The Tiv of Northern Nigeria, who number some 800,000, believe that they are all descended from one man, Tiv, through some 14 to 17 generations of known ancestors (Fig. 1). These ancestors are constantly named in casual conversation and in discussion of serious affairs. To understand things Tiv one must know Tiv genealogies. By genealogical reference a Tiv traces ties of kinship and marriage, claims a place to live and farm, argues his case in a moot, conducts matters of magic and ritual, and decides against whom he will fight on any given occasion. Genealogies are the key to Tiv social organization. Tiv political structure is based on a lineage system: a system of segmented groups in which each segment (save the maximal) is included in a segment of a higher order but of the same kind, and each segment (save the minimal) includes segments of a lower order but of the same kind. The Tiv system has an almost one to one correlation between lineage and territorial segments. Both are called ‘those of X’, the eponymous ancestor; thus Mbaduku (those of Aduku) describes both the lineage segment (ipaven, pl. uipaven) and the discrete territory which they inhabit (tar, pl. utar).

Within the Nilo-Hamitic group of tribes in East Africa is a sub-group, the tribes of which speak closely related dialects. So close are these dialects that a native speaker of any one can understand a speaker of any other. In the normal intercourse between the peoples this does in fact happen constantly. Linguistically this group of dialects might be called the Teso Dialect Cluster, after the tribe of that name.

Published literature on the subject of the Shilluk is considerable and there are also many interesting accounts of specific subjects buried in the files of the Administration. Nowhere, however, is there a complete account of all aspects of Shilluk life. Moreover, there has been a tendency to concentrate on certain aspects, notably the Divine Kingship, to the exclusion of others. In 1941 Mr. M. E. C. Pumphrey and I published two articles: the first a general summary account of the Shilluk tribe based on Mr. Pumphrey's observations and wide experience; the second a more detailed analysis of one Shilluk settlement, the result of fieldwork carried out in 1937. In 1944 I had the privilege of attending the installation of reth Anei Kur and, together with Mr. W. P. G. Thomson, published a full account. Subsequently Mr. Thomson published his ‘Further Notes on the Death of a Shilluk Reth’, after the death of reth Anei in 1943. This, with Professor Evans-Pritchard's Frazer Lecture, The Divine Kingship of the Shilluk of the Nilotic Sudan, represents the total of information published on the subject of the Shilluk in recent years.

Le 2 mai 1923, Sir Frederic LUGARD prenait la parole à Bruxelles, dans la Salle de l'Union Coloniale, en présence de S.M. le Roi Albert. Le cycle de conférences organisé par le Ministre des Colonies de Belgique, M. Louis Franck, pour l'étude des problèmes coloniaux sous l'éclairement des diverses solutions adoptées par les principales nations coloniales, devait nécessairement appeler à cette tribune, pour cette confrontation, l'ancien gouverneur général de la Nigérie, le tenant de l'administration indirecte, qui venait, l'année précédente, de consigner les données de son expérience et d'exposer sa doctrine dans un ouvrage dont le retentissement allait s'étendre à toute l'Afrique et qui deviendrait le bréviaire des administrateurs coloniaux.

Most Cewa believe that certain persons are witches (mfiti, sing, and pl.) who impoverish, harm, or kill their fellow beings by using destructive magic and by performing supernatural feats of various kinds. That they are greatly preoccupied with this belief and its various implications is shown by the frequency with which they attribute death and misfortune to witchcraft, and by their related tendency to take precautions against possible attacks by ‘witches’, e.g. by having their bodies and huts magically protected.

Certain features of Cewa witch beliefs make them well suited to sociological analysis. As this type of analysis has been somewhat neglected by students of witch beliefs, Part I of this paper will be devoted to a brief review of some of the literature (mainly on Bantu) and to an attempt to formulate a serviceable hypothesis. Part II will summarize information about the Cewa essential to an understanding of Part III, in which the hypothesis will be applied to Cewa material. Part III will appear in a subsequent number of Africa.

The present paper is an attempt to interpret the structural principles of the Nilo-Hamitic age-system and to establish its significance in the wider structure of the Nilo-Hamitic societies. The discussion is based on an analysis of the available anthropological literature. But this literature is extremely uneven and not seldom confusing, so that some aspects of my argument necessarily have but a preliminary value. It will not be possible to produce here all the details of the analysis, which I hope to deal with more extensively in some other place.

Hausa is primarily a linguistic term but it has definite cultural connotations and refers to the Hausa-speaking Muslim populations of Northern Nigeria and adjoining French territories, who are typically organized in large centralized states. Such a definition excludes the pagan Maguzawa, whose native speech is also Hausa, and it ignores ethnic differences between the indigenous Habe, who were conquered by Fulani in the ‘Holy War’ of 1804-10, the settled Fulani, who now form the ruling group in most of the states, and the large assimilated populations of slave origin in Hausa communities.

C'est en 1949 que j'ai pu entreprendre, en liaison avec la Section de Géographie de l'Institut d'Études Centrafricaines, une enquête de sociologie urbaine consacrée aux ‘villes’ noires qui encadrent Brazzaville: Poto-Poto, Wenzé et Bacongo. En 1950, les recherches se multiplièrent grâce au travail collectif de l'équipe de sociologues que je parvins à rassembler à Brazzaville et le travail se poursuit actuellement, durant le répit laissé par les missions accomplies en ‘brousse’.

I Propose to examine the Uganda secondary boys' boarding-school, in which I teach, as an institution in culture contact; to consider how far its function must be interpreted in terms of its own dynamism and how far in terms of the parent cultures of the Black and White members of the community. The interpretation I make from data gained chiefly within the school is necessarily incomplete, and a complementary study by a field anthropologist, looking at the school from the point of view of outside society, is desirable. But within the limits of the data available to a schoolmaster I here offer a description and an analysis.

The Ethiopic syllabary employed for writing the classical Ge'ez and also, with certain modifications, the contemporary South Semitic vernaculars of East Africa, was formed by super-imposing a system of auxiliary vowel-marks upon a basic consonantal alphabet; this alphabet occurs, alongside of the syllabic script, in the Old Ethiopic inscriptions of the Axumite Kingdom in the fourth century of our era, and is a derivative of the Sabaeo-Minaean or Old South Arabic script found in the monuments of the south-west Arabian kingdoms. But although the Ethiopic syllabary is thus genetically connected with the other main branches of the Semitic alphabet, the traditional order of the signs, in which the consonantal component and the accompanying vowel are the primary and secondary determining factors respectively, does not agree with that of any Semitic alphabet hitherto known. There is no old or reliable native tradition as to the reason underlying the order of the signs; no help is to be had from numerical signs, which elsewhere, as will shortly appear, afford valuable testimony to the order of the letters; for Ethiopic borrowed Greek alphabetic signs for this purpose, while the South Arabian inscriptions used single strokes for the units, and for higher denominations the initial letters of the native words for five, ten, hundred, &c. The mnemonic word-groups reconstructed by Bauer and others are open to objection on grounds of language and sense. Other external criteria yield only tentative and inconclusive results, and the subject has accordingly remained one of speculation and controversy.

The Cushitic group of languages belonging to Oriental Sidamo is spoken to the west, south, and partly to the east of the Gurage domain. The Sidamo languages and dialects are insufficiently known and, with a few exceptions, rather inadequately described. Those known as belonging to this group are Sidamo, Gudella (called Hadiya by the Ṭəmbarro, Kontoma by the Alaba), Kambatta, Ṭəmbarro (a close dialect of Kambatta), Halaba or Alaba, Darasa, and Qabenna (called also Womba by the natives of Qabenna, and Adiya by the Galla). It seems doubtful to me whether Moreno is right in considering Burǧi as belonging to this group.

The Yoruba were probably first established in what is now Nigeria in the region of Nupe, whence they crossed the Niger and went southwards in search of a suitable settlement. They chose Ile-Ife where, according to tradition, they encountered no opposition from the aborigines. Ife was later idealized; it became their Holy City and the revered cradle of their civilization. They probably remained under a single government at Ife until they had consolidated their power sufficiently to undertake the conquest of their neighbours. The general drive was towards the south, although a counter-migration back to the north resulted in the foundation of Old Oyo. When the Yoruba fanned out from Ife, they left principalities in their wake as they drove towards the sea. This region was probably then occupied by the Fon or Egun people, who were either absorbed or expelled as the Yoruba, in various waves and in different directions, penetrated the tropical forest.

Certain sampling problems which arose in the design of the Agricultural Survey of Basutoland in 1949-50 were solved by the use of the native tax registers, in conjunction with the rather scanty information provided by the last population census in 1946. As the situation was one which is likely to be found in a number of African Territories, it may be of interest to describe it and to discuss the methods by which our difficulties were overcome.

Professor Greenberg, in his series of linguistic studies, writes: ‘From the present series there will emerge a complete genetic reclassification of the languages of Africa. These results are so at variance from the commonly accepted scheme that a brief methodological foreword seems in order.’ This is a clear and frank statement and a great promise. Until now, in spite of several attempts, no satisfactory classification of African languages has existed. Though it may seem natural not to be satisfied with an analysis of individual languages but to aim at a synthesis, to see the whole and its interrelations, there was in many quarters a definite aversion from a holistic approach; it was even said to be more important to stress the differences than to try to find relationships. It is certainly necessary to study each single language in all its peculiarities, but it is wrong to maintain that a comparative investigation should not be undertaken until every African language has been analysed; that would defer the matter ad kalendas graecas. It is not necessary to analyse every Bantu language in order to show the characteristic features of Bantu languages and their relation to other languages. We are grateful to Professor Greenberg for his attempt, which reveals a familiarity with the problem and a sound and extensive knowledge of many African languages. Though not every point he makes is new, yet he indicates new roads and provides food for reflection and discussion.

Swahili is, by origin, a Bantu language which was strongly influenced by Arabic. In the course of time Swahili has borrowed words from a variety of languages. During the last thirty or forty years it is not surprising to find that Swahili has continued to enrich its vocabulary, more particularly from English.

Underlying Eva Meyerowitz's remarkable work, The Sacred State of the Akan, are two assumptions, partly expressed and in part left to be inferred by the reader from the great mass of evidence which her thorough and painstaking research has made available.

The first assumption is that the culture of the Akan today shows a decline from a higher culture which they formerly possessed. The second assumption is that the culture with which the Akan must be identified is the ancient heliolithic culture which once flourished in the Mediterranean and the Ancient East.

To endeavour to epitomize the problems of capital investment in a continent in a few pages must in itself be regarded as presumptuous; to make the attempt when that continent is Africa, with its immense regional, political, and racial diversities, may well be foolhardy. Therefore in submitting this note, in response to the invitation of the Interim Committee of the International Economic Association that I should set down some headings for discussion at its conference, I have endeavoured to focus attention on some fundamental issues which are in some degree common to Africa south of the Sahara.