It is well known that nationalist movements are generally accompanied by parallel movements of ideas that make it possible for its leaders to mould a new image of the dominated people. And as Thomas Hodgkin has shown, the need for African political movements to ‘justify themselves’ and ‘to construct ideologies’ has been particularly strong.1 Nationalist movements were to a large extent founded upon emotional impulses, which imparted a distinctive tone to the intellectual clamour that went with them and which continue to have a clear resonance after independence.

When French administration was established in West Africa, largely at the turn of the century (with the principal exception of parts of Senegal, which have been French-administered for some 300 years), the existing social structures ranged widely from some quite simple, egalitarian groups to some very highly stratified and centralised political systems, often conquest states where the distinction between ‘noble’ and ‘commoner’ was clearly recognised and had consequences in the style of life and the possibilities of a career.

Problems created by boundaries are among the more frequent causes of war, and North and West Africa has some of the strangest boundary problems in the world.1 Unlike many of the world's borders, the boundaries here are not the walls and moats of history, natural defence lines whose traces mark the military conflicts and diplomatic compromises of the nation's past. The only exceptions are one-sided and even ironic: the treaty of Lalla Maghnia of 18 March 1845 defined 100 miles of the Algero-Moroccan border after the Moroccan defeat by France at Isly, and the line dividing Algeria from Mali and Niger was the result of an agreement in 1905 separating French military explorers in North Africa from rival French military explorers in West Africa. There is therefore none of the legitimacy of national history associated with the boundary lines. This has its advantages and disadvantages: the might of conquest and the right of diplomacy have not sanctified the borders, but the Schleswigs and the Alsace-Lorraines are not present either.

Economic planning is now a commonly acclaimed ideal in the underdeveloped countries, particularly in Africa. Both the theory and the practice were transmitted by the developed countries. Certainly, the advanced economies have very different conceptions of planning, depending on whether they are centrally planned or market-oriented. The former embrace economic planning by ideological predilection; the latter are moving in the direction of ‘indicative’ planning, or at least state intervention on an extended scale. This course was induced by the goad of the crisis-ridden years of the great depression, the exigencies of World War II, the pressures of post-war reconstruction, and the stupendous technological and organisational revolution of our times. In the metropolitan countries—France, Belgium, and the United Kingdom—the idea and practice of economic planning was propagated to the colonies during and after the war.

President Senghor of Senegal stands out among the statesmen of Africa not only for his literary achievements and his political acumen, but also for having made a major contribution toward the emergent doctrine of African Socialism. Senghor's reflections on that subject are based on his emotional and intellectual commitment to African values and realities, and on a thorough investigation of western and Communist thinkers. The result is an amalgam aimed at serving the future of Africa.

The monetary evolution in the less developed countries in recent years has led to renewed interest in the functions of financial institutions, particularly in the potential contribution of commercial banks to economic growth. Since many of the developing countries have inherited banks and banking techniques from highly industrialised countries in Europe the question has been asked whether these institutions are capable of performing adequately the varied functions that the growth-conscious new nations now expect of them.

Pan-Africanism has been described as ‘essentially a movement of emotions and ideas’,1 and this description is equally applicable to négritude, which is its cultural parallel. Indeed, no better phrase could be found to sum up its double nature, first as a psychological response to the social and cultural conditions of the ‘colonial situation’,2 and secondly as a fervent quest for a new and original orientation.

In the former respect, the imaginative writings of the French-speaking Negro intellectuals offer a precious testimony to the human problems and inner conflicts of the colonial situation; in the latter respect, their propaganda writing and other activities represent an effort to transcend the immediate conditions of this situation by a process of reflection. Négritude is thus at the same time a literary and an ideological movement.

The attainment of independence by Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania has posed new and perplexing problems for the 360,000 Asians settled in these countries.1 They have to adapt themselves to new political régimes, which are determined to carry out far-reaching changes in the traditional roles of the different races in East Africa. In order to understand fully the complexity and magnitude of the problems faced by the Asian community in East Africa, it is essential to contrast the colonial pattern of race relations with that envisaged by the new African leaders.

There are three basic contradictions in the Nigerian political system. They may be stated briefly at the outset. First, the machinery of government is basically regionalised, but the party machinery—the organisation of the masses—retains a strong trans-regional and anti-regional tendency. Secondly, the main opposition party has relied upon the support of a class-conscious regional power group in its drive against the system of regional power. Depending upon a regional section of the political class to effect a shift in the class content of power, it was really asking that section to commit suicide. This contradiction produced a crisis in the Western Region which might easily be repeated elsewhere. Thirdly, the constitutional allocation of power is inconsistent with the real distribution of power in society. The constitution gives dominant power to the numerical majority—i.e., under existing conditions, to the north—but the real distribution of power is determined by technological development, in which respect the south is superior.

There is a very close relationship between education and the economic growth of modern nations.1 Most of us also accept the slogan that the real basis for social, economic, and political progress is the development of the skills, knowledge, and creative capacities of people. These, of course, are ‘self-evident truths’. But by themselves, they really offer little practical justification for tangible investment in education projects.

In 1962 the Nigerian Federal Minister of Economic Development said,

It is our duty as a nation to see to it that we produce population census results which have been thoroughly conducted, verified and appraised, and therefore acceptable, without any shadow of doubt, to all governments of the world and to all international bodies such as the United Nations and its agencies, the World Bank, etc… The impressions of the manner in which a country conducts its affairs are one of the factors which earn for it the respect or disrespect of the rest of the world.1

A Strongly charged Swahili political vocabulary has emerged in Tanzania, which sharply distinguishes persons and nations, in both domestic and foreign affairs, as being either for or against Tanzania's policies. The implications of the selection and usage of this vocabulary are considerable in any assessment of political trends in Tanzania, since language and culture are certainly related. Not only does language reflect cultural patterns, but language also imposes its patterns on culture.1

The systematic investigation of corruption is overdue. There are three main types of literature in English on the subject: historical studies of corrupt practice in Britain; inquisitional studies, mainly of the U.S.A. and the English-speaking West African and Asian countries; and sociological studies which deal with corruption incidentally. So far as I know no general study in English has appeared.1 One reason for this seems to be a widespread feeling that the facts cannot be discovered, or that if they can, they cannot be proved, or that if they can be proved, the proof cannot be published. All these notions seem dubious. There are nearly always sources of information, some of them—such as court records—systematic in their way, and some of them very circumstantial (like privileged parliamentary debates). Many of the people involved are quite willing to talk. And commissions of enquiry have published large amounts of evidence, obtained by unusual powers of compulsion.

Most new African countries have faced the problem of overhauling and refurbishing their local administrative machinery to cope with a variety of new tasks, and to fill the gap left by the removal of expatriate district officers. Indeed, it is precisely because this problem is not unique to Tanzania that students of government outside East Africa may be interested in an account of its regional administration.1

The last few years have been notable in Africa for the many attempts which have been made to bring about economic integration, on the one hand through political regroupings, on the other by various kinds of economic associations between fully sovereign states. At present, the number of ‘political’ integrations is small. One of the most important recent examples, the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland, was broken up in 1963 after a life of ten years. The Federations in former French West and Equatorial Africa did not survive the independence of their constituent territories. In fact, about the only examples of this kind of integration at present are Cameroun, Somalia, and EthiopiaEritrea.

In most African countries, the housing situation is most unsatisfactory, both in quality and quantity. The underlying factors are both demographic (population growth, rapid urbanisation) and economic (the under-development of productive resources). Although the poverty of housing is only one facet of the ‘pauperisation’ of the African masses, and although new needs arise directly from the process of development itself, yet the only possible framework for any modern housing policy is planning—economic, social, and spatial—in which the role of the public authorities is decisive both in the preparation and the implementation of the plan. Housing then becomes one element in the total modernisation of society.

What follows purports to give the opinions of three judges of the highest court of appeal in Newstate, Africa. The title is taken from a pregnant phrase of O. W. Holmes, an American writer on jurisprudence. He held that the result of a case depended upon ‘the inarticulate major premiss’ of the judge (or the unstated assumption which most influenced his judgement), at least in matters of first impression—i.e. cases in which the judges must determine for the first time what is the operative rule (‘norm’) of law. He urged this proposition in sharp opposition to the popular notion that a judge merely applied to the ascertained facts clear rules of law, which he found in earlier cases or in statutes.

The Islamic Republic of Mauritania, independent since 28 November 1960, is the most recent convert to the revolutionary model of single- party government practised in a number of new African states.1 As such, it is a political curiosity, for the model presupposes a militant mass party that ‘won’ independence, whereas the Mauritanian People's Party, founded after independence, in December 1961, is a heterogeneous association of politicians and traditional tribal leaders. Until 1964, President Mokhtar Ould Daddah, Mauritania's first university graduate, carefully balanced the regional, tribal, and personal demands of the notables while moderating those of the young modernisers within his administration. Since the extraordinary congress held at Kaedi in January 1964, however, he has attempted to transform a politics of equilibrium based upon tribal personalities to a politics of nation- building based upon a modern party.

The problem of African advancement has an essentially political side. Since the discussion here is concerned with the overtly economic aspects of localisation, specific mention must be made at the outset of its political implications, especially of the possibility of conflict between economic and political aims. For example, it may well happen that at a given stage of economic development, a country would maximise its rate of economic growth by leaning heavily on imports of capital and skilled personnel, but that this policy is unacceptable on political grounds. Under these circumstances, the country's leaders must decide whether to subordinate economic to political welfare, or vice versa. Economic analysis is not able to offer any guidance on how this decision should be made: except to ensure that if political considerations are to be regarded as paramount, the full economic cost of a politically-oriented decision is known and appreciated.

Far out in the Indian Ocean, stretched like a string of pearls between the Grand Ile of Madagascar and the coast of East Africa, lies one of the world's most beautiful groups of islands, one of its most intriguing civilisations, and one of its most puzzling territories: the Comoro Islands. The archipelago is altogether one-quarter the size of Corsica. The four main islands—Mayotte, Anjouan, Mohéli, and Grande Comore, surrounded by numerous smaller isles and coral reefs—between them cover an area of only 852 square miles (2,336 sq. km.). The total population at the time of the most recent census in 1958 amounted to 183,133, with 90,790 on Grande Comore, 61,815 on Anjouan, 23,364 on Mayotte, and 7,164 on Moheli. The latest estimate, for 1963, gives a total of about 200,000. Tiny as they are, apparently unaffected by the wind of change, and isolated from the main tide of the world events, the islands still present a microcosm of the problems encountered by the developing countries on the mainland. They too are undergoing the difficult transition from a colonial system to independence, and have to reckon with the strong traditional structures of a civilisation left largely untouched by French administration, which still influences the lives of the mass of the population.