-type constitutions negotiated during the Lancaster House conferences, the former French territories, except Guinea, became independent under constitutions drawing heavily upon the constitution of the Fifth French Republic, of which they were virtual copies. Among the countries formerly under Belgian rule, the Congo (Zaïre) was the only one attaining independence with a constitution, the Loi fondamentale of 1960 which was an Act of the Belgian Parliament.

Therefore, initially the degree of homogeneity was fairly large; there were basically three types of constitutions and the deviation from these models was limited. Admittedly subject to adaptations all the Westminster constitutions were similar, and in fact to some extent they still are; thus in its essential features the 1980 constitution of Zimbabwe draws from the same stock as its predecessors of the early 1960s. The first constitutions of the former French territories were, likewise, very similar, inspired as they were by the French constitution of 1958. The Loi fondamentale of the Congo was strongly influenced by the Belgian constitution, and so was the autochthonous constitution of Burundi which was promulgated a few months after independence in 1962.

Many constitutions have since succeeded these initial texts: between 1960 and 1985 there have been 43 constitutions in the 18 French-speaking countries under consideration, i.e. an average of 2·4 constitutions per country. This flow has led to a considerable diversification of constitutional types.

The material which forms the subject matter of this article constituted a chapter of a PhD thesis presented to London University in 1980. The thesis was based largely on the answers to Kohler's questionnaire which was distributed by the German colonial authorities throughout what was then German East Africa in 1909. A recent article in the Journal of African Law describes these questionnaires in detail. Bibliographical references in the following text to the answers to the questionnaires follow the numbers assigned to them by Ankermann (1929) and used in the list in Redmayne and Rogers' article. Some answers were published at the time and these are referred to in the same way as normal bibliographical entries Some use has also been made of Post's earlier questionnaire which, together with the answers, was published under the editorship of Steinmetz (1903). Post's questionnaire was written in 1895 and distributed throughout the German colonies. The thesis dealt with land tenure and contract and so covered the field of the answers in the questionnaires dealing with those topics. It also set out a typology of African societies at the time the questionnaires were distributed, based on what could be discovered of their economic and social relations. As it turned out this typology proved rather more useful in establishing connections between economic relations and forms of land tenure than it was in establishing connections with such relations and contractual liability.

The importance of agriculture especially in a developing country cannot be over-emphasised. It had been the mainstay of the Nigerian economy since the colonial period. Apart from subsistence farming which catered for the food needs of the local population, Nigeria had exported cash crops in the past.

Unfortunately, the blessings of the oil boom have diverted our attention from agriculture in the past decade with the consequent neglect of it. But the dwindling fortunes of oil appear to have induced us to switch our attention once again to agriculture.

To this end, some practical steps have been taken by Government to encourage investment in agriculture. These include subsidising fertilisers and seeds for farmers, the establishment of various Agricultural Development Projects, the Communal Farm Programmes and the establishment of various River Basins Development Authorities. Other recent measures include tax relief for agro-allied projects; tax holidays for investors in combined agricultural productions and processing; capital allowances for capital expenditure on plant and equipment for, and equipment leasing to, agriculture; removal of import duties on tractors and other agricultural machinery and equipment and increased foreign equity participation within the framework of the Enterprises Promotion Decree.

With the promulgation of the Sudanese Civil Transactions Act, 1984, in February, 1984, the Republic of the Sudan joined several other Arab countries (e.g. Egypt, Jordan, Iraq and Libya) which have codified major areas of their non-criminal law. The Sudan's previous attempt at such codification was short-lived: the Civil Code, 1971 was repealed in 1973. Although many sectors of the Sudanese legal establishment have been critical of the 1984 legislation, because of questions regarding the quality of the draftsmanship and the absence of its circulation for comment prior to promulgation, it remains the most comprehensive single piece of legislation since the 1971 Civil Code, covering such topics as contract, sales, tort, gift, insurance, bailment and property, both real and personal.

This article will survey all current Sudanese legislation affecting real property, including, most importantly, the Civil Transactions Act, 1984. Because there are more than twenty-five separate legislative acts in the Sudan relating to land, comprising more than six hundred relevant sections, the discussion herein must of necessity be to highlight the major divisions of the current land law, pointing out its distinctive features and those areas in which it appears that conflicts exist as between the various pieces of legislation.

The Civil Transactions Act, 1984 (hereinafter sometimes referred to as “C.T.A.”), was promulgated on 14 February, 1984, and took effect on that date. It comprises some 95 chapters with 819 separate sections, more than one-third of which deal with matters relating to land.

The late Professor Gluckman adumbrated on the customary dues formerly made to the King in Barotseland. It might be of interest to consider similar imposts required on the other side of Zambia in the Lundazi District, and to note in particular that the distinction that is made in Barotseland between what Gluckman calls “Kingly things” and tribute also obtained in Lundazi as well.

Feudal dues in Lundazi before the occupation fell roughly into four categories, “Kingly things”, here called regalia or the local vernacular word for them, vya chalo, things pertaining to the land; mithulo or tribute; msonko or land tax and chiŵeta or tribute labour.

The vya chalo, as the name signifies, were things pertaining to the land which belonged to the chief in his capacity as the titular head of a land-owning clan and might not be taken or used by anyone else except with permission. Properly speaking vya chalo appear to have consisted only of the skins, with claws intact, of the larger carnivora, lion, leopard and cheetah, the skins of hartebeest and the plumage of the Livingstone Lourie.

The recent decision of the Supreme Court in Adeniyi Olowu &Ors. v. Olabowale Olowu & Anor to the effect that a person belonging originally to one ethnic group can by a process involving time, association, marriage, personal wishes and manner of life, become assimilated into and thereby legally acquire the status of another ethnic group, is of great significance. For it breaks new ground, gives legal backing to the promotion of social and national integration and establishes very clearly for the benefit of legal philosophers and theoreticians, that courts in fact make law.

Previously, it was believed that no Nigerian could legally change his ethnic group. The prevailing attitude was “once an Ibo, always an Ibo ”, irrespective of the fact that the family of the propositus had settled amongst the Yorubas of Oyo town seven generations previously. The settler family would retain links with its “motherland” no matter how tenuous. The dead of the family would still be conveyed “home” for burial. Even if the settler family wanted to join the ethnic group of the host community, the host community would not allow them to forget that they were strangers. Thus in spite of inter-marriages and other social interaction between the settler family and the host community, the distinction and original identity of the settler family would be retained.

What applies to individual settler families also applies with more force to settler communities. They retain their original cultural and ethnic identity, generations after settling in the midst of another ethnic group.

The role of law as a tool in aid of development is extremely important to less developed economies. In the area of insurance where insurers act as mobilisers of vast amounts of capital, the importance of regulation as a tool facilitating development cannot be overemphasised.

In recognition of the increasing importance of insurance activity to the economies of less developed countries, the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development has played a leading role in helping developing countries fashion regulatory systems that maximise the contribution of their insurance industries to the development of their local economies.

This paper looks at the importance of insurance to the Ghanaian economy and discusses the use of insurance regulation to aid development. The paper first looks at insurance in relation to the national economy as a whole, examining how regulation is used to fulfil the various aspects of the industry's importance in aid of development. The paper then looks at the industry and the important sections of the economy, considering how regulation aids development in these areas by fulfilling the various objectives of the industry.

Twenty years ago Zambia was riding a wave of seemingly unstoppable prosperity. Income per capita was the highest amongst sub-Saharan African countries. The high copper prices on which Zambia's wealth was based enabled the government to pursue ambitious social welfare programmes. However since the second half of 1974 the bottom has fallen out of the copper market as a result of recession in most of the copper-consuming countries and technical advances in industry which have reduced the need for copper. In the decade since then Zambia's economy has deteriorated progressively as can be gleaned from these statistics: GDP per capita in constant (1970) prices declined by about 25 per cent, between 1974 and 1983; per capita incomes fell by 44 per cent, during 1974—85 period; the level of real imports in 1984 was only 40 per cent, of the average level in the early 1970s; scarcity of foreign exchange has reduced capacity utilisation to low levels (in the last quarter of 1985 it was estimated that the industrial sector was operating only at about 30 per cent, of capacity and in some individual companies the situation was so serious that some once-thriving factories had had to close down for lack of essential spares and raw materials) and the investment rate fell from 41 per cent, in 1975 to about 12 per cent, in 1984. The expenditure in the public sector for operation and maintenance is underfunded, resulting in marked deterioriation of standards in public services, especially health and education.