It is not easy to describe the objects, still less the activities, of the Africa Bureau in a few words. It is one of those organisations whose ambitions and influence are much greater than its physical size.

If you look at the dominating purpose behind the activities of the past 12 years, you will find it in the Bureau's sympathy with and determination to promote African independence. It was established in 1952 to provide accurate information particularly on the aims and hopes of African nationalism, to oppose unfair discrimination, and to encourage development in Africa. The need for such an organisation in Britain had been recognised primarily by Rev. Michael Scott, who on returning from South Africa sought help from people in Britain for the African people of South West Africa. An informal group advising on the intricate political and constitutional issues involved in bringing South West Africa's plight before the United Nations provided the nucleus from which the Africa Bureau grew, and since 1948, Michael Scott, honorary director of the Bureau, has attended the U.N. and given evidence as personal representative of Chief Hosea Kutako of the Hereros.

Under the auspices of the U.S. Department of State, the Ford Foundation, Georgetown University, and the African-American Institute, more than 75 scholars and other specialists convened at the Shoreham Hotel, Washington, D.C., to exchange views on problems of political and social change in francophone Africa, and to discuss them with a much wider audience of government officials and diplomats from Africa, Western Europe, Canada, and the United States. The programme, the first of its kind ever held in the United States, was organised and directed by Dr William H. Lewis of Georgetown University.

Over the past few years many arguments have been exchanged between partisans of multilateral aid to developing countries and those who prefer bilateral forms of co-operation. Multilateral programmes are often accused of inefficiency and waste owing to international bureaucracy and political complications, and bilateral agreements just as often are suspected of covering up for neo-colonialism. In the meantime a new kind of multi-national aid programme has appeared. Sometimes these are on government level, like the joint educational programmes of the Nordic countries in Tanganyika; sometimes there is co-operation between non-governmental organisations in different donor countries.

The main theme of this Congress, held in the cité universitaire in Dijon, was the impact of agricultural changes on society in developed and developing countries. The modernisation of agriculture (industrialisation, commercialisation, decrease of manpower, increase of production per capita) is accompanied by a set of changes which affects not only the rural population itself; but also human society as a whole. Technological and economic changes have an influence on cultural and social structure. The Congress aimed to study this influence with emphasis on the effects on society as a whole, and to compare the experiences of developed and developing countries.

This three-day seminar was held under the auspices of the University of Edinburgh's Department of Political Economy and Centre of African Studies. It was organised by Ian G. Stewart, Reader in Economics and Vice-Convener of the Centre of African Studies Committee, and was attended by some 40 African, American, and British economists concerned with trade and development prospects for African primary commodities. Included among the invited participants were academic and government economists from Ghana, Nigeria, the Sudan, and East Africa, as well as from the U.N. Economic Commission for Africa and research centres in Britain and the U.S.A.

In East and Central Africa considerable investment in physical capital is now being made. This must be matched by investment in human capital, if the full benefit is to be gained. Professor John Lewis, of the University of London, stressed ‘The Place of Adult Education in Education Development Planning’ in his contribution to this conference. Educating children will produce results in six to ten years' time. Educational investment in adults can produce results more quickly. But at present the effort to educate adults, such as it is, is spread over many agencies. For significant results adult education must be integrated into a country's general development plan.

This conference, under the direction of Dr A. N. Allott of the University of London, was an outstanding success and marked a real development in the consideration of the subject. About half the participants, who numbered just under 40, were from universities in Africa, U.S.A., and Europe; the others were mainly from the government or the judiciary of various African countries. The annual general meeting of the International African Law Association also took place during the week.

The sixth annual meeting of the African Studies Association, the leading American academic society of specialists on Africa, was the first to be held on the west coast. Although attendance could not be expected to match that at meetings in the east, a registration of over 250 testifies to the increasing strength of African studies in America. Quite a few of the founders of the Association were present, but the participation of many newcomers suggested that a second generation of American Africanists was bringing new vigour and insights to the field. Several visiting African scholars made notable contributions to the meeting.

The chairman of the conference, who presided at the opening session, was Rashidi Kawawa, Second Vice-President ofthe United Republic of Tanzania. The conference was fortunate to have an East African Minister as discussion leader at each of its plenary sessions; and it was particularly valuable that the three Tanzania Ministers of State, A. Z. N. Swai, A. H. Jamal, and A. M. Babu, were able to devote so much time to participating in the work of the conference. Each of the three East African countries sent a strong team of Ministers, Members of Parliament, and civil servants; particularly notable contributions were made by J. G. Kiano, Minister for Commerce and Cooperatives in the Government of Kenya, and C. Obwangor, Minister for Justice for Uganda. The three wings of the University of East Africa were formidably represented; and there were observers from the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (Addis Ababa), the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (Paris), the Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry of East Africa, the U.S.A.I.D., and the Ford Foundation, without whose financial generosity the conference could not have taken place. Finally, there was a selection of ‘specialists’ from overseas: Nicholas Kaldor from Cambridge, William Clark from the Overseas Development Institute in London, Vladimir Martynov from the Institute of World Economy and International Affairs in Moscow, George Skorov from the International Institute for Educational Planning in Paris, M. R. Shroff, Deputy Economic Adviser to the Government of India, whose contribution was generally regarded as quite outstanding, and myself, a sort of governmental wolf in academic sheep's clothing.

While most African countries have no real cause for alarm concerning narcotic drug addiction and illicit trafficking, the possibilities for the future in such a huge and rapidly changing area call for the utmost vigilance. Only in this way can the tragedy of large-scale addiction which has afflicted other wide regions of the world be avoided. Urbanisation, internal migration, and detribalisation are factors which might well sow the seeds of future trouble. The United Nations therefore organised this regional seminar, the first of its kind in Africa, as part of its programme of technical assistance in narcotics control.

Closer international co-operation at the national level—this was the basic idea behind the resolutions passed by this conference, where overseas volunteers from seven different organisations operating in the United Republic met government officials to discuss the possibilities of more detailed collaboration. The seven were: Mellemfolkeligt Samvirke, the British United Nations Association, Voluntary Service Overseas, Harvard—Project Tanzania, the American Friends Service Committee, Deutscher Entwicklungsdienst, and the United States Peace Corps, which alone has 180 volunteers at work.

This conference was held on the initiative of the Afrika Verein and the Deutsche Stif tung für Entwicklungsländer. Its aim was to examine the theory and practice of regional planning and external co-operation within the framework of African development.

The Afrika Verein is a German organisation which took over from the Syndikats für Westafrika, which was founded in 1884, and is now one of the most important economic organisations concerned with Africa in the Federal German Republic. It advises merchants, businessmen, and sometimes even the government, and examines market possibilities and business conditions, from the political (i.e. psychological) as well as the legal point of view. The Deutsche Stiftung für Entwicklungsländer is more widely known. It specialises in development problems and its activities cover all the so-called ‘underdeveloped’ countries. Being a government body it originally dealt mainly with Asia and Latin America, but for the past two years, with the emergence of the new African states, it has been enlarging its African department.

This session was attended by the largest number to date of independent member states, and was much more representative of the African continent than the first, in January 1959, which was attended by only nine independent African states. Now there were delegates from 30 member states and 10 delegations from associate member states. Besides these, there were many observers from other governments, from specialised agencies, from intergovernmental and non-governmental organisations. The newest member states were Kenya and Zanzibar, which had become independent towards the end of last year; and as a result of the break-up of the Central African Federation, Northern Rhodesia, Nyasaland, and Southern Rhodesia separately had become associate members.

The Poets' conference held under the auspices of the Berlin Festival had the same theme as that of the entire festival this year, Africa's contribution and relation to the arts and culture of Europe. It is at once debatable whether a conference can decide what culture is: whether culture can be talked about across a table among 70 men and women from different parts of the world via tri-lingual instantaneous translations and other kinds of static that fill the air at such times. To appreciate the even subtler intervention of Africa into western culture, in these circumstances, might prove to be impossible. Fortunately conferences have a way of finding their working levels, even though these may not always coincide with the subject assigned them.

This was the second in a series of three conferences on public policy, organised by the University of East Africa and financed by the Ford Foundation, whose aim is to bring together policy-makers and academics for discussions on major public issues.

In attendance were delegations, of at least a dozen each, from Uganda, Kenya, and Tanganyika, consisting mainly of Cabinet Ministers, parliamentary secretaries, other M.P.s, and civil servants, as well as representatives of public corporations, political parties, and trade unions. Small delegations from Ethiopia, Northern Rhodesia, Nyasaland, Southern Rhodesia, and Zanzibar were also invited. A group of 10 ‘visiting specialists’ from overseas with experience of federal systems and problems elsewhere were invited to take part. Among these were six economists: Ursula Hicks and Arthur Hazlewood from Oxford, Pitamber Pant of the Indian Planning Commission, Vladimir Kollontai from Moscow, Jan Auerhan from Prague, and Benton Massell (who was unable to attend but contributed a paper) from the United States. The others were a lawyer, S. A. de Smith from the London School of Economics, and three political scientists, Arthur MacMahon of Columbia University, A. H. Birch from Hull University, and myself. A group of a dozen ‘local specialists’ drawn mainly from E.A.C.S.O. and from the economists, lawyers, and political scientists at the University Colleges in East Africa also presented papers and played a significant role in the discussions. The total number of participants, including 22 observers, amounted to over 90.

At the fourth Cambridge conference on development problems, the role of industry was discussed by ministers, senior officials, economic advisers, and business executives, from 22 African, Asian, and Caribbean countries, the United Nations, and the World Bank. Have some, if not all, of Africa's new nations now reached the stage when it would pay them to put their biggest bets on quick industrialisation? Or must they go on putting most of their money and brains into bringing about an agricultural revolution first, before striving for industrial take-off? These questions started the conference off on one of its big themes.

This seminar was arranged by the Peace Research Institute in Oslo for the purpose of bringing together scattered research workers for the exchange of ideas and methods. They were able to draw on experience from Africa, Asia, and Latin America.

P. Heintz, director of the Latin American School of Sociology, Santiago, opened the seminar with a talk on the relationship between anomie and development. He mentioned institutional anomie, the compartmentalisation of sectors of society, which occurs, for example, when education fails to make any contribution to the economy. Although he paid more attention to individual anomie, and how it can be absorbed into and dissolved by anomie structures, the institutional concept would appear to be extremely relevant to development problems. Labour markets and the transformation from ascribed to achieved status were mentioned as mechanisms to reduce institutional anomie.

This Survey was requested at an early session of the U.N. Economic Commission for Africa, but it has not proved possible to prepare it until now because of the shortage ofstaff available for research work and the paucity of information. An earlier Survey was prepared in the U.N. Headquarters, on the basis of the material available there—The Economic Development of Africa since 1950— but it took the story only up to 1956, and thus did not cover the main changes at, and after, the achievement of political independence.

The idea of setting up an all-African Development Bank was first expressed in a resolution passed at the All-African Peoples' Conference held in Tunis in January 1960. This was followed in 1961 by a unanimous resolution of the Economic Commission for Africa, requesting the Executive Secretary ‘to undertake a thorough study of the possibilities of establishing an African development bank’. The following year, E.C.A. established a committee of nine member states (Cameroun, Ethiopia, Guinea, Liberia, Mali, Nigeria, Sudan, Tanganyika, and Tunisia), who were enjoined ‘to make all the necessary governmental and other contacts…to make complete and comprehensive studies into the financial and administrative structure of the proposed bank and into the nature and extent of its operations; to draft a charter… and to make recommendations on its location’.

Because it is easy to dramatise the stuff of politics, Pan-Africanism is usually discussed only in terms of its political implications. But its protagonists justify their confidence in its value by their belief that functional co-operation on a regional and continental basis offers the best—perhaps the only—way of meeting the social and economic challenges facing the nascent modern African societies. For them, therefore, the real test of Pan-Africanism's success lies not simply in whether the independent African states can succeed in maintaining a single political organisation such as the Organisation of African Unity, but whether it is capable of making an effective contribution towards improving and strengthening Africa's economies and societies. The O.A.U.'s specialised commissions are, therefore, of crucial importance in evaluating the achievements, or potentialities, of Pan-Africanism.