In an article, ‘A Contribution to the Study of Zande Culture’, which appeared in Africa in 1960 (vol. xxx, no. 4), I discussed the certain or probable borrowing by the original Azande, the Ambomu, in the course of their migrations, of their main cultivated plants, e.g. eleusine, maize, ground-nuts, manioc, sweet potatoes, bananas, and tobacco, from assimilated or neighbouring peoples. In a second article, ‘A Further Contribution to the Study of Zande Culture’ (Africa, vol. xxxiii, no. 3, 1963), the discussion of cultural borrowings was taken into the field of artifacts and technology: building, smithery, pot-making, carving, plaiting, oracles, and medicines. In the present and final essay some examples are given of borrowing in areas of the social life other than those of cultivation of plants and the arts and crafts.

Credit is a vital economic institution without which trade becomes very limited. In the industrial Western societies, where it is highly developed, it operates through formal, standardized arrangements and procedures by which the solvency of the debtor is closely assessed, securities against possible default are provided, and the conditions of the agreement are documented and endorsed by the parties concerned. Ultimately, these arrangements and procedures are upheld by legislated rules and sanctions administered by central, bureaucratized, fairly impartial, efficient, and effective courts and police. In West Africa, on the other hand, where long-distance trade has been fostered by varying ecological circumstances, such organization has not yet evolved, particularly for long-distance trade. Nevertheless extensive systems of credit have been developed.

The Yoruba are generally believed to be the most urbanized of the peoples of tropical Africa, and certainly their propensity for living in large nucleated settlements is one of the most striking features of the settlement geography of the continent. It is not surprising, therefore, that the Yoruba town has attracted a considerable amount of attention from anthropologists, sociologists, and geographers alike. W. R. Bascom and others have emphasized the uniqueness, magnitude, and long history of urban development; W. B. Morgan, A. L. Mabogunje, and N. C. Mitchel have examined the functions and morphology of Yoruba towns; and certain sociologists, notably N. A. Fadipe and P. C. Lloyd, have discussed detailed aspects of Yoruba urban life. From all these writings one dominant feature has emerged: that Yoruba towns are ‘agricultural towns’ in the sense that they are agriculturally based and the product of intimate links between town and country. While it is true that most towns in pre-industrial societies tend to be linked with their immediate hinterlands, in so far as the excess of food production there makes their existence possible, Yoruba towns are linked to their hinterlands by even stronger ties, because the Yoruba living in the country traditionally looks upon the town as his real home and owes direct social allegiance to it.