Book Review: Africa Today
| Published date | 01 September 1956 |
| Date | 01 September 1956 |
| DOI | 10.1177/002070205601100312 |
| Subject Matter | Book Review |
228
INTERNATIONAL
JOURNAL
AFRICA
TODAY.
By
C.
Grove
Haines.
1955.
(Baltimore:
The
Johns
Hopkins
Press.
xvi,
510pp.
$6.00)
This
book,
which
grew
out
of
a
conference
on
Africa
held a
year
ago
in
Washington
under
the
sponsorship
of
the
Johns
Hop-
kins
School
of
Advanced
International
Studies,
is
a
collection
of
twenty-two essays
and
nineteen commentaries
by
contributors
with
widely
different
backgrounds and
varying
degrees
of
spe-
cialized
knowledge
about
Africa.
The
essays
deal
with
a
wide
range
of
political,
economic,
cultural
and educational
subjects.
In
a
volume
of
this
kind,
particularly
when
the
topic
is
as
large
as
Africa,
any
attempt
at
comprehensive
description
and
analysis
is
apt
to
be
deficient
in
some
respect.
Africa
Today
strikes
this
reviewer
as
weak
in
at
least
three
respects.
In
the
first
place, it
lacks
balance.
Far
more
space
is
devoted
to
the
Gold
Coast
and
Nigeria
than
to any
other
part
of
Africa.
On
the other
hand
many countries,
such
as
Libya,
the
Sudan,
Ethiopia,
Somalia,
Liberia,
Angola
and
Mozambique,
are barely
mentioned,
despite
the
numerous
and
important
problems
en-
countered
there.
Secondly,
several
questions
of
special
interest
to
social
scientists
are
treated
vaguely
and
inadequately.
One
finds,
for
example,
occasional
references
to
"processes
of social
change"
but
no
discussion
designed
to
shed
any
particular
light
upon
these
processes.
Finally,
even
though
many
contributors
warn
against
the
difficulties
involved
in
formulating
generaliza-
tions
about
so
vast
and
diverse
a
continent as
Africa,
few
seem
to have
avoided
generalizations
based
on
facts
observed
only
in
a
particular
area.
Despite
these
weaknesses,
Africa
Today
must
still
be
regarded
as
a significant
book.
The
attitudes
it
expresses
toward
the
problems
of
contemporary
Africa
are
particularly
interesting.
Since
the
second
world
war,
attitudes
toward
Africa
have
been
shaped
primarily
by
concern
with
questions
of self-government
and
economic
development.
Usually,
however,
the
two
ques-
tions
have
been
viewed
as
largely
unrelated
to
each
other.
Sepa-
ration
of
political
from
economic
factors
has
made
it
possible
to
regard
achievement
of
self-government
as
a
relatively
simple
task,
involving
little
more
than
transfer
of
administrative
func-
tions
and
of
symbols
of
state
power
from
colonial
to
native
authorities.
Africa
Today
shows
substantial
agreement
among
the
contributors
in
rejecting
this
simple
approach.
Lord Hailey,
for
example,
maintains
in
his
masterful
introduction
that
the
African
objective
of
self-rule is
not limited
to
independent
political
status,
but
includes
the
desire
"to
achieve
at
the
same
time
some
parity
with
the
peoples
of
the
more
fully
developed
countries."
Another
contributor
discusses
self-government
in
its
"wider
con-
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