The correct starting point in the analysis of any economic unit is to pose the following three questions: What are the needs of the people? What resources are available? How adequately are these resources being mobilised for these needs ?1

These questions are applicable to a continent or a country (or for that matter a county, a city, or a village); they can also be applied to the world as a whole. If they are, a picture emerges which, if it does not appal us, because it is so familiar and so easily taken for granted, would certainly astonish a visitor from another planet. The basic human needs for nourishment and for protection from the weather are not great, and the resources known to be available could, with current levels of technique, easily permit a comfortable living standard for everyone. Yet these resources are very largely unexploited or wasted, and miserable poverty is the typical human condition.

A Recebt study by the U.N. Secretariat provides ample proof, if further proof were needed, that the problem of the economic development of the low-income countries cannot be solved without these countries becoming not only producers, but also exporters of manufactured goods, on an important scale.1 At present 86 per cent of the exports of the ‘developing countries’2 consists of primary products, and only 14 per cent of manufactured goods. But the world market for primary commodities expands only slowly, owing to the low income elasticity of demand. This is partly due to the low income elasticity of food consumption in the wealthy countries and the rapid growth of their own agricultural production, and partly to economies in the use of materials in industry and the development of synthetics. Since 1938, the volume of trade in manufactures has more than trebled, while the volume of trade in primary products has increased only by two-thirds.

In November 1963 the inhabitants of the Transkeian Territories, the largest block of Bantu reserve in the Republic of South Africa, went to the polls to elect representatives for a Legislative Assembly, upon whom the responsibility for the government of this, the first so-called ‘Bantustan’ to achieve a limited form of self-government, is to be laid. The election was the culminating point in a series of changes in the administrative structure of the area which have been characterised by an emphasis on the institution of chieftainship as the basis of local government. After approximately 60 years of rule through magistrates (later supplemented by a system of district councils) the Bantu Authorities Act of 1955 was introduced, giving greatly enhanced powers to the Chiefs, who now became the heads of the tribally-structured Bantu Authorities.

For those who follow African events closely it is the phenomenon of nationalism which attracts greatest attention. It was a rising sense of national identity which threw off the colonial yoke, and this ongoing creation and exaltation of culture and society at the national level can either foster or frustrate the creation of viable political units. We are therefore obliged to keep abreast of African nationalism if we are to understand the course of events and forecast the shape of things to come in this developing continent.

The World Federation of Trade Unions (W.F.T.U.) was one of the most hopeful ventures of all the Communist front organisations. Unlike some of the other fronts the Russians did not create it. They captured the W.F.T.U. after it was established, and had a good start. Once captured, however, the W.F.T.U. represented merely an extension of the pattern of the earlier Red International which had been created by the Comintern following World War I as a vehicle to reach the working masses of the world and rally them to Moscow. But like its predecessor—dissolved in 1937—the W.F.T.U. has also failed to make significant inroads among the workers in western countries and win control over them. While it has affiliates in the west, the French Confédération Générale du Travail (C.G.T.) and the Italian Confederazione Generale Italiana del Lavoro (C.G.I.L.) being the most outstanding examples, the W.F.T.U. does not at all dominate these movements. Rather, control for the most part is exercised through the local Communist parties, some of which, while still very much an integral part of an international apparatus, have won some measure of autonomy from Moscow.1

The achievement of independence may tend to dull the interest which African leaders have shown in the organisations that try to influence policy-making in British government. But they should need no reminding that in Britain there are comparatively few means of maintaining an informed body of public opinion about international affairs as a background against which the Government can operate. Colonial policy was frequently left to colonial experts, and the case for African nationalism was argued by a small number of groups such as the Fabian Colonial Bureau, or the Movement for Colonial Freedom.

The basic aims of this Institute are the same as those of its sister Institutes in Santiago and Bangkok. Indeed the reasons for their establishment in Latin America and Asia are valid a fortiori in the African setting. A great number of newly emergent states are faced with the inescapable claim for accelerated economic growth, and this in its turn depends upon a considerable extension of public investment and upon the introduction of national economic planning, of a more or less comprehensive kind according to conditions in any particular country.

Rapid social, economic, and political developments on the continent of Africa since 1950 made it almost impossible for general African Studies Programs in the United States to keep up with new knowledge and events. In order to fill the growing need for more sharply defined Programs, Syracuse University, through the Maxwell Graduate School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, established in September 1962 the East African Studies Program with Dr Fred G. Burke as director.

The Centre of West African Studies has been in full operation since October 1964. Its staff is as follows: J. D. Fage, M.A., Ph.D. (Director and Professor of African History); P. C. Lloyd, M.A., B.Sc., D.Phil. (Senior Lecturer in Sociology); D. Rimmer, B.A. (Lecturer in Economics); R. E. Bradbury, B.A., Ph.D. (Lecturer in Social Anthropology); K. W. J. Post, M.A. (Lecturer in Political Science); A. G. Hopkins, B.A., Ph.D. (Assistant Lecturer in Economic History). A number of other members of the University of Birmingham are closely associated with the work of the Centre, including D. W. J. Johnson, M.A., B.Litt. (History); R. E. Wraith, C.B.E., B.Com. (Local Government); W. B. Morgan, M.A., Ph.D., and R. P. Moss, B.Sc., Ph.D. (Geography); and R. H. F. Dalton, B.A. (Education).

The practice of holding conferences of Commonwealth Speakers or Presiding Officers of legislatures and of the Clerks of those legislatures is not as prevalent as one would expect in view of the importance which is attached to the institution of parliament as a bond between Commonwealth countries.

For many years India has provided an outstanding example of co-operation in this field. The first conference of Presiding Officers of the various legislatures in that country took place in New Delhi in 1921. Since then these conferences have been held periodically and they have now become a regular annual event. The agenda largely comprises procedural points of interest; no votes are taken and no formal resolutions are adopted. The first conference of Secretaries of legislative bodies in India was held at Gwalior in 1953, and subsequent conferences have been held annually in different states.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.