Africa has become more reliant – not less – on exports of primary products and raw materials and on imports of finished and semifinished goods since independence… the fact that Africa's role in the world economy has undergone a relative decline at the same time as dependence on foreign markets, goods and capital has experienced an absolute increase is evidence that the gap between Africa and the industrialised world is growing, despite the ambitious efforts of African states to close it.1

From the late 1950s until the present day the territories, colonies, and later the new states of English-speaking Africa have been engaged in a continuing effort to develop their own national constitutions. It has been an attempt to capture in written form the government structures and political systems which would best express their political will and guide them through the difficult early years of independence.

‘The events of recent years have brought out the conflicts that can arise between the continuing pressures for political independence and the inescapable truths of economic interdependence in the modern world’. – Recent words from the horse's mouth, to wit the British– North American Committee, consisting of some 100 leading industrialists of the western world who view with alarm the strong desire on the part of the emerging nations to exercise ever-greater control over their own mineral resources. In a concise report, they sternly remind the governments of developing countries of the dire consequences of the hostile attitude to foreign investors as expressed in demands for higher taxes, more local participation, and – Heaven forbid – nationalisation.1

Kenya has a bad image among those who see themselves as ‘friends of the people’, who for many years must have thought of it as the land where it is always 1788. But although some years ago we were informed by a reliable authority that ‘Africa is ripe for revolution’, in Kenya up till now – though who dares predict what will be in the newspapers tomorrow? – it is still not 1789: the revolution has not arrived.

Botswana, Lesotho, and Swaziland are among very few countries which, in recent times, have for an extended period and without formal agreement used another national currency as their domestic circulating medium and legal tender. After many years of being de facto part of a larger monetary area using the South African currency, in 1972 the three smaller countries jointly initiated negotiations with Pretoria which led to the creation of an officially recognised Rand Monetary Area in December 1974. Thereafter they chose different arrangemènts which span the spectrum between continued integration with and separation from the monetary system of South Africa. The experiences of these countries, while of interest in themselves, may also be relevant to other governments with dependent currency systems which face similar options.

Academics and aid officials are increasingly turning their attention to two aspects of rural development: the structure of the local society, and the social impact of agricultural programmes. In part this reflects a pessimistic and moralistic reassessment of earlier attempts to promote development in the Third World. However, this analytical focus also represents the continuing evolution of research by those who are engaged in refining their theoretical perspectives on rural society.

The ultimate reality in culture change… hinges on the fact that corresponding institutions in two cultures satisfy analogous needs in different ways and with different techniques; but in the process they have to use the same human and natural resources: land, capital, labor, politically organized force, the impulses of human reproduction, and also the standardized emotions, values and loyalties specific to each culture. – Bronislaw Malinowski, Dynamics of Culture Change (New Haven, 1945), p. 71.

This short article analyses the demand for and the use of educational indicators with reference to Swaziland. The data requirements are considered as well as the policy implications of establishing a fixed series, and an educational input-output table is constructed in an attempt to derive an all-embracing set of indicators. The Markov model presented here was initially created in order to help forecast what might happen to the Swaziland education system rather than to describe it. As the discussion of the data requirements below suggests, however, this can be considered a fortunate birth.