It is generally advisable to get a reasonably firm grasp of the past and present before attempting to achieve an approximate ‘fix’ on the future. Prognostications about the furture are always risky and especially so in reasonably unpredictable fields like science and technology, which can be demonstrated to have been congenitally immune to accurate predictions throughout history. Scientific and technological break-throughs have often, in the past, produced unanticipated changes, and they have frequently led to the solution of heretofore unresolvable problems. History gives us instances of communities which have taken advantage remarkably quickly of advances in science and technology, but it also shows us instances of societies which for one reason or another failed to adapt. And one might add that while some scientific and technological innovations take on global relevance, others have remained specific and have been circumscribed by time and place.

The impact of nuclear weapons on the present and future trends in international relations continues to attract wide scholarship. While the literature on the subject has been growing apace, nuclear technology is becoming increasingly sophisticated, and the dangers posed to the survival of mankind are becoming much more acute than hitherto. In broad terms, the fears expressed about these weapons tend to centre around the implications of three major issues: the emergence of greater first-strike inclinations in the two super-power nuclear forces; the possibility of a perceived strategic imbalance favouring either the United States or the Soviet Union; and the dangers of nuclear proliferation.

Two these are presented in this article. The first is that since the great surge in oil revenues during 1973—1974, there has emerged in Nigeria an intert economy. By this I mean an economy which has reacted passively to the increased revenues, but which has had no growth-generating power of its own outside of the crude oil-producing sector. The other-than-oil economy has not had any internal ebgine of growth. In support of this thesis, I shall make three points: (1) the growth of Nigeria' economy, apart form oil, has been strikingly small, give the huge increase in oil revenues; (2) even the linited growth rate has been dwindling; and (3) the pattern of the growth that has been achieved suggests a passive response to an exogenous stimulus.

The nature of the boides responsible for administering justice to Africans, and for settling disputes between them, was the subject of continual and sometimes heated debate in colonial Kenya, and indeed elsewhere in British Africa. Nor have the old controversies completely lost their relevance in contemporary independent African states, as recent moves to reform the system of courts in Zimbabwe have clearly shown. Nevertheless, the debate has a rather timeworn air about it today, the arguments a tired familiarity which obviates the need to rehearse them in detail. They tend to centre on certain key issues: the composition, procedure, and administration of the courts, and the appellate system.

This extract from an editorial in The Times, which followed the capture of a Soviet warrant officer by invading South African forces in southern Angola in September 1981, sums up well the attitude in many western quarters, including most governments, towards Soviet involvement in the continent, particularly Southern Africa. It was widely assumed that the victory of the Movimento Popular de Libertação de Angola led by Agostinho Neto, achieved with substantial Soviet and Cuban aid, would lead to the use of Angola as a springboard for communist intervention in Zimbabwe, Namibia, and South Africa. Those who supported this premise believed that Moscow's leaders wished to be in a position to control the sea-lanes off the South African coast, and that

The universities often may seem remote from rural communities, but they continue to draw a proportion of their students from the villages and small towns and, increasingly, a concern for the welfare of the rural inhabitants informs and directs the teaching, applied research, and theoretical debates of many members of staff.

What is Japan's basic policy towards South Africa? According to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Tokyo:

Japan, which firmly supports the self-determination of the African people and strongly opposes racial discrimination, has earnestly desired a solution to the problems in southern Africa.

Japan strongly condemns the continuation of racial discrimination in South Africa and has demanded that the Government of South Africa abolish such discrimination. From this standpoint, Japan maintains no diplomatic relations with South Africa and has prohibited such direct investment as the establishment of joint ventures by Japanese firms in that country. Furthermore it has imposed restrictions on cultural, educational and sport exchanges between Japanese and South Africans, respecting the relevant United Nations resolutions.

Since the last American troops withdrew from Vietnam during 1975, the strategic value of Africa to the United States has steadily risen. As a result of the renewal of cold-war hostilities between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. and an escalating series of crises for American foreign policy in the Third World, the African continent is now a principal battlefield for competition involving the United States, Western Europe (particularly France), Cuba, and the Soviet Union. After the end of the Vietnam war, direct American military intervention in Africa was precluded for a short time by legislative restraints – notably the ‘Clark Amendment’ of December 1975 that blocked involvement in Angola – and by the public's reluctance to become entangled in another military commitment overseas, a phenomenon often referred to in Washington as the ‘Vietnam syndrome’. Furthermore, the United States lacked the military capacity to engage in such adventures, having suffered such heavy losses in Indochina and being preoccupied with the creation of a new all-volunteer army. Over the past five years, however, two Administrations in Washington have worked assiduously to ‘cure’ the so-called ‘Vietnam syndrome’ and restore America's military position abroad.

As part of a broader study concerned with tribal–national relations in modern Zambia, the research reported here deals with a complex, indigenous state, the Barotse Kingdom, in which adjustments to post-colonial arrangements have been fraught with difficulties. Here I deal with the results obtained by analysis of interview schedules collected during 1966–7 among a sample of local élites in one of the Districts of the then Barotse Province (now called Western Province). Employing a conceptual framework which emphasises the distribution of information — what Theodore Schwartz calls a distributive model of culture — the analysis focuses on several factors considered crucial in understanding how local groups become incorporated into the nation-state. Finally, the influence of traditional attachments on this process is explored.

Maize is the third most important crop in the world after wheat and rice, being grown throughout the temperate, sub-tropical, and tropical zones wherever rainfall or irrigation is adequate. In Nigeria, it also takes third place, albeit behind sorghum and millet, and occupies more hectarage than any of the cereal crops in the humid forest zone.

On 4 February 1976 the Federal Military Government of Nigeria promulgated Decree No. 6, initiating the removal of the national capital from Lagos to Abuja. Thus Nigeria followed Brazil, Botswana, Malawi, Pakistan, and Tanzania to become the most recent developing country to arrange for a transfer of its centre of government. The proliferation of new capitals constructed in the twentieth century has captured the world-wide attention of geographers, architects, planners, and demographers, but the literature on the subject examines these projects almost exclusively with a focus on planning for national development. This viewpoint too often neglects politics as the paramount force in the relocation of a nation's capital city.