Despite the superb hospitality of the President of Sénégal and his Government, and of the rector and staff of Dakar University, the second meeting of the International Congress of Africanists in December 1967 must be accounted a disaster on such a scale as to endanger the whole future of the organisation. Intending participants were given wholly insufficient notice to produce papers worthy of such an occasion, and those who nevertheless complied with the invitation were cruelly disappointed to find on arrival that their contributions had not been translated or duplicated for circulation in advance of the sessions at which they were to be presented. Neither a programme nor even a provisional list of participants was available in advance of the meeting. Even so, there were persons billed as chairmen of sections and leading speakers who failed to put in an appearance. As a result, most of the discussions at most of the sessions had to be improvised. True, one of the admirable team of U.N.E.S.G.O. interpreters was heard to say ‘J’ai vu pire’, but when pressed he could think of only one worse example. No doubt individual participants could point to fresh contacts which made the occasion not wholly a waste of time, but there must be few who could conscientiously ask their employers to provide the expenses of attending another meeting without the assurance that it would be of a very different character from this one.