EDITOR'S NOTES
| Published date | 01 January 1956 |
| Date | 01 January 1956 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1002/j.1099-162X.1956.tb00507.x |
JOURNAL
OF
AFRICAN ADMINISTRATION
VOLUME
VIn
NUMBER 1JANUARY, 1956
EDITOR'S
NOTES
It
is encouraging to be able to open
the
first number of
the
Journal's
eighth
volume with an article from an American observer of African affairs. Since
its
foundation in 1949
the
Journal has steadily built up a reputation as
the
pro-
fessional organ of British African administration
and
its contributors have been,
and
still are, largely drawn from
the
ranks of those who are concerned with
the
practical aspects of administration in Africa. We are, however, always
happy
to
receive constructive comment from interested spectators
and
we hope
that
Mr.
Ottenberg's article will be the precursor of other similar contributions.
Mr. Ottenberg's paper was stimulated by
the
description of local government
in the Eastern Region of Nigeria which Mr. Livingston Booth contributed to
the
April 1955 issue. Mr. Ottenburg, who is an anthropologist with a personal
knowledge of
the
Afikpo Division, believes
that
developments in local govern-
ment in Nigeria are producing local political alliances which are different from
traditional social groupings and his paper illustrates the social
and
economic
factors which underlie these changes. The article illustrates, we think, one of
the several ways in which sociological research can come to
the
assistance of
practical administration in Africa.
Some years ago Mr.
Arthur
Phillips remarked upon the tendency of African
courts to assume divorce jurisdiction which is
not
supported by traditional pre-
cedents. Mr. Knowles has tested this thesis by undertaking asurvey of divorce
cases heard in
the
South Nyanza District of Kenya.
In
our second article he
suggests
that
in
the
light of the changing conceptions of justice
and
morality
there is now a need for a modern code of divorce law for use in African courts
in the South Nyanza District and discusses how this
may
be achieved.
The problems of local government finance have received much
attention
recently both in Africa
and
in
the
meetings of
the
Colonial Local Government
AdVisoryPanel in London. Attention has perhaps been mainly directedtowards
the rural aspects of
the
subject
but
in view of
the
rapid development of
urban
local government in certain areas of Africa it is perhaps timely to reproduce
Mr. Froomkin's paper on municipal fisca) management. The article which we
:eprint
with
the
permission of
the
writer
and
the
editors of
the
American
Journal in which
it
first appeared, presents ashrewd analysis of
the
issues
attending
the
division of financial responsibility between central
and
local
ｾｯｶ･ｲｮｭ･ｮｴ
and
although much of
the
illustration is drawn from outside Africa
It will doubtless be of great interest to those concerned with municipal
and
urban
finance there.
In the October 1955 issue Mr. Graham-Jolly described
the
startwhich
is being
made in introducing multi-racial local government in
the
rural areas of Nyasa-
land. Mr. Norton contributes to this number acompanion piece in which he
outlines
the
manner in which a multi-racial local council has emerged in
the
Newala District of Tanganyika. His article strikes aparticularly encouraging
note since
it
records clearly
that
this council came into being very largely
because
the
several races in
the
district were prepared to co-operate in
its
establishment.
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