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INSTITUTE OF AFRICAN STUMES FOURAH BAY COLLEGE ao |[|i|j 1Q75 UNIVERSITY OF C°

Vol. III No. 3 Session 1972-73 APRIL 1973

Editer: J. O. EDOWU HYDE

Asst. Editor: J. A. S. BLAIR

AFRICANA RESEARCH BULLETIN

CONTENTS

Page

INTRODUCTION ...... J. G. Edowu Hyde 1

ARTICLES

Developments in the Study of African Literature

...... Eldred D. Jones 3

The Study of African History: The Sierra Leone Scene

oooooaoeeooooo . John E„ Peterson 20

The Study of African Religions Edward„E. Fasholè-Luke 37

Social Effects of Industrialization and Urbanization in Sierra Leone H. B. Dumbuya 54- INTRODUCTION

During the current session the Institute organised a series of four lectures which reviewed the pres¬ ent state of the study of the literature, history, religions and sociology of . We publish edited versions of the.lectures in this issue.

Professor Eldred Jones, Head of the Department of English, Fourah Bay College and Acting Director of the Institute, inaugurated the series with a lec¬ ture on 'Developments in the Study of African Literature.' Using the year 1963 as a point of departure, Professor Jones has shown how two con¬ ferences held that year at the University of Dakar and Fourah Bay College, respectively, helped to set the seal of respectability on the study of African Literature. He takes us through the con¬ tributions of non-African critics and commentators to those of African authors. The various controv¬ ersies are examined as to the legitimacy of non- Africans assuming the role of critics and the role of an African writer in a revolution, specifically the Biafran episode. Professor Jones has high¬ lighted the problem facing African universities wishing to augment their resources in African Literature; the headstart gained by overseas univer¬ sities and their greater financial resources ensure their pre-eminence as centres for the study of African Literature.

In 'The Study of African History: The Sierra Leone Scene*, Professor J. E. Peterson, Head of the Depart¬ ment of Hodern History at Fourah Bay College has reviewed developments which helped to establish the study of African history as we know it today. He has drawn the attention of readers to those scholarly works which are like signposts on the road to the re-discovery of African history. Attention is drawn to the change in focus of those writing African history, and who have thus provided new historical insights. Professor Peterson rightly emphasises the crucial role of archaeology in revealing the past, citing the iron age remains located in the Kabala area by John Atherton. Using modern carbon dating methods the site has been dated circa 695 A.D. An unsuccessful attempt v/as made a few years ago, "by the Institute, to interest Government in this activity following a preliminary survey by Paul Ozanne. The time is perhaps opportune to revive the Institute's request for funds for achaeological investigations.

ï Dr. Fashole-Luke too, has gone far in his review to indicate v/hat has been achieved so far in the study of religious phenomena in Sierra Leone and . Like his colleagues he has stressed the need for financial provision to explore the rich fields awaiting the researcher, in this in case, the area of religious studies, muslern and indigenous, christian. It is important to note Dr. Fasholè-Luke's references to ments of university depart¬ Religious Studies, as against departments of Christian Theology, which, in the context of our religious pluralism, promises much more fruit¬ ful results. He is the Acting Head of the ment Depart¬ of Theology, Fourah Bay College. The fourth lecture in the series was contributed by Mr. M. B. Dumbuya, Acting Head of the ment of Depart¬ Sociology. In it he has examined industrial¬ ization and urbanization and concluded that these are key factors in development Leone. planning in Sierra

Finally, the editors wish to express their ation of the appreci¬ services of Mrs. Delia P. Carpenter in typing this number.

J. G. Edowu Hyde Editor ARTICLES

DEVELOPMENTS IN THE STUDY OE AFRICAN LITERATURE

Eldred D. Jones Department of English Fourah Bay College

In 1963 two important conferences were held on the place of African literature in the curriculum of African universities. One was held in Dakar and the other in this College. The two conferences were conceived of as complementary. In the words of the record of these conferences edited by Gerald Moore and published by Ibadan University Press:

The conferences held at Dakar University and Fourah Bay College in March and April 1963 grew out of a conviction that univeir sity initiative throughout Africa was „• needed to ensure the introduction of African Literature to first degree arts courses. The assumption was that if this innovation were made from above it should be possible to persuade the various Exam¬ ination Boards to extend it to the second¬ ary school syllabus. Thus in time the revolutionary idea of teaching young Africans about Africa might even percolate down to the primary level.

Among the resolutions of the Fourah Bay conference was this one:

... that the literature of Africa should be included in the literature syllabuses of all universities in Africa and also in the work of schools; and that research into the whole field of literary activity and the recording and study of local material should be encouraged. ...

The study of African Literature has since become an important part of the curriculum of all African universities and from that point of view, one of the main aims of those conferences has been fulfilled. In some universities this has meant the jettisoning of some aspects of the traditional English Litera¬ ture syllabus. In the University of Nairobi for example, in the Department of Literature there are papers in Swahili Literature, in Traditional Liter¬ ature (as a genre) in addition to Ilodern African Literature in European languages. In ïourah Bay College once we were able to arrange our own sylla¬ buses, we made provision for the incorporation of African Literature in English into both the honours and general degree programmes. The French Department did the same.

As was envisaged in the resolution of the Fourah Bay conference, the study of African Literature has permeated down to school level and some African writers have at last found a fairly secure market in Africa. African authors now regularly appear in the G.C.E. ordinary and advanced level syllabuses.

But of course African Literature had been studied at a scholarly level long before the two 1963 confer¬ ences, What these conferences did was to highlight the relevance of the literature to the teaching programme of universities. Indeed at one stage the situation was that African Literature was studied more outside Africa than in Africa itself. Even tod^y, although there are excellent teachers of African Literature in Africa, in the matter of library holdings of books and manuscripts necessary for the study of African Literature,some univer - sities in the United States and Britain have collec¬ tions (because they have more money) which would make tHem more attractive centres for the study of African Literature than many African universities.

I shall give an example. In textual criticism access to the earliest form of a work is vital. The University of Texas, which makes a speciality of collecting such material and has a corner on the manuscripts of many British authors, is now acquir¬ ing African manuscripts. They have an impressive collection of South African manuscripts and may soon be acquiring manuscripts from other parts of Africa and from the Caribbean. African universities which are too poor to pay for these precious objects will be compelled to go for these materials on their own authors, to foreign universities. This is not an indictment, it is only a statement of fact. The • University of Texas very generously opens its resources to visiting scholars. I mention the fact because those who provide the money for universities in our part of the world often think that once the staff has been paid, and there are books in the library and food for the students, little else is needed. Research even into the things around us costs money.

To give another example; there is interest in African universities in the study of the oral literature of Africa. " The Universities of Ibadan, Ife, Nsukka, Ghana, as well as Sierra Leone have programmes for the study of material in the local languages. But the best body of work so far to emerge has come not from an African university, but from Oxford. The Oxford Library of African Liter¬ ature now has some twenty volumes mainly on oral literature. One of these volumes is the excellent one Ruth by Dr. Finnegan, Limba Stories and Story • Telling. The book was published in 1967- Miss -finnegan started her fieldwork in 1961 on a grant from the Colonial Social Science Research Council. This was supplemented by what she herself calls a generous grant from the Horniman Fund. Her second spell of fieldwork was made possible' by award by Somerville College, Oxford, of the Alice Horsman Travelling Fellowship. All in all a lot of money went into the research for that book. It is not the sort of work one does between lectures. Research of that sort needs concentration, time, and, inevi¬ tably, money. We must somehow make it possible for Africans to be able to spend time studying the material which exists in their own languages. At the present time research money is all too scarce in Africa. It must be stated, however, that research by Africans could be done much more cheaply in this field than by non-Africans. In many cases the African scholars know the language and often are native speakers. Also, provided they have the necessary facilities they can keep contact with the living situation over long periods. Support for this kind of work is one of the greatest needs in the study of African Literature today.

5. I do not believe of course that only Africans should study and comment upon African Literature; but it seems obvious that Africans should be in the van¬ guard of the study of their own languages and liter¬ atures, and it is a pity that this is not so today in many parts of the continent.

Who should criticise African Literature? The short answer to this should be: "whoever is willing to undertake the necessary amount of research in an attitude of scholarly open-mindedness and humility." However, even this subject has proved controversial. Ernest Emenyonu, in African Literature Today No-a 6, launched a swingeing attack on non-African critics, beaming his attack especially on the work of Bernth Lindfors. Lindfors has an equally spirited reply in No. of the same 7 journal. Probably a great deal of the ink and emotion -spent on this subject is unnecessary.

Obviously, from some points of view, a Yoruba critic of Soyinka's work has some initial advantages over a non-Yoruba. Soyinka's work is based on Yoruba culture; its religious beliefs, its social organis¬ ation, the translatable idioms of the language, and so on, but all this is used as a starting point for ideas of more general relevance. This kind of back¬ ground knowledge is not however a closed book to the non-Yoruba scholar who is prepared to take the trouble to obtain it. Provided he exercises the necessary caution and care, a scholar can become a reliable critic of Soyinka's work or of any other Yoruba writer, Ulli Beier, of Austrian origin, has made himself quite an authority on Yoruba and language literature, Susan Venger is equally able knowledg- on some areas of Yoruba life. Pierre Verger too has made valuable contributions to the study of Yoruba life, particularly linking the Nigerian tradition with South American survivals of Yoruba culture.

Another scholar whose work has proved valuable is Janheinz Jahn. Probably Jahn's most important con¬ tribution to the study of African Literature will prove to be his bibliographical and historical studies. The Bihliography of Neo-African Literature which came out in 1964, like The History of Neo- African Literature, is deliberately inclusive. The Bibliography was probably the first such work to give equal billing,-as it were, to the Cnitsha writers with the better known names in African Literature. Jahn also gives a sizeable list of writers in African languages. It would probably come as a surprise to many to find 79 West African writers listed who had produced work in 13 West African languages. Forty writers are listed under Twi, a surprisingly large number beside 27 writers using Yoruba. Equally inclusive is the History of Neo-African Literature which came out in 1966. Jahn's first section in the book is titled 'from the rubbish heap' - a derisive origin given by an enemy to the 17th Century mulatto Alfonso Avares, who according to Jahn's researches was "the first author of African descent ...who wrote works in a European language." One of the interesting suggest¬ ions which Jahn put out in that book, but which he himself had faint hopes of having accepted, is the term 'Agisymba' to designate the area usually referred to as sub-baharan Africa. The adjective was going to be 'Agisymbic' and of course we the inhabitants were going to be called 'Agisymbians'. Jahn got the name from the Egyptian astronomer and geographer Ptolemy. He did not propose to deal with that subtler geographical area 'south of the Sahara but north of the Limpopo.' That geographi¬ cal area, however, figures prominently in the con¬ troversy on what is African Literature.

Jahn's first book iiuntu (1957) which purports to be "An Outline of Neo-African Culture" is perhaps too generalised to be as significant as the more bibliographical works.

Among the bibliographers must also be mentioned John Ramsaran whose Approaches to African Literature and its revised version New Approaches to African Literature give a very handy students guide to what was available then. Of course, like all biblio¬ graphical work and particularly in a fast-growing area like African Literature, it was out of date even before it came out.

7. The sort of idea which inspired John RamsaranJfe' bibliographies has been taken even further by Hans Zell and Helene Silver in A Reader's Guide to African Literature» This volume gives lists of works, "brief biographies of the authors and even photographs»

The work of Ulli Beier in African Literature has become quite significant. As a discoverer of talent and publicist he has been unexcelled. The journal Mbari which he founded and edited gave many African writers their first appearance in print. He has returned to Nigeria where he is Head of the Institute of African Studies at the University of Ife, in the heartland of Yoruba culture.

Much of the work which I have mentioned is of a bibliographical nature because until fairly recently most of the critical books which appeared were mostly unsatisfactory. I think it could be said that the bibliographical aspect of African Literature is well taken care of. The task of updating the material is carried on by journals like the Journal of Commonwealth Literature. With this aspect of the work behind us or at least well in hand, we can proceed with the business of editing, interpreting and evaluating.

There a are number of lively debates on various aspects of criticism, starting from the basic one -what do we criticise? What qualifies as African Literature? I do not want to go into this area of debate. It is an area of scholarship for which I have never developed much enthusiasm. I might just mention that the opinions range from Obi Vali's on the extreme left - "any true African Literature must be written in African languages" (which automatically disqualifies the work of Achebe,'. Soyinka, Senghor, Ngugi and others), to views on the right to the effect that any work which uses the African back¬ ground authentically, qualifies. This would admit not only people like Nadine Gordimer who is native to the continent, but Joyce Carey and Margaret Laurence.

8 Apart from giving us a rule of thumb by which to decide which books can go into an African Literature programme and which not, I am not sure how far even an unassailable definition of what is African Literature will take us. when we have decided whether Henry James, Eliot, and Auden belong to American or English Literature, or whether Shaw, Swift, and Sheridan belong to Irish or English or Anglo-Irish Literattire we are still left with the business of getting down to what they actually wrote. Does Evelyn Vaugh's The Loved One qualify as American Literature and Graham Greene's The

Heart of the Matter as African - even Sierra Leonean - Literature? We can easily get unprofitably lost in a wilderness of definitions. Possibly part of the struggle for an exclusive definition is to exclude. Having defined the boundaries of African Literature, we keep all strangers out. T am not particularly attracted to the idea of exclusion in criticism.

I do not think we have to invent a whole new critical vocabulary for the special study of African Literature, a set of criteria which would be in¬ applicable to any other kind of literature; but we must be aware, or at least keep our minds open to the possibility, that there may be peculiarities, which arise from the general background from which some of these works spring. I have noticed differ¬ ing reactions to particular passages in African plays, different reactions as between African and non-African audiences. I am now talking of writings in English, not even in African languages. I have mentioned elsewhere how mahy European and American critics find some of the speeches in African plays tedious and boring, particularly when these speeches contain a whole succession of proverbs reiterating the same idea. In societies where this rhetorical device is no longer in use this certainly merely slows up the movement of the plot, but this would not matter so much in a society where this kind of rhetoric generates its own energy and its own interest and would therefore not produce the same kind of reaction. I have called this a difference in poetic expectation. There have been occasions also when either because of the strangeness of the symbolism or some other phenomenon, European critics

9. have been at a loss to understand important sections of African plays - the significance for instance of the end of Kongi's Harvest or the end of a Dance of the Forests'! John Arden, himself a British contemporary ayante guarde playwright, seemed to be in difficulties m a recent review of ooyinka's Kongi1 s Harvest, He confessed himself (possibly unneces¬ sarily) to be at a disadvantage in interpreting the play and wrote: "Unless we are experts on African affairs, how can we possibly assess the values and emotions of Ooyinka's people"? He is particularly puzzled by the end of the play:

But Kongi by the end of the play appears to have won - or at least to have partly won - it is not easy to say, for the final confrontation has been in terms of dance, and the written directions for the dance are not an adequate indication of its meaning to a reader who has not seen much West African dancing.

I think really Arden's difficulties in the interpeting play spring from an unfamiliarity with the Yoruba background from which the symbolism springs, as well as from a general unfamiliarity with Goyinka' work. These are difficulties which a certain amount of knowledge and exposure could cure. I do not therefore think that his difficulties are insuper¬ able. He has one further difficulty which I think him from imped-es making up his mind on Ooyinka's work and that is, he is not sure what a Marxist critic should make of Soyinka. Dedicated as Arden is to a Marxist ideology, if ooyinka's work cannot be fitted into the Marxist expectations then it can¬ not be given the highest credit. I make this point to illustrate the fact that when non-African critics have found themselves in difficulties it is not so muchbecause they are not African, but because they have not had the opportunity to make themselves familiar with the elements necessary for the exam¬ ination of the works they have in front of them, or because they come with some preconceived notions through which to interpret the material.

10. If they have heen in the background in bibliograph¬ ical work, Africans have engaged very actively in the evaluation of African Literature» Though here again some of the earliest books (mostly bad) came from non-Africans, who took a rather anthropological interest in the writings of Africans, or who found the criticism of it an interesting relaxation from, or substitute for, more intellectually strenuous work» 3ut both Africans and non-Africans have in the recent past been producing articles and books which really treat the Literature seriously» Black Orpheus, African Literature Today, the Journal of Commonwealth Literature, Conch, Presence Africaine, African Forum, African Arts/Arts d'Afrique and lbadan have alT carried some penetrating criticism as well as the grind of pedestrian 'dead-horse-flogging' stuff. It is probably right that opinions of all kinds be given a hearing rather than be arbitrarily weeded out by some high priest of criticism.

I think that the basic task of elucidation - explain¬ ing, throwing light on - still needs to be done for many African writers whose work remains a closed book to their own countrymen. Although I said that one of the aims of the Eourah Bay College 1963 Conference - the introduction of African Literature in schools - had been met, many teachers are still reluctant to offer the African options listed in the West African School Certificate syllabuses. The reason is that, contrary to popular African superstition about African writing, even though they spring from the environment, the works do not necessarily communicate instantly to every African; and many African teachers, who would gladly tackle Milton and T. S» Eliot, relying more heavily on the notes at the back than on iiie text itself, open the work of an African poet at the usual place - the back - and find a blank. They are reluctant to tackle the text without the help of notes and commentaries. They want to be told what to say. We therefore need guides 'to reading. It was in this spirit that J wrote my reading notes on Soyinka's Interpreters in African Literature Today. I was not interested in giving my own opinions - even though some inevitably slipped out - but to help others see what boyinka was doing, so that they also could appreciate his work for themselves. He had given me immense satisfaction which I wished to sber-- with others.

11 I do not think, like some very eminent writers, that the aim of criticism is to 'place' a work or a writer in some sort of order of merit list. The way even the best writers have gone up and down the charts with changing tastes and changing champions makes this a rather pointless exercise. By care¬ ful analysis we can reveal excellencies and point out faults as they appear to us. But there are very fexv absolutes in criticism; it is, thank God, not a science.

In the criticism of African Literature, the African writers themselves have not been silent. They write prefaces, lectures, essays, and give interviews. What they say is interesting but not always illum¬ inating. Many people prefer, with some reason, Coleridge on the poetry of Wordsworth than Wordsworth on his own poetry. Thus a recent critic, Dr. Iyasere, in an article which compares Achebe's achievement in Things Fall Apart with critical words he had used elsewhere^ ends a section with these words:

Ironically in Things Fall Apart, a novel of some stature, Achebe uses significant images, emotionally charged metaphors and symbols to organize, explore and even evaluate the human experience embodied in his novel. Implicitly his method of arti¬ culation appears to negate his own literary theory.

What Iyasere is attacking here is the idea, which he deduces from Achebe's statements, that the writer's function is to record. So according to Iyasere not even authors necessarily pronounce the last word on themselves.

Incidentally one of the passages that Iyasere finds fault with appears in a series of interviews recor led by African writers at the University of Texas. This is one of the more interesting, but perhaps not generally the most enlightening, developments of the last few months: the writers themselves have been talking about themselves and their writings, or at least, things they had said earlier about

12 themselves and their writings are now coming ont in print. As usually happens in these matters these publications are coming out in clusters. Last year the University of Texas brought out a pamphlet called Palaver or Interviews with Five African Writers in Texas. Incidentally they brought out at the same time a companion pamphlet Kas-Kas, which contains interviews with three Caribbean writers recorded in Texas. Heinemann have also come out with African Writers Talking, which contains inter- views with sixteen African writers, as well as Killam's African Writers on African Writing. With this spate of critical opinions by African writers we ought to expect a great deal of enlightenment, but in fact when one looks at what has actually been published, nothing of really earth-shaking significance has been said by these writers of their work, although they have shed some interesting sidelights.

Anyone who has read Song of a Goat by J. P. Clark would realise the tremendous importance attached in the society to the idea of fertility, and the great disadvantage of infertility. It is perhaps of some interest that Clark talking about the play has this to say about it:

The business of reproduction, of fertility, is a life-and-death matter in my home area. If a man does not bear, he has not lived. And when he is dead, nobody will think of him. Whereas here /in America/, you have other interests and'preoccupations which have made you less concerned with the issue of procreation, and the sense of survival after death that we derive from it.

This does not really shed new light on Bong of a Goat since within the text of the play the import¬ ance of fertility is clearly enough emphasized to make it a positive reason for suicide. Nor would this statement by Clark have been enough if the text of the play had not brought this out. But per¬ haps it is comforting to the critic to hear this as it were from the horse's mouth. There are also personal reactions to their own work which make some of these authorial disclosures interesting. I myself have recently been looking at the work of Wole Boyinka and have found what it is impossible to miss on a careful reading, that one of the basic ideas in his writing is a propen¬ sity of man to prey on his kind and inflict needless suffering on himself in the process. Also that society needs martyrs, i.e. people who are willing to sacrifice themselves for the good of the society and who frequently end up being the victims of the very society that they seek to save. This is, as I have indicated, inevitable after a sensitive reading of Boyinka's work, but again it is comforting.to the critic to find that his opinion reflects Wole Soyinka's intention. Soyinka was asked by Lewis Nkosi about his play Dance of the Forests and among other things he said: 1 *

I find that the main thing is my own personal conviction or observation that human beings are simply cannibals all over the world so that their main pre¬ occupation seems to be eating up one another.

This in fact almost echoes actual words in the play:

Unborn generations will be cannibals most worshipful Physician. Unborn generations xvill, as we have done, eat up one another.

In answer to another question Boyinka indicated that The Strong Breed was his favourite one-act play and went on to say this about it:

... my favourite one-act play which is The Utrong Breed. I think this one is also very much mixed up with the whole element of sacrifice, so contrasting the idea of suffering with willing sacri¬ fice as opposed to the other general cannibalism of human beings.

Perhaps one other interesting feature of these new publications containing wise words of African writers is one involving one of the most traumatic occurences

14. in modern Africa, the Nigerian Civil War. Two writers who found themselves on opposing sides of this war were interviewed separately at the University of Texas and their views on the role of a writer in circumstances such as the Civil War are rather interesting. Chinua Achebe was asked what he thought was the place of the African writer in a revolutionary situation and his answer was :

I suggest that his place is right in the thick of it, if possible at the head of it,... I say that a writer in the African revolution who steps aside can only write footnotes or a glossary when the event is over.

A similar question was put to J. P. Clark by the same interviewers, possibly with Chinua Achebe's answer in mind. The question was "What should the African writer's role in the society be"? and in the course of his answer he says that:

... when as a writer he puts pen aside to take up sword, gun and hand-grenade, or when he mounts a soap-box to speak slogans chosen for him by others then I think he has left one role for another. ... a lawyer practices his trade; so does a doctor. That does not mean either will not vote.

Opinions like these are interesting, but so far as I have seen do not change my views on anything that any of these writers has written. Nigerian'writers and. the Civil War would make a good sub.iect for study - J. P. Clark, Soyinka, Achebe, Ekwensi, and tragically, Okigbo were all embroiled in it in one way or another.

Finally on this matter of African writers on them¬ selves perhaps the most interesting document so far is the very recent volume by Wole Soyinka on his prison experiences. The book, The Han Died, is enlightening in a biographical way; it confirms a number of ideas that had appeared in his creative work, but perhaps the most interesting thing about it is that Soyinka himself, as the central figure in the drama, appears in a role which he had fore¬ shadowed in a number of his own heroes. He had,for instance, foreshadowed it in the fate of Eman the hero of The Strong Breed, who had ended up the victim of the society that he had tried to save. Soyinka's explanation of the activities which led to his own arrest and imprisonment is that he did cross over to Biafra and did see Ojukwu, but that far from trying to buy planes for the Biafran cause, he had tried to see whether talk could produce an alternative to war. This idea would fit very neatly into his anti-war theme in more than one of his works. War to him is evil and is only to be under¬ taken as a last resort in a worthy cause. Even then, it is evil, if perhaps inevitable. This point of view comes out very strongly in his play A Dance of the Forests in which the captain of Mata Kharibu's soldiers had refused to lead his men on what he considered to be ah indefensible war. He alone of all the Emperor's surrounding states¬ men and scholars had dared to call the war indefen¬ sible, but for his frankness he was emasculated and sold as a slave. If Soyinka's own explanation of his actions is accepted, then for similar reasons, he suffered like the Captain for trying to prevent carnage in an unnecessary war. For it is quite clear that in Soyinka's thinking, the Nigerian Civil bar could have been avoided and is in fact a waste of life and talent similar to that great waste which he pictured in his long poem Idanre. So what is interesting about this author's latest book is the picture of him going through the tor¬ tures that he had predicted in his imaginative works for men who decide to stand against the current of their society when their convictions make this the only right cause. Even before the incident involving Boyinka during the Civil War there had been enough in his life to show how closely lie resembled some of his own heroes.

- * *****

16. The study of African Literature in Sierra Leone, particularly at Fourah Bay College, has a fairly respectable history, but it is a history with a long gap. Some of the earlier members of staff of this College in the mid-19th Century took an interest in the collection of folk material long before this activity became popular» One.of the earliest collections of African proverbs in their original language appeared as part of Samuel Adjai Crowther's grammar of the Yoruba language which was published in 1843» Crowther as is well known was a member of this College ; indeed his name is the first name on the College register. Koelle another member of staff of the College also pro¬ duced the first collection of tales from the Kanuri. Koelle is probably better known for his classic work of African Linguistics, The Polyglotta Africana. The Polyglotta Africana was compiled in from information collected from freed slaves who between them spoke nearly 200 African languages. Koelle ccmniled the Kanuri Tales in a similar way without ever leaving Freetown, by using informants from the Kanuri area then dwelling in Freetown. Because of the circumstances surrounding the found¬ ation of Freetown it was, right up to the middle of the 19th Century, an incomparable laboratory for the study of African life, language, and tradition. The early members of Fourah Bay College made very good use of this valuable facility. Another con¬ tribution to the study of African oral Literature was made by C. F. Schlerker whose Temne Tales were published in 1861.

This early impetus in the study of African Language and Literature was ldst for neàrly a centuryyr.when Fourah Bay College dropped the study of Africa^. Languages, and work such as was pioneered by Koelle, Crowther, and Schon, lapsed. At the present time Lierra Leone through this College, is re-establish¬ ing its place in the realm of African Literature, but this time mainly in the area of the criticism of modern African Literature in English. Cuite recently Dr. Eustace Palmer's book on The African Novel stirred considerable interest in scholarly circles. It is also worth mentioning that one of the principal critical journals, in this field, African Literature Today, is edited from this

17. College, although the financial support for it comes from Heinemann, an English publisher. My own book, The Writing of Wole Soyinka, has been published both Tn London and in Few York. So it is true to say that we are holding our own in the matter of the. elucidation of African Literature,

Where I think a great deal remains to be done is in the collection, translation, and evaluation of oral material - the sort of work that 19th Century teachers in this College engaged in. An ex-member of this College, Mr, Bu-Buakei Jabbi, now a member of the English Lepartment of our sister college Egala, has started on the collection and study of Mende poetry, ^uite recently he published a trans¬ lation and commentary on a Mende poem "Botivangein. He is not able to engage in this work with much concentration because his time is spent mainly in teaching at Egala and, as I indicated earlier, the work of collecting and evaluating this type of material requires time as well as financial support.

Those who are familiar with the old series of Sierra Leone Studies will remember that E. F. Sayers, a District Commissioner from Britain, collected one or two songs and snatches from Sierra Leone languages, Kuranko and Susu in particular. But again this was work which was done as a spare-time activity by somebody whose main preoccupation was quite differ¬ ent. Mr. T. M. Williams, an Electoral Commissioner stationed in Bo, works in association with the Department of English and tries to collect Temne songs, but again this is not his main occupation and so his contributions coEie in only when adventitiously he happens upon something worth recording. All this leads to the point that, if the collection and eval¬ uation of the material that exists in our own country, not to mention material that exists further- afield in Africa, if this material is to be collected and. evaluated, then there must be the kind of support which enables scholars to devote the kind of time and concentration that Miss i'innegan was able to devote to the study of Limba oral material.

18. One final word about the study of African Literature outside Africa. It is a subject which is. probably growing faster outside Africa than within it. A number of important contributors in"African Literature Today have their addresses in universities in the "United States and the United Kingdom, with one or two offerings from places like Belgium and the Scandinavian countries. In all of these areas the study of African Literature is taken increasingly seriously and a great deal of money is spent on the collection of folk material as well as in the study of contemporary modern literature. America also recruits a fair number of staff in this area from the African countries; people like Kofi Awunor, Mphahlele, Iyasere, Opaku, llezu, Anozie, and a host of others teach African Literature in American universities. Part of the reason for this is that many black American, students object to being taught African Literature by non-Africans. There is thus quite a market for Africans who can face a class and talk about the writing of their countrymen. There is no earthly reason why African Literature should not flourish in universities outside Africa, but it would be curious if the main scholastic contributions to this study came from outside the continent itself.

19. THE STUDY OF AFRICAN HISTORY:

THE SIERRA LEONE SCENE

John E. Peterson Department of Modern History- Fourah Bay College

The study of African history is partly a product of a more general movement in the study of history by which the discipline broadened its base from its origins as a study of the history of the politics of Europe. The genealogy of the study of African history as we know it today partly derives from the development of universal history by Vico and Voltaire in the eighteenth century as well as from the nineteeenth century historians who began the investigation of economic and social history. In the twentieth century, as never quite before, history became the study of man and his society in all of its dimensions in time past. Likewise it began to be the study of all men, not merely those of the technologically advanced societies of Europe and the New World.

Beyond this, however, there is another, and in some ways far more important, strain in the genealogy of African history. When an elderly, regal Mandinka yele (musician and historian) began one day in 1959 in Magazine Cut, Freetown, to relate to me the beautiful saga of the Mandinka people I felt the thrill of this second strain personally. His trad¬ ition of his people began in Mecca with the birth of the Prophet Mohammed. It ended with his own birth in the Guinea interior at the end of the 19th century and his trek to and settlement in Freetown. It is a story of expulsion, flight, settlement, migration, war, victory, defeat. The Mandinka moved to Egypt, across the desert to the Sudanic grasslands of the Niger, to the high country of Futa Toro, the mountains of Futa Jalon; every¬ where they moved they sought to preserve the purity of the faith, a faith that was theirs, from the time when the mother of Moanju, the first Mandinka,

20. suckled the Prophet to sustain his infant life» This second strain then is the study of African history in Africa, a process which has gone on in an oral form since the formation of human societies here. The history of the liandinka community of Freetown has been developing by the additions of what we should rightly call professional handinka historians since at least as early as the begin¬ nings of the Mali Empire in the 12th and 13th centuries. Its references to times before then no doubt refer to their Muslim conversion and the sub¬ sequent deep attachment they formed with the faith. Each generation added its own part to the gradually but consistently increasing fabric that is their history.

The genealogy reveals a further strain upon which the study of African history developed. It is the earliest records of travellers to the continent. Those of the classical world have left accounts of the northern coast, the desert and beyond, as well as of the eastern coast. The Arab scholars of the 12th to 16th centuries left records of travels across the Sahara and their contact with the peoples of the western Sudan which form a solid base of information revealing the kingdoms and. empires of those centuries and before. The Portuguese, Dutch, and Danes of the 16th and 17th centuries collected historical information about the peoples they met along the coast as they journeyed southward from Cape Bojador.

From this brief résumé of the family tree of African history you can see that I am not one who holds that the study of African history began in 1956 with the publication of Dike's Trade and Politics on the Niger Delta. Though, as I shall subsequently noint out, that was a seminal work from many standpo'"ts there are earlier works which contribute signifi¬ cantly to the growth of the discipline as we practice it today. I do not intend to turn this lecture into a recital of African historical biblio¬ graphy, but there are two or three works which I do want to single out. The first two are nineteenth century recordings of oral traditior: Johnson's History of the Yoruba and C. C. Reindorf's History

21. of Gold Coast and. Asante. Each is, in many ways, an uncritical recording of late 19th century oral tradition. Johnson particularly presented Yoruba history from the perspective of Oyo, one group among many, albeit the city state which had come to dominate much of the rest of Yoruba in the 18th century. His careful recording, however, of the Cyo traditions provided the reader with an unmistakeably clear view of the cultural complexity and sophistication of pre-colonial West African societies. The effects of European contact and the threat of occupation were revealed as the Oyo Empire proved unable to both sustain itself and thwart the changing economic complexion of things in the early nineteenth century. Reindorf's work, similarly presented from an internal perspective, is likewise a study in the complex relationships among and between groups in the pre-colonial period. Not unbiased in its interpretations, it nonetheless established a base from which later scholars could move in coming to an understanding of the oral history of the Fante and the Asante.

The third work which needs special mention is E. w. Bovill's monumental secondary work Caravans of the Old Sahara, published in the early l930's." The work was eventually rewritten and republished in 1958 with a new title with which most of you will be more familiar - The Golden Trade of the Moors. The earlier work was the superior one although few of us use it anymore as it is long out of print. In it Bovill took the perspective of the Western Gudan and studied the intricate trade and political relationship between West and North Africa during the first 1500 years of the Christian era. Bovill based his work on the ancient Arabic texts of the period of contact. He introduced many of his English readers to the very existence of these texts since most have only been translated into English in the later 20th century. The reader of the Caravans was introduced to the great empires of Ghana, Mali, and Gonghai. The wealth of the man whom.Dike has called the greatest king in African history Mansa Musa is thôî?e to be reckoned with. His spending spree in Egypt while on a pilgrimage to Mecca impossibly inflated the Egyptian economy for well over ten years after his departure.

22t The work of these three - Johnson, Heindorf, and Bovill - illustrates a point regarding the "broader study of African history which has significance when one realizes that each was written either immediately prior to or during the colonial period. The point is that Africa itself is the focus. In the case of two of the authors, moreover, it is African history seen through the eyes of African authors. That such history is not greater history than that written by others is clear. However, it is important history especially to those who accept that the social science of history is essentially a relative one. The perspective of Johnson on the Yçruba was different from that of say Glover or Burns who wrote from the perspective of the Empire though regarding essentially the same events. Bo it is with heindorf as well.

Bovill was an englishman. He was not a professional academic, but a company director in London. His only contact with West Africa was as a member of the West African Frontier Force in the First World Jar. His business put him in contact with North and East Africa. He learned Arabic. He read widely and in a detailed fashion. He allowed himself mentally to infiltrate the cultures about which he read and then wrote. Though an amateur he wrote from the standpoint of those about whom he wrote and thus conveyed to generations of men and women the splendour and consequence of the golden trade.

African history is then the study of the peoples of the African continent from their perspective. There was considerable precedent for such a study when in 1956 the Clarendon Press of Oxford brought out Dike's Trade and Politics. It was hefalded as a momentous event covering as it did the economic and political history of the Nigerian peoples of the Delta from 1830 to 1885. Its forimila was much the same as that of Bovill; Dike looked at the interrelationship of economic and political forces prior to the final establishment of colonial rule. His book came Just as the crest of the wave of African studies broke in the United States and Europe. It came as the first nation of colonial Africa gained its independ¬ ence, Just a year before a west African colony of Britain was granted its independence. It came as

» 23. a refreshing change of pace to a new generation of African historians in training who had had to he satisfied with works on imperial history or the static ethnographies of the anthropologists» This was really African history at last !

Of course, it was» Dike had had a traditional schooling in his home country before finishing with an undergraduate education at Fourah Bay College, then a far away outpost of Durham Univers¬ ity, about which you have no doubt heard in the current traditions of the place. Dike then was one of the Durham breed before going off to King's College,London where he worked for the Ph.D. with Professor Gerald Graham» Graham more than any other single figure probably created the Ibadan school of history by his training of a host of young Nigerian scholars beginning with Dike. Graham knew little about African history. He was Canadian by birth, British by adoption, and had written on North American history, especially the Hudson's Bay Company. He taught Dike, and those who followed him, the techniques and methodology of the historian Like a good thesis director he interfered minimally in the research itself, giving only general advice on direction and from time to time on interpretation Dike was left to sort out his subject and this he did with the skills carefully acquired and with enough imagination not to inhibit his exploration of two new types of source material: oral tradition and local and family historical records. Many will have different reasons for the importance of Dike's contribution*. but to me it was his revelations about the complex workings of the Aro oracle among the Ibo. It was not only the means by which the oracle was used in the slave trade, but more so how it was the focal point of Ibo economic life in a more general sense and how it helped to bind this parti¬ cular acephalous society to a unity. Just as import ant was Dike's use of local records, especially the family histories of traders in the Delta area. The work went far beyond the usual emersion in official government and records.

24. A second book, published the same year, 1956» has developed into an excellent general sourcebook on the growth of African politics in the 20th century. Written by an English political scientist,, Thomas. Hodgkin's Nationalism in Colonial Africa became a primer for those who sought the roots of the inde¬ pendence movements throughout the continent. It is an essential book for the historian. From it he learns of the political functions of the independ¬ ent churches, the importance of the early trade union movement, the significance of urban voluntary associations, and the successes and failures of the proto-nationalist movements of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The work moreover spans francophone and anglophone Africa thus giving it a far wider dimension than other studies of the time. It is not a definitive work, simply one of those basic texts which remains useful to the historian of the 20th century. It was published a few years before Hacmillan's "Winds of Change" speech. Where¬ as most people took the figure of speech to mean that there were hurricane-like or tornado-like winds of political change sweeping across the con¬ tinent, those who had mastered their Hodgkin knew that these were gentle winds of change which had blown as a refreshing and liberating breeze since the beginning of the colonial era in most of Africa.

Coming, as they did, at the end. of the colonial era, the works of Tike and Hodgkin were critical since they established clearly the African perspective which would continue to dominate the study of African history. The work of a third man, the Belgian anthropologist Jan Vansina, provided a functional methodology for the development of oral trad.ition„ Vansina first published his prescrip¬ tions in English in an article in the Journal of African History after which it was expanded into full book. It was based upon his ten years of field research in Zaire. He was able to define different types of tradition ranging from the official histories of the large centralized states to the systematic memory of individual families and clans. His advice on the essentially passive, non-directive role of the field researcher remains the most important prescription to successful field work to this day. ï'inallyj the establishment of oral sources

25» as "being of equal value to written sources provided for the full development of the study of African history. He overcame the distinction made previously between history and ethnohistory, arguing that there was no need for such a distinction once the essential worth of the non-literate source was established. The product of his methodological prescriptions was finally realized with the publication of his Kingdoms of the Savana in 1966, It is a systematic reconstruction of the histories of the Kongo, the Luba, the Kuba, and the Lunda Empires and Kingdoms of north central Africa,

Vith the roots of the study of African history firmly implanted by the end of the 1950's, it con¬ tinued to develop and produce many flowers through¬ out the continent in the subsequent years.

Next, I want to define briefly five themes which seem to have emerged from these studies. They are: a new emphasis on traditional, precolonial societies; the study of the persistence of African institutions and values in the context of modernization; the discovery and understanding of African resistance movements; an emphasis on economic history and especially relationships based on trade; and finally, a concerted effort to explore the most distant past through archaeology.

The emphasis on traditional, precolonial societies is perhaps the major one. It is general throughout the continent. I have already mentioned Vansina's studies of the Zaire empires and kingdoms. Alpers has looked at I'lutapa, Roberts at those of Zambia, Ranger those of Zimbabwe. Historians in East Africa such as Ogot and Kimambo have similarly investigated the societies of their regions. Akinjogbin has produced a solid historical study of Dahomey. Wilks' articles on Asante reveal a state administrative structure so complex that he has gone to the modern bureaucracy of the large international corporation to find a meaningful comparison. Nigeria has new studies of the Yoruba, the Ibo, the peoples of the Delta, the Sokoto empire, the Tiv and the Nupe. The Tukolor, the Massina Empire, Hadj Cmar and the Empire of Samori Toure have all been reinvestigated

26. by scholars of francophone Africa, What began as the investigations of a handful of anthropologists in an attempt to establish a traditional baseline for the measurement of change has developed into a full time occupation for scores of historians determined to establish the full complexity of pre- colonial societies,

I think it would be safe to say that Africa has not known static societies. Change has been the constant. The impact of European cultural values imported largely during the colonial period has increased interest, however, in the persistence of African institutions and values in the context of modern¬ ization, Theories of change in general and that of acculturation in particular have demonstrated that peoples do not absorb new institutions or values without going through a conscious or unconscious process of acceptance, Rejection is a viable alternative. The work of two other young Nigerian historians who made the journey to London University for their Ph.D. training, Professors Ajayi and Ayandele, have illustrated this process with regard to the impact of Christian in Nigeria during the 19th century. The persistence of tradi¬ tional secret and initiation societies throughout the continent as shown in the published work of Kenyatta as well as a host of others fully, if differently, illustrates the point of societies remaining steadfast to certain aspects of culture even in the face of so-called forced change. Most scholars who have written about him show that Bamori retained a traditional pattern of military and poli¬ tical organization while adopting the more sophisti¬ cated weaponry of the French, against whom he was at war.

This brings me naturally to the third and recently the most popular theme: that of African resistance movements. Begun or perhaps encouraged by the publication of T. C. Ranger's Revolt in Southern Rhodesia, 1896-7in 1967, the study of resistance by African populations has spread like wild fire. We now have a large, expensive volume on revolt and protest all over the continent and a smaller one on revolt and protest just in West Africa, the latter

27 o edited by a former Director of this Michael Institute, Crowder. The essential quality of all such studies is to see the imposition of colonial rule from the perspective of the African societies them¬ selves and to show, where such results occurred, the extent to which these societies fought for their very existence. A secondary theme is that tradi¬ tional African societies were undergoing the process of modernization and that the violent reaction was in some measure an attempt to maintain independent control of such change. For those who still adhere to the belief that it was a blessing to used bring what to be called 'civilization' to the African peoples, these studies of resistance are a refresh¬ ing and necessary dose of corrective medicine.

The involved theses of such studies have already come under critical fire as those of our students who heard David Beach, a young Rhodesian scholar, in a seminar during the first term will attest. He has already retravelled Ranger's territory to some critical effect. To me these studies in general do not fully grasp the African understanding of the European, in the precolonial period. I feel, for example, that those violent reactions about which I know are far more traditionally based than has been hitherto recognized. The British, with the imposi¬ tion of colonial rule, got in the way of traditional expansion and their reaction was the same as it would have been if the enemy were another African polity. To see it as many 'resistance scholars' do as a special reaction to a particular situation is too often to perpetuate the colonialist myth even in though slightly new clothing. The irony of this is to be appreciated.

The student of African history, influenced no doubt in part by the effects of the colonial import-export trade, has begun a fairly systematic of investigation recolonial trade and the continent's economic history. There is an entire volume on precolonial African trade by Gray and Birmingham which deals with pre-1900 trade in East and Central Africa. Kwame Dwaku of Legon has recently shown the essen¬ tial contribution of long-distance trade to the growth of the Asante Empire. ^>uch studies reveal

28. the large scale nature of precolonial trade and lead us to further studies which show that such economic activity was largely in the hands of African entrepreneurs themselves. I should here inject a note regarding my energetic colleague Stan Mudenge who, using such trade at least partially as his point of departure, has recently produced a monumental dissertation which scholars better able to judge than I laud as a major contribution to an understanding Of the Rozvi Empire. He has revolu¬ tionized our perception of yet another momentous chapter in the precolonial history of Central Africa and we eagerly await its publication.

The fifth theme is, strictly speaking, not a theme itself. It is an absolute essential for the study of the earliest portions of African history. It is the study of archaeology. It remains true today that the most significant archaeological investiga¬ tions have been carried out in Southern, Northern and Eastern Africa. The work in East Africa alone over the past seventy years has produced spectacular results in the discovery of the earliest known form of human life, first by the late Dr. L. S. B. Leakey and now more recently by his son Richard. Not con¬ tent with linjanthropus with its age of over 1.75 millions of years, the date has now been pushed back to something in excess of 2.5 millions. Even more significantly, archaeological field work in East Africa has unearthed a complete sequence of stone age cultures. fork closer to home includes the discoveries of Nok in the plateau regions of Northern Nigeria which has been carbon-dated to the early part of the first millenium B.C. and is one of the only advanced neolithic agricultural cultures to be identified in the Sudanic region. It contains a sequence which carries the culture into the iron age. Archaeologi¬ cal investigations in the Eenegal and Mauritanian interior have unearthed sites related to the trans- Saharan trade of the first millenium A.D.

This review of the development of the sttidy of African history and the emergence of certain themes has not been exhaustive or complete. It should

29. serve merely as an understanding of the complexities of the field and the healthy state of evolution it has attained by 1973» Now I want to turn my atten¬ tion exclusively to its state of health in sierra Leone o I have, you have noted, completely excluded developments here from my discussion up to now. As in many facets of its culture and history, I must report that although Sierra Leone had an early start in the field of the study of its own history, developments elsewhere have more recently left it behind. The historical bibliography on Sierra Leone before 1850 is long and impressive. Host of the collection was done by foreign visitors, but it serves as a crucial baseline for historical reconstruction of the country's history as far back as the 15th century. The second half of the nine¬ teenth century produced Sierra Leonean authors of vitality: A. B. C. Sibthorpe, Africanus Horton, Charles Tlarke, and the adopted son, Edward W. Blyden I. The early twentieth century saw the publication of Crook's history of the Western Area. Then, after a long hiatus, came Christopher Fyfe's monumental encyclopaedia of 19th century Sierra Leone history in 1962, followed two years later by his Sierra Leone Inheritance, a very competent collection of documents covering a broader frame¬ work. Together with Arthur Porter's excellent application of sociological theory to the whole history of the Freetown educated elite in his book. Creoledom, my own contribution in Province of Freedom, and other more particular studies such as John Hargreaves' biography of Sir Samuel Lewis, the history of the Western Area in the 19th century has been fully covered. then, however, you recollect my earlier comments on the sorts of themes which are emerging in the study of African history, you will discover that the bulk of the history of the whole of Sierra Leone as we now know it still needs to be written. When one looks to the period prior to 1800 along the coast, and generally to the areas in the interior, he finds a mere smattering of material in print and readily available to the 20th century reader. During his period as a historian at Fourah Bay College, Peter Kup produced a slim volume-'.covering the first three

30 4 hundred years of the modern era in what came to he Sierra Leone. In it he compiled an impressive arrajr of material which described the people and the Coast in the long period of Afro-European con¬ tact before British philanthropic and economic interests combined to found the late eighteenth century colony on the southern shore of the Sierra Leone estuary, underneath the verdant peaks of the coastal mountains. Unlike the works previously mentioned which concentrate on the later period, Kup's volume stands out simply in its ability to leave the reader with those intriguing and un¬ answered questions which should provide the key to the opening up of the country's more distant past, its richness and indeed its poverty.

Some of those questions have been more recently answered in a reassessment of some of the very sources used by Kup. Walter Rodney's A History of the Upper Guinea Coast, 154-5-1800 (Oxford, 1970) represents the most significant contribution to the historical study of this particular area of West Africa in several decades. Using European accounts for what they surely are, the traditions of the coastal peoples in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Rodney has provided a chronology of the Mane invasions. He has established that the Lane invasions occurred during a twenty year period after 15^5. The Mane contributed a new ruling class to Sierra Leone and its surrounding areas as fell as better military techniques and improvements in the manufacture of iron and cloth. The Mane brought also increased exploitation and the end of the art of the ivory carver.

Rodney's hypothesis regarding the origin of the Mende has been seriously questioned because of its total lack of linguistic evidence. The scholarly debate has been fully summarized in Arthur Abraham's comprehensive thesis, "The Rise of Traditional Leadership among the Mende" which although it does not posit alternatives concerning the mysteries of Mende origins, it does pirovide a variety of explan¬ ations for the foundation of Mende chiefdoms. David Uwyer's suggestion in a pftper in this Institute last session that the are origins of the Mende language probably recent and tdiat it spread rapidly as a

31# trade language may be the simple answer to the question of liende origins and the explanation of why we have no notation of Ilende until the 18th century.

It is however regrettable to report that much of the history of Sierra neone is to be discovered. Much more is now being done, to be sure, but in establish' ing even an essential framework, in the formation of working hypotheses, we are still greatly depend¬ ent on the work of kodney, that very important first chapter of Fyfe's History, and in the historical background found in such important ethnographies as those of Kenneth Little and Huth iimiegan, "the published articles of Vernon Dorjahn, and the grow¬ ing body of doctoral dissertations done by the current travellers to Sierra Leone, the Ph.D. cand¬ idates from Lvanston, Los Angeles, Zaria, Dar es Salaam, Birmingham, London, and Edinburgh.

Still looming large is the whole question of migra¬ tion. How did this country come to be populated? who were the first arrivals and what did they meet? Today the Temne and Mende peoples dominate the land¬ scape because of their large numbers and their ability to adapt to the changing Sierra Leone scene in the past century. But what of the period before 1750, 15OO» 1000? Were they even here? What too of the Bulom, the Kissi, the Limba? What of the other contemporary Sierra Leoneans? How valid is the Freetown Mandinka tradition which claims that their_traders met the Portuguese early on at the watering place on the peninsula's northern coast? There are many questions to be answered simply regarding migration.

If migration looms as the immediate historical question which remains unanswered, there are others which may or may not prove of greater importance. Before the nineteenth century, it would appear, there was little large scale political organization in the interior, no centralized states which make the recovery of history in Nigeria or Ghana so relatively easy. Except for this unrewarding nega¬ tivism - no central states'* - we know little or nothing of the nature of political organization in

32. the period "before 1800,, Again, one is forced to "begin with questions that will lead to hypotheses. It would appear from the documentation of the nineteenth century Sierra Leone interior that the effect of direct contact with the European govern¬ ments on the coast was to stabilize chiefdoms. 'Je s leyan Methodist records of early contact with the Liraba, for example, indicate that a chief's contact with the Europeans raised his stature in the eyes of his subjects and served to solidify his hold, especially if such contact resulted in the coming of schools to his village or increased pros¬ perity through trade. A smattering of historical studies of northern villages indicates a somewhat casual notion toward chieftaincy during the period prior to the introduction of colonial rule; far greater importance was given to being a strong warrior. Once the Pax Britannica was introduced in 1896, however, former warriors renewed their interest in their rights to chiefdoms by vying for them whenever one became vacant. What then was the traditional role of the chief? Was he really some¬ thing- of a local caretaker while the stronger elements were off fighting or raiding? wherever one probes the past he is faced with endless questions which in turn lead only to the formation of the historian's best guesses, hypotheses. Obviously, much work remains to be done. In propos¬ ing a research model for the discovery of the history of the Sierra Leone interior one is faced initially with the problem of beginning simply, with the collection of the most rudimentary data. Genealogies have to be the starting point. The work of one B.À. Honours graduate in history from the University of Sierra Leone during one year in Magburaka turned up good data which go back to the 17th century A.D. From genealogies one might optimistically expect to move on to discover the more rewarding areas of political and social history. Here the hitherto largely untapped documentary collection of the Sierra Leone Government Archives et Fourah Bay College, together with the extant provincial records still dangerously housed in a host of District and Provincial Offices in the interior, should prove of new and important velue. Although most of this

33# documentary history concerns the later nineteenth century, my own experience working in them shows that there is a considerable amount of ethnographic material which will be increasingly relevant when coupled with the systematic collection of oral sources in the interior itself» lor this reason, we have incorporated into our honours course in cierra Leone history a field experience during which students collect oral tradition. In the course of our work so far we have discovered new traditions regarding Madam Yoko, the 1198 rebellion chieftancy among the Limba, and regarding the 1931 Idara Rebellion in Kambia bistrict. This year we shall concentrate our efforts in the Temne and Kono chiefdoms between Magburaka and Yengema. By such efforts over the next few years the material for a general local history of the interior will be collected. Although such a product will be rudi¬ mentary at best, it will form the basis for more precise work in the future. In such a way the will be unearthed.

The systematic collection of oral material and its digestion into finished histories is more properly and competently the province of the professional historian or the professional historian in training For this reason we have begun the instruction of historians on the graduate level in Sierra Leone. The proper concentration of such research is the history of this part of the African coast. The presence of a highly qualified group of scholars comprising the Department of Modern History at Fourah Bay College, Lniversity of sierra Leone, allows for such a development. A history depart¬ ment, however, is not enough to undertake fuily the history of this country. As has been the case elsewhere in the discovery of history where mater¬ ials of an unwritten nature are of primary import¬ ance, the training of a historian in Lierra Leone must include adequate exposure to the arts of the anthropologist, the sociologist, the geographer, the archaeologist, and the art historian. One happy resource built into our university is the skills of the students in a variety of local languages. Although some general linguistic train¬ ing may still be in order, one can be relieved that

34. many precious months of time usually spent else¬ where absorbing an African language will here be saved.

The role of geography and archaeology in the study of Sierra Leone history is of particular importance The geographers of Sierra Leone have, for the past ten years or more, been a consistently active group of researchers producing studies of Sierra Leone on the local scene. Their ability to handle the research problems relating to the studies of migra¬ tion and population concentrations alone provide a resource which may be of useful value to the histor ian who follows them into the field to collect simi lar data concerning time past. The archaeologist, in all honesty, probably holds the crucial key in the process.of unlocking the mysteries of Sierra Leone history. In the area of archaeological field work little has been done although the presence of two archaeologists within the past five years may foretell of more work in the future. The investi¬ gations of one has a revealed basic pottery sequenc near Lo which may date to the seventeenth century. The interesting collaboration of the other with Dr. M. Kalous formerly of the Department of Modern History on the always intriguing question of the nomoli has shed useful light on the history of this country. Moreover, John Atherton's field work in the Kabala area has produced the most spectacular discovery in archaeology in recent years. He has found an iron age site which has been carbon dated to the year 695 A.D. plus or minus 90. It is the oldest such site in Sierra Leone and gives a base from which further study should develop. It is a pressing need for the University itself to become a centre of archaeological training and research. In the context of more recent times, systematic investigation needs to be made into the fruitful area of trade and economic history. Allen Howard's study of northern long-distance trade is still eagerly awaited. A similar study needs to be done linking the north with the east and the the south, i.e. Krim, Gallinas, and Sherbro coastal regions. Moreover, a scries of studies of historical trade relationships between people of Sierra Leone is

35. needed» As I indicated two nights ago in one of my questions to the speaker then, I am increasingly suspicious of the warfare theory of the country's history. Everyone rushes to attach the adjective 'warrior' to the noun 'chief' when describing leaders in the interior before 1896. The inter¬ dependence of the peoples of Sierra Leone through trade, I feel, necessitated the formation of inter- group social connections to facilitate such trade. Look at how many of our chiefs are descended from trading families in the past. I must confess I have been led in this thinking by two young Sierra Leone historians with whom I have had the pleasure to work: Mr. Abraham and his work in the southern and eastern province and Mr. Cecil Fyle and his work on Yalunka and the Solima Empire.

The Sierra Leone scene therefore includes some significant accomplishment and considerable work to be done. It is worth while work to do. The history of Sierra Leone when fully known should help immeasureably in giving the people - all the people - an important sense of common identity. Sierra Leone is no longer this Western Area, this Freetown, although that is how it is regarded in large parts of the interior. Sierra Leone is all.

Historical research here is still the first order of business. Of equal importance however is the need to convey the product of such research to the people - to school children, university students, the nation. I came five years ago and was shy about nationalist history because of the impact of nationalist historians elsewhere. I stand tonight an uncompromising nationalist myself. It is your national history about which I speak. It is import¬ ant for a Sierra Leonean to know something about the roots of his past. It is far more important for him to see his place - valid, dramatic, dynamic - in the total stream of history. There is value, after all, in knowing something about where you have been and in understanding something about where you are. These are not immodest goals in one's search to discover the history of Sierra Leone. The search is exciting; the discovery is crucial.

36. THE STUDY OF AFRICAN RELIGIONS

Edward W. Fasholè-Luke Department of Theology Fourah Bay College

It is my intention in this lecture to deal with the study of African Religions with particular refer¬ ence to Sierra Leone, indicating the progress that has "been made and the research that has been under¬ taken in this field of endeavour, and mapping out the areas in which further research can be fruit¬ fully pursued in the future. The topic itself raises two immediate problems: first, how does one define African Religions? Second, is the study of African Religions a separate discipline or is it an adjunct of sociology, anthropology, philosophy or history? The first question, that of the defi¬ nition of African Religions, is itself a matter of dispute. There are some scholars who hold the view that the only authentic African Religions are those of the various tribes of Africa and that Christianity and Islam are imported religions, which have not and will never be completely indigen- ised in Africa. Other scholars maintain that Christianity and Islam, as well as Traditional African Religions, are now native to Africa and they cannot be ignored. The main exponent of this view is Professor John Mbiti, who writes in his book, African Religions and Philosophy, "Both Christianity and islam are 'traditional' and 'African' in a historical sense, and it is a pity that they tend to be regarded as 'foreign' or 'European' or 'Arab'." I personally subscribe to Mbiti's view, but with the reservation that the question of how far an African Christianity or an African Islam has been produced is a matter for study and is still in dispute. It is as yet -un¬ certain whether an African can remain an African while embracing either Islam or Christianity.

The question of whether the study of African Religions is a separate discipline or a branch of other disciplines like sociology or anthropology, though hotly debated at one time, is now closed.

57 With the setting up of religious studies and departments of theology in nearly all African universities and the mushrooming of periodicals on African religious ideas, practices and rites, not only in Africa, hut also in Europe and the United States of America, as well as the publica¬ tion of many books by scholars in this field, there can be no question that the study of reli¬ gions is an independent discipline. On the other hand, by its very nature, the study of religions is an interdisciplinary endeavour, and scholars in this field have gratefully accepted the research methods, tools and findings of scholars in other fields of study. It is also true that religion deals with the whole of life; it is not surpris¬ ing therefore, that students of sociology, politics and «thics have considered religious questions. I may also add that the West African Examinations Council has included the study of African Tradi-' tional Religions, Islam and Christianity in their syllabuses; a sign that religion is regarded as a proper subject for study in schools. Of course, there is the distinct possibility, that the study of religions can be nothing more than propoganda for one's own religious ideologies; this genuine fear probably accounts for the setting up of depart¬ ments of religious studies and comparative religions, rather than departments of theology, in the new universities of Africa. Let me quickly add at this point, that though we have a Department of Theology here at the University of Sierra Leone, nevertheless, provision is made for the teaching of African Traditional Religions and of Islam. We are not a department of christian theology. Indeed, there are no religious tests applied to members of this Department: the only criteria for appoint¬ ment in the Department are expertise and competence in one or two branches in the field of religion. Furthermore, even academics of no fàith can be appointed to the Department, provided that they have the relevant academic qualifications.

After these introductory remarks, I will now turn to the examination of the study of African Tradi¬ tional Religions, Christianity and Islam, in that

38 order. Up to the 1950's, African Traditional Religions had been regarded as aspects of primi¬ tive religion and they were therefore studied mainly by anthropologists and scholars in the field of religionwissen-schaft, usually called the history of religions. The history of religions school claims that its approach to the study of religion is an empirical one; it studies religion per se and not as an epiphenomenon of some more fundamental dimension of human experience, such as the social, the historical or the economic. The major scholars in this field have been E. B. Tylor, E. Durkheim, Malinowski, Levy-Strauss, Mircea • Eliade, John Middleton, Franz Steiner, Joseph Kitagawa, Charles H. Long, William A. Lessa, Daryll Forde, Edmund Leach and Evon G. Vogt. There are two significant features about this list of names: first, they are all of European or American scholars and second, they are all of anthropolo¬ gists or sociologists. For example, John Middleton has edited a series of American museum source¬ books in anthropology with such titles as, Gods and Rituals, Myth and Cosmos, Magic, Witchcraft and Curing. We also have an excellent series of essays- "edit e d by Daryll Forde, African Worlds, which deals with the cosmological orientations of several African peoples. William A. Lessa and Evon Vogt have also produced a Reader in Compara- rive Religion, which is a balanced survey on pnm- itive religions; it gives a rich survey of opinions concerning the origin, function and development of religions and there are essays on myth and ritual » symbolism, manna and taboo, totemism, magic, witch¬ craft and divination, the magical treatment of illness, death, ghosts and ancestor worship. Eliade has also done thorough studies on myths and mythology in his Rites and Symbols of Initiation and Myth? Dreams and Mysteries. Joachim Wach's Comparative Religion is also an excellent study of primitive religious beliefs and practices.

All the works I have mentioned, are by anthro¬ pologists and they insist on describing African Traditional Religions as primitive religion, prim¬ arily because these phenomena appear among so

39. called primitive peoples in other parts of the world, and also because most of tropical Africa is still largely under-developed. However, some anthropologists are beginning to describe African Traditional Religions as "the religion of illiter¬ ate peoples". The study of African Traditional Religions was largely ignored by missionaries of Christianity and Islam, largely because these phenomena were regarded as pagan and ipso facto inferior to Christianity and islam and therefore false. At least, so they argued. Africa and Africans had no systematic beliefs worth studying. However, a few lone voices were heard; notably Rr. Tempels, whose Bantu Philosophy clearly demon¬ strated that Africans had a philosophy which could stand on its own. In 1931? Rr. W. Schmidt, also published his Die Religionen der Unwolker Afrikas, which declared that Africans believed in the Supreme Being. The first African to enter the scene was Jomo Kenyatta, with his Racing Mount Kenya; this was an attempt to explain Kikuyu religious beliefs, rites and practices to Europeans and to show that African indigenous beliefs were viable. Six years later, Dr. Danquah of Ghana pub¬ lished his masterly Akan Doctrine of God. This was followed four years later by Archdeacon Olumide Lucas', The Religion of the Yorubas. This was the sum total of African contribution to the study of African religions. 1954- saw the publication of S. R. Nadel's Nupe Religion and this was a sympa¬ thetic assessment of the religion of a particular tribe.

Christian missionaries started to take African Traditional Religion seriously, when in 1950? a symposium, on African Ideas of God was published, containing studies, all written by Christian missionaries, of the ideas of God among twelve different tribes. The Rev. R. T. Parsons, who had been an E.U.B. missionary in Sierra Leone, wrote on "The idea of God among the Kono of Sierra Leone" and the Rev. ¥. T. Harris, who had worked for many years as a missionary in Segbwema, wrote on "The idea of God among the Mende". A star contributor to the symposium was Dr. Geoffrey Parrinder, of

AO. University College, Ibadan, who wrote about the "Theistic Beliefs of the Ewe and Yoruba Peoples". All the contributors were unanimous in their view, that Africans believed in a Supreme God before the advent of Christian or Muslim missionaries. They conclusively disproved the view that "Deity is a philosophical concept which savages are incapable of framing", and showed clearly that "untutored Africans can conceive God".

Parrinder continued his work on African Traditional Religions and published in quick succession two books: African Traditional Religion and West .:: e African Religion. He argued that Traditional Religion was not primitive religion; but it is doubtful whether he convinced the anthropologists. By the middle of the fifties African Traditional Religion v/as coming into its own as a separate field of study and African universities were begin¬ ning to study these subjects. Articles were pub¬ lished in journals like Africa, Hihhert Journal and the anthropological journalsi Perhaps the most significant work from Africa, came from Prof. Bolaji Idowu in 1962, with his careful and erudite study, entitled: Olodumare: God in Yoruba Belief. Around this time also, the Sierra Leone Bulletin of Religion was started, and articles on hende and Mono religious beliefs were published, mainly by Prof. Harry Sawyerr and the Rev. W. T. Harris. The field was now open to African scholars to con¬ tribute to the study of African religions. In 1968, the Sierra Leone University Press, published a book by W. T. Harris and Harry Sawyerr? entitled: Springs of Mende Belief and Conduct, a definitive study of liënde religious beliefs and ethics. In 1969 Prof. Mbiti.published his African Religions and Philosophy and in 1970, his Concepts of God in Africa, which is a kind of a to z of ideas about God among three hundred tribes in the continent. 1971 also saw the publication of Harry Sawyerr's, God: Ancestor or Creator? a theological study of the theistic beliefs of the Yoruba, the Mendes and the Akan of Ghana. In between, Parrinder slipped in his Religion in Africa and African Mythology. There were also the publications of

41. Spirit Mediumship and Society in Africa, a series of essays by various authors on spirit possession; Bishop Annze's Sacrifice in Ibo Religion and R. Iî. Downes, Tiv Religion. J. V. Taylor's The Primal Vision also deserves honourable mention at this point. The decade of the sixties was Africa's decade and it coincided with the awareness of Black Americans of their kinship with Africa; courses on African religions were instituted in American universities and books were poured out from the presses for the use of students: some were good, some were definitely bad, like Mendelhson's God, Allah and Jutju and some were indifferent. Journals dealing with African Traditional Religions also proliferated. There are now nearly twenty-five journals published by university departments of religious studies, by Brill of Leiden and by Chicago University Press, which deal almost exclusively with African Traditional Religion. I ought perhaps to mention an eccentric book written by a Professor King, entitled Religions of Africa; it provides the necessary comic relief to the large and learned tomes which have been coming out and it is likely to be popular among American students.

But there are still large areas in the study of African Traditional Religions which need to be charted. The ancestors play a dominant role in many African societies, but they have not yet been critically studied. I also think that what we need now are not general studies of African religious ideas, but detailed studies of individual peoples. The theme of myths and the function of rituals in individual African societies still need to be appraised and preserved. There is still to be settled the question of methodology: is religion a dimension, a social function, a structure and archetype, an encounter, a supernaturalistic des¬ cription or a projective description? Is African Traditional Religion primitive religion? All these questions cry out for urgent and careful answers, further more, how far have traditional beliefs been influenced by Christianity, Islam and Western culture? How far are the descriptions and

4-2 definitions of African Traditional religious beliefs and practices by African scholars, uncon¬ scious attempts by educated Africans to rationalise the ancient African beliefs? All these are areas which will repay patient and careful study and research. Prof. Idowu's African Traditional Religion: a Definition is to be published soon and it will contributegreatly to our understanding of the phenomenon.

In all these areas, the members of the Department of Theology have contributed articles on the con¬ cepts of God in African beliefs, worship or vener¬ ation of ancestors, the theme of myths and rites connected with burial among the Creoles. The Sierra Leone Bulletin of Religion, edited by the Chaplain, is taken by thirty universities in Africa, Europe and the United States of America.

I can end this section of the lecture by saying that the study of African Traditional Religion is like a vigorous baby, struggling to develop, but frustrated by lack of funds for research; however, it is unlikely that its growth will be stunted, for it is nourished by scholars of various discip¬ lines and the cooperation between anthropologists, sociologists, historians and religionists will produce by 2000 A.D. a mature adult, able to hold its own among the other vigorous disciplines being studied at the university level and finding it unnecessary to defend its existence in a community of scholars.

We turn now to the study of Christianity in Africa. Because Christianity in Africa was brought by Western missionaries, it is necessary to begin this part of the lecture,with a survey of the history of historical endeavour, but whereas Lord Hailey's survey of Africa hardly made any reference to the religious aspects of African history, it is impos¬ sible today to write a history without taking account of one of the great creative forces in the development of Africa. However, impartiality is impossible. On the one hand, there is the Christian writer who, though critical of some of the methods

4-3. used by the missionaries, has the difficulty of completely freeing himself from the hagiographical tradition of missionary writing in the past. On the other hand, the secular historian may recognise some of the activities of the missionaries in social service and education, but he may also regard any attempt to convert anyone as positively pernicious, thus debarring himself from any deep ■understanding of what was going on. Thus what appears at first sight to be objective historical research may turn out to be veiled political or religious propaganda. This is an area where cooperation between church historians and historians will produce materials, the study of which will make it possible for us to learn what really happened, and what were the forces actually at work in the various parts of the continent. In the United States of America a wide and powerful interest in African Studies has developed and some of the schools of African Studies in American universities are among the best equipped in the world. But more important is the share which African scholars themselves are taking in the study of a recent past. Worthy of special note is the school of Nigerian historians. Such works as J. P. A. Ajayi's, Christian Missions in Nigeria: 1841-1891< and E. A. Ayandele's, The Missionary Impact in Modern Nigeria 1842-1914 and Holy Johnson, Pioneer of African Nationalism, stand up to the most exacting historical criticism. These writers are critical, since they have the advant¬ age of knowing Africa from within, and can under¬ stand many things that are hidden from the foreign western scholar. But it is interesting that, in a series of studies entitled Christianity in Tropical Africa, ed. by Prof. C. Baeta, secular historians were on balance kinder to the mission¬ aries than Church historians; perhaps the histor¬ ians, exercising the difficult art of historical imagination, had realised that the work and achieve¬ ments of the missionaries must be assessed in the light of the knowledge available to them at the time and not in the light of the unexpected con¬ sequences of some of'their actions.

44. ^here is also a series of unequal quality on church growth sponsored "by Dr. McGavern and his colleagues at Pasadena, in the U.S.A. Of particular interest to West Africa are: Church Growth in Central and Southern Nigeria by Grimle?/- and Robinson, Church Growth in Sierra Leone by Olson, and Church"Growth in Liberia "by Wold. These works are typical of the tendency to generalise about younger churches, often on the basis of inadequate and inaccurate information. What must now be recognised is the great diversity of type and processes of growth, and the need for detailed studies of churches in different parts of the continent and in different stages of development. A more solid piece of work is that by J. V. Taylor on The Growth of the Church in Buganda. It is perhaps worth noting at this point, that studies of Christianity in Buganda abound, ranging from religion and society, to the geography of religion and religion and politics.

In West Africa, Ghana holds the prize for its books on Christianity; here are a few examples, P. L. Bartels, The Roots of Ghana Methodism; Noel Smith, The Presbyterian Church of Ghana; ÏT. Mob ley, The Ghanaianrs Image of the Missionary. One of the great problems of these books is the almost total absence of references to the work of the Roman Catholic Church, and when references are made to the Roman Catholic missions they are often polemical in tone. There is however an improvement in this situation, typified by Bishop T. S. Johnson's modest, The Story of a Mission and the more substan¬ tial work "by Dr. Hans Debrunner entitled, Christian ity in Ghana. Another problem is that not all' missions are as yet willing to open their archives even to responsible scholars; but it is likely that this attitude will change as controversial events recede into the past. There is at present no church history of Sierra Leone and for the nine¬ teenth century we have to rely heavily on the work of Pyfe and Peterson. Dr. Arthur Porter gives us glimpses into Creole religion in the twentieth century, but there is a definite need for a well documented history of the ahurch in Sierra Leone. It is a project which a member of the Department

45. of Theology has in mind, when he has the time and the financial resources to carry it out. Mean¬ while I have written an introduction to a reprint of Archdeacon Dandeson Crowther's, The Niger Delta is due out Pastorate, which sometime this year. I am also engaged in editing the letters of Arch¬ deacon Crowther on the Niger Delta which I controversy, hope will not only throw considerable light on missionary policies and strategies in the last decade of the nineteenth century in West Africa, but will also vindicate the reputation of Creole missionaries in West Africa, against the unfounded charges made against them by white missionaries. Perhaps we need an adequate and thorough study of the development, growth, evolu¬ tion and spread of Creole Christianity, prefer¬ ably by an objective non-Creole.

In the last fifteen years greater attention has been paid to 'native churches', 'African sects' or African Independent Churches, and there are some scholars who believe that these movements are the outcome of independent confrontation of the African mind with the Gospel and that they rep¬ resent authentic African Christianity, which has developed independently of the western cultural accretions of the missionaries. Other scholars are more cautious in their assessment of these prophet-healing movements, pointing to the of dangers syncretism and racialism in reverse. It is clear however, that it is at the flashpoint between syncretism and orthodox beliefs that genuine African theology will be produced. The pioneer work in this field is Dr. Bengt Sundkler's great book, Bantu Prophets in South Africa; since its publi- cation, a number of anthropologists, and psychologists theologians have devoted attention to the millenial element in the so called cargo cults and other similar phenomena which are also present in the Pacific area. Dr. D. B. Barrett, in his book, Schism and Renewal in Africa, has drawn attention to the widespread character of the Afri¬ can sects, and listed and analysed six thousand religious independent movements, some of them previously unknown. His method and analysis have

4-6. not received universal acceptance, but it is not unlikely that the book will be more adequately appraised as new information comes to light. The vigour with which the study of African independent movements is being pursued can be seen from Robert Mitchell and Harold V. Turner's A Comprehensive Bibliography of Modern African Religious Movements which lists nearly a thousand articles and books on the subject. Some books stand out as classics in this field. C. G. Baeta, Prophetism in Ghana; P. B. Welbourn, East African Rebels; J. B. Webster, The African Churches among the Yoruba; H. V. ïurner," a former member of staff here at Fourah Bay College, African Independent Church, (2 Volumes) on the history and theology of the Church of the Lord, Aladura; Shepperson and Price, Independent African ; and Volh Soyinka's The Trial of Brother Jethro. The Kimbanguist movement in Zaire has recently been admitted into the World Council of Churches and this suggests both a movement on the part of African Independent Churches towards closer links with western oriented churches and also a willingness on the part of those churches to con¬ sider What these new groups have to offer to the christian world.

The widespread study of Independent African Church movements has led to the study of the indigenisa- tion of the Church. Historians, sociologists, nationalists and even theologians have criticised missionaries in Africa for producing churches which are pale imitations of Western church patterns and structures and reflections of Western cultural imperialism. They have also noted a paternalistic relationship with the mother churches in the West, even in the midst of the political independence of many African nations. The churches in Africa have thus been accused of neo-colonialism and of main¬ taining the colonial mentality and economic and cultural dependence upon their founders. It is not surprising therefore that genuine African . Christianity has been sought for in the independent movements and there are some scholars who believe that an African indigenous theology can only be found in these movements, which attempt to relate

4-7. Christianity to their African milieu. But the Western oriented churches, now largely led by Africans, have counter-attacked and a quest for indigenisation has begun. The first shot in the battle was fired by Prof. Bolaji Idowu of Ibadan University in 1965, in a slim volume entitled, Towards an Indigenous Church. Idowu in a brutal attack on the churches in Nigeria, pleads passion¬ ately for the indigenisation of the liturgy, the language of evangelism, the dress and vestments and the theology of the African church. He also suggested ways in which this process can be furth¬ ered. While I am deeply in sympathy with this movement and while I am convinced that conversion to Christianity must be coupled with cultural con¬ tinuity, I am equally suspicious of any attempt to produce an ethnic or racial theology or liturgy. Indeed the quest for indigenisation of the church, its structures and its theology, raises fundamental questions about the nature of Christianity, which have often been overlooked by those involved in the quest. For example, how can the church in Africa be both African and at the same time an integral part of the universal church? Harry Sawyerr has attempted to answer this question in his valuable, but largely unsatisfactory book, Creative Evangelism. The book is valuable because it highlights the basic problems of evangelism in post-colonial Africa, but it is unsatisfactory, because it attempts too much and also because it is written from a point of view, which is not widely accepted in Africa. Perhaps a more signi¬ ficant question is whether in fact Christian theology can be expressed in ethnic categories. This is a question which many theologians have failed to take seriously, notably the volume of essays edited by Paul Ellingworth and Kwesi Dickson entitled, Biblical Revelation and African Beliefs and also the tJournal of the Student Christian Federation on African Theology edited in Nairobi. I have myself tried to answerthis question in an article in the Sierra Leone Bulletin of Religion, entitled "An African Indigenous Theology: Factor Fiction" and endeavoured to show two things: first that those who wish to produce an African

48. Indigenous Theology, would not be so keen on it if it was defined as African Native Theology and second, that if the African churches are to make a contribution to the theology of the universal church, then that theology must not be culturally bound. Indeed, a theology produced primarily for a particular culture group will always be bankrupt and will be useless both to the group for which it is produced and also to the various communities which make up the universal church.

Contemporary studies of the church in modern Africa are also receiving great attention from scholars. These studies range from Christianity, nationalism and politics, through Christianity in the midst of rapid social change and the training of ministers and laymen, to studies about the interaction between Christianity and Islam in Africa and the status of women and the relationship between traditional marriage and christian marriage. The time is now ripe for an evaluation of the concepts of marriage in Africa and scholars are less anxious to hold up the monogamous ideal, than they were wont to do. What is needed urgently are area studies of marriage patterns in Africa and the appraisal of marriage contracts - this is a field where there can be fruitful interdisciplinary study in African universities.

The research potentialities in the field of Christ¬ ianity in Africa are immensely rich and we are only just beginning to touch the edges of the subject. In order to be able to do this effectively, we need finances and scholars in departments of reli¬ gious studies face a gigantic task with meagre resources and constant criticism both from their university colleagues and also from the churches. There are signs however, that scholars of Christian¬ ity in Africa are not daunted by their tasks and are patiently studying a vital part of the exper¬ ience of millions of Africans, which need to be carefully studied, evaluated and published.

4-9 When we turn to the study of Islam in tropical Africa, we find that it has not yet had the benefit of successful large-scale work in English by a Muslim. There are of course many books written in Arabic, but H. I. Hassan's Islam and Arabic Culture in Africa published in 1963 and Mahmud. Brelui, Islam in Africa, published in 196-4- are notable exceptions. J. Spencer Trimingham's works on Islam in the Sudan, Islam in Ethiopia, Islam in West" "Africa, History"of Islam in West Africa, Islam in"East*Africa and The Influence of Islam upon Africa, published between 1949 and 1968, are solid and scholarly works by a Christian scholar. Trimingham is saturated with his subject of study and endeavours to be scrupulously and academically honest in his treatment of Islam. Total objectiv¬ ity is neither possible nor desirable, for if one knows a person's standpoint or prejudices, he can make allowances for them. It is not surprising therefore that while some Muslims appreciate Trimingham's work as a christian service to Islam, like Ibn Battuta describing Christianity in Constantinople in the fourteenth century, others regard it as the combination of the white man and Christian missionary extending paternalism and colonialism into the field of scholarship. Prof. J. N. D. Anderson's Islamic Law in Africa is in a similar category, as well as Nehemia Levtzion's Muslims and Chiefs in West Africa. But Ayre Oded has done some basic research on Islam in Buganda. T. W. Arnold's, The Preaching of Islam in trying to be fair to Islam tends to overcompensate, but this is a valuable work. Humphrey Fisher has done a useful study of the Ahmadiyyah in West Africa, which is unfortunately out of print.

The papers presented at the Fifth International Seminar of Africani3ts at Zaria in 1964, have been edited by I. M. Lewis as Islam in Tropical Africa: each theme has an extensive hibliography. An important American contribution which brings together an international team of scholars, includ¬ ing one Muslim, is James Kritzeck and William H. Lewis, Islam in Africa, published in 1969. The

50. bibliographical work is most helpful, though a few chapters are regrettably weak. The Cambridge History of Islam Vol. 2, devotes a whole part to Africa and the Muslim West, a typical example of the combination of exact scholarship and mature judgement. Two other masterly works need to be mentioned at this juncture. D. P. L. Dry, The Place of Islam in Hausa Society, an unpublished Ph.D. thesis and ft. A. Klein's, Islam and Imperial¬ ism in Senegal, published in 196S"; the latter examines in detail the coming of French power and its effects on traditional society and Islam in the Sine-Saloum area, not far from the Gambia river, from 1847-1914-, while the former considers the impact of Islam on traditional Hausa society. Abdul Kasozi and Noel King are working on Islam and the Confluence of Religions in Uganda, based on the memory of an old warrior, aged 100± Osmani Wamala, and will deal with the coming of Islam to Uganda. But a good deal of work still needs to be done.

With regard to the dialogue between Islam and Christianity in Africa, on the muslim side there is a fair amount of material to be found in print in the form of articles, pamphlets and small books by muslim chiefs like Sheikh Shuaib of Uganda and Abdullah Saleh Farsy. There are also slim volumes refuting Christianity by Ahmadiyya writers, in English, Twi, Yoruba, Swahili and Luganda. Oral materials are also available in various cities and towns of East and West Africa, and a student who wants to learn about Islam in these areas will only have to consult the muslim leaders.

On the christian side, the best material is at the oral level, though the I'luslim World has carried relevant and learned aricles on Islam in various parts of Africa. Remarks, reports and letters from missionaries in the field to their headquarters still have to be worked through and collated systematically.

51. Despite this wealth of scattered written material the best account of how at last Christian and Muslim have begun to sit down together is still obtained by word of mouth. Fr. Benigmus was killed in an air crash on Mount Cameroun, and some of his import¬ ant work is to be found at the Paris Mission Head¬ quarters, but his work continues at Ibadan at a Christian-Muslim centre named for him. The dialogue is also carried out in the various university departments of religious studies in Africa, where muslim and christian scholars study the experiences of their religions in an atmosphere of cordiality and mutual respect.

But the study of Islam in Africa seems to have passed Sierra Leone by. There is no history of Islam in Sierra Leone, nor have any systematic attempts been made to study the manifestations of Islam in Sierra Leone and assess its impact on traditional society. Statistics about the member¬ ship of Islam in Sierra Leone are far from accurate and when I dared to suggest in 1966 that Freetown had more Muslims than Christians, I was accused of letting down the home side, even though I pointed out that this was merely an inspired guess. Nor have we any concrete evidence to decide whether or not Sierra Leone is a muslim country. Part of the reason for this, is that the Department of Theology is small and has concentrated largely on christian theology because it has seen its function largely as that of training ministers of the church and school teachers, who teach bible knowledge. No conscious effort has therefore been made to recruit muslim scholars. However, attempts are now being made to make Islam an integral part of the curri¬ culum in religious studies, and there is a possi¬ bility of a study of the history, growth, develop¬ ment and dynamics of the muslim community in Freetown being undertaken. This type of study will lend itself to an interdisciplinary approach and could yield rich dividends, if only the funds and the facilities are available.

52. The study of religions in Africa is in a state of infancy. Traditional religious beliefs, practices and rites continue to hold the minds of our people, despite the influence of Christianity and Islam. The Arabness of Islam is a kind of shell which can give her strength to do her work and be herself wherever she goes. To Christianity her European- ism is an impediment which it is best to lose in her quest for indigenisation. Both religions.are sisters who have gone through immigrant and resident alien status and become citizens. But while Christianity came in with the conquering colonial powers, Islam came into Africa meek and lowly, in the company of traders. Islam in Sierra Leone is thus free of the stigma attached to the slave trade and the wars which certain Muslims carried on up to less than a century ago. Islam has also regained international contact and the prestige of a world religion. The revolution Islam brings to individuals and societies will take place. When in A.D. 2000, all this talk about modernisation and syncretism has died away, she will be stronger than ever. The love affair between Christ and Africa goes back two millenia. At the present time the church has a future and vast potential¬ ities, if only she can dissociate herself from some of the misdeeds of her self appointed friends and advisers - perhaps at last we may be allowed to discern her as she really is, in all her beauty, black and comely, arrayed for her Lord. The study of religions will therefore continue to be a rich diamond mine for scholars as long as religion con¬ tinues to be a vital and effective part of the total experience of Africans; and the signs are good that we will be able to study together and in a spirit of discovery; rather than in a spirit of rivalry and animosity. For sound scholarship, like good poetry, is the recollection of powerful emotion, in tranquility.

53. SOCIAL EFFECTS OF INDUSTRIALIZATION

AND URBANIZATION IN SIERRA LEONE

il. B. Dumbuya Department of Sociology Fourah Bay College

INTRODUCTION

The terms "industrialization" and "urbanization" have several different meanings. Industrialization frequently refers to increased mechanization and productivity, while urbanization often refers to the processes of becoming urban, the movement of people from their rural settlements to towns, the changes from agricultural to other occupational pursuits of cities, end to the development of modes and standards of behaviour peculiar to urban areas. But the precise relationship between industrializa¬ tion and urbanization especially in the developing countries still remains a subject of debate among social scientists. I do not intend to contribute to the already existing volume of literature on this subject. It is for some observers a question of the "egg and the hen". Others believe that there is a direct correlation between the develop¬ ment of urbanization and the development of indust¬ rialization. Suffice it to say that although there is often a coincidence between the two pro¬ cesses the causal relationships are still not clear. The issue becomes even more confused when examined in the light of those countries like tra¬ ditional India where certain common features of industrialization such as extensive specialization and division of labour were found with relatively little industrialization. In West Africa, William Bascom (1959) discovered that there was extensive urbanization among the Yoruba of Nigeria without a corresponding technological industrialization. This finding indicated that urbanization is more directly linked with a given standard of living which to all intents is at a relatively higher level when compared to the surrounding areas,

54- especially in the terms of the provision of pipe- borne water, electricity, schools etc. Being city dwellers they were ensured a high living standard - such as is sought by all human beings. The farm provided a source of income, and since the Yoruba farmers were city dwellers, one would conclude that that type of Yoruba farming engendered a sur¬ plus to pay for the amenities of the city life. He noted that the Yoruba farmers were city dwellers whose farms were located on a belt of land surround¬ ing the city. This meant that some method of land classification was acceptable and allied "zoning" of industries adopted. This later gave rise to a division of labour which included, among others: weavers and dyers whose efforts produced cloth, iron workers who manufactured hoes and tools, and diviners and medicine men who cared for the soul and body.

In West Africa the pattern of modern industrializa¬ tion and urbanization was and continues to be influenced primarily by the needs of the colonial powers whose motives are basically commercial. A strong administrative machinery to buttress this commercial enterprise and exploitation gave support to the creation of urban sectors outside of the coastal areas. For example: groundnuts gave birth to the Kano-Lagos railway, cocoa in Ghana generated the Accra-Kumasi railway, while in East Africa cotton in Uganda stimulated the Kenya- Uganda railway. In Sierra Leone, Kenema grew as a result of cocoa, coffee, timber and more lately diamonds. The Government Diamond Office, a branch of the Bank of Sierra Leone and the Forest Indust- ties Corporation are located there.

Bo flourished as an urban centre when the Sierra Uêone Produce Marketing Board headquarters, diamond offices and railway workshops existed, but it is now dwindling very fast. Bo should be resurrected by sending'the S.L.P.M.B. headquarters there for the purchase of produce. This will serve to stimu¬ late the transport industry in the south. Trans¬ portation encourages the geographical specialization of agriculture and allied occupations.

55. Bonthe grew and. developed as an early urban centre from trade and the piassava industry which was backed by a navigable waterway system. The intro¬ duction of synthetic fibres seriously curtailed the trade and depressed the town. The development of waterways vis-á-vis road systems for use in tourism could lead to a revival of Bonthe.

Lunsar grew dramatically into an urban centre as the direct result of iron ore mining at Marampa.

Pepel was a small fishing hamlet in the early 1920's. It is growing into an urban community as a result of the establishment of a port to ship iron ore.

Koidu-Sefadu and Yengema have developed as urban centres due to diamond mining.

Comparatively little effort has been made by West African governments and African scholars to study the concomitant effects of such growth and decline of urban centres in regard to their overall develop' ment programmes. Strange to say that in those countries where any attempts have been made at all, they have been directed mainly to the problems of the superstructure. That these efforts have proved lacking are suggestive of the fact that no such studies can be useful for development unless they are related to the fundamental social structures and the underlying attitudes, beliefs, and values of the people they are intended to serve. In 1956, a team of UNESCO experts studying the nature of the problems generated by industrialization and urbanization in Africa south of the Sahara, sounded a note of warning that African governments, and African scholars must give immediate attention to the problems of industrialization and urbanization because they represent the 'tropical cancer' which militates against economic, social, cultural and political development in tropical Africa today. The excuse by African governments and African scholars alike, pleading lack of funds to carry out such imperative tasks, would certainly be flimsy if developmental priorities were ascertained and the

56. goals for socio-economic planning were defined in the light of their existing resources. Develop¬ mental priorities must he identified and executed on a sound socio-economic "basis in order to satisfy the needs of the nation in particular and the world economy in general. This in my view would be a sound approach to the philosophy of self-reliance in contemporary Africa.

SOCIAL EFFECTS IN SIERRA LEONE

After these few general observations, let me now turn to my immediate task - the social effects of industrialization and urbanization in Sierra_Leone. I must also hasten to remark that it is not intended here to provide solutions for these problems, if one can rightly call them problems at all. In fact to assume such a complex responsibility would be intellectual dishonesty. The pictures presented by industrialization and urbanization are multi¬ dimensional, and they must be understood in such a perspective.

Looking at the social effects of industrialization and urbanization in West Africa, Professor Raymond Firth observes that:

Apart from the general problems of raising real incomes and standards of living in the territories as a whole, a special set of problems is posed by the urban centres. The urban drift, always a matter of con¬ cern, has been greatly accelerated by new

desires and needs. ... In the coast towns in particular, conditions of over¬ crowding are often severe, problems of high rents, unemployment, family disloca¬ tion, juvenile delinquency are present to a high degree. Linked with the urban prob¬ lems in general, but particularly as a phase of population movement, are two other prob¬ lems. ' These are difficulties in connexion With the urban strangers on the one hand, and with the labourers who have migrated for industrial employment, on the other. (UNESCO 1956:73)

57. This observation by Firth provides us with a general picture of some of the problems I propose to examine. Sierra Leone like most other African countries is predominantly an agricultural country with the bulk of its population living in peasant rural settlements. The 1963 census indicated that more than three-fourths of the population were settled in localities with less than 1,000 inhabit¬ ants, and a little more than four-fifths of the population lived in localities with less than 2,000 inhabitants. The 1963 census also suggested that there were approximately 54 towns in Sierra Leone with more than 2,000 inhabitants each. This meant that about 19% of the entire population of the country lived, in towns with more than 2,000 inhabitants.

TABLE 1 Fopulation by Size - Class (1963)

Size of the No. of o/ locality localities ^P^tion *

Below 1,000 1,636,602 75.1 1,000 - 2,499 108 157,829 7.2 2,500 - 4,999 30 102,627 4.7 5,000 - 9,999 11 66,236 3.0 10,000 - 14,999 5 62,531 2.9 15,000 - 29,999 1 26,613 1.2 30,000 and over 1 127,917 5-9

2,180,355 100.0

Source : 1963 Population Census of Sierra Leone

The degree of urbanization in a country is usually a reflection of its main economic activity. In Sierra Leone, four main types of industrial econo¬ mic activities may be identified.

Mining especially for diamonds, iron ore, rutile and chrome are important. Small scale plantations of cocoa, coffee, rice, timber, palm oil, and ginger exist in some parts of the country.

58. Transportation by road is currently being developed to link Freetown and the main provincial towns as the railway is being phased out. Small scale industries are being developed mainly in Freetown which provides the greatest concentration of the country's infrastructure and productive installa¬ tions. Freetown has this infrastructure and productive installations because of -its harbour where raw materials from outside the country are landed. These include: crude oil for the refinery, fish and other sea-foods from the continental shelf (this industry needs a great deal of development), clinkers which used to come in for the now defunct cement factory, and wheat flour, sugar, etc. for the biscuit and confectionery industry.

In order not to increase the cost of production of the final products to the local consumer, it seemed necessary to build'such factories as near the entrepot as possible. A consumer population was thus guaranteed its goods at a reasonable price. This in effect has made industrial decen¬ tralization rather difficult in the country. Con¬ sequently, industrialization has not kept pace with urbanization in most parts of the country. (See Table 2)

Urban growth in Sierra Leone between 1927 and 1963 was tremendous. This was accelerated primarily by the discovery and mining of minerals in the Northern and Eastern Provinces. For example in 1927 Freetown, Lunsar, and Koidu had populations of 73* 126; 78; and 96 inhabitants respectively. By the year 1963 the populations increased to 157,613; 12,132; and 11,706 respectively. These dramatic increases in population were due primarily to migration of people from the rural areas and the influx of foreigners to the mining centres and to the capital, rather than to the natural growth rate of the population which was estimated between 1.3% and 1.5% for the period. Migration to Freetown and other urban centres was due to the diamond boom. It enabled some people to afford the luxuries of urban life. A later decline in income often left the individual stranded in the town or city.

59. TABLE 2 URBAN GROWTH IN SIERRA LEONE

POPULATION INCREASE IN CENTRE 1927 1965 PERCENTAGE

Freetown 73,126 157,613 115 Makeni 1,000 12,304 1,130 Bo 3,780 26,613 600 Lunsar 78 12,132 15,400 Kenema 1,200 13,246 1,000 Koidu 96 11,706 12,100 Yengema 1-44 7,313 4,970 Magburaka 34-8 6,371 1,730 Segbwema 2,790 6,258 124 Bonthe 5,4-00 6,230 15 Jaiama 864 6,064 602 Port Loko 2,700 5,809 115 Y omandu 978 5,469 459 Kailahun 2,772 5,419 96

Barma 360 5,280 1,366 Blama 1,812 5,073 180

Source: Melcbiade Yadi, Employment Promotion Problems in the Economic and Social Development of Sierra Leone, Inter¬ national Institute for Labour Studies, IEME 3C47, 1972.

60. Two other important conclusions, derived from the population census of 1965, were the youthfulness of the population, and the disproportionate ratio between the two sexes. Approximately 4-6% of the population were under 20 years of age and almost a third were aged between 20 years and 59 years. A total of 78% of the population was under 4-0 years of age. The sex-ratio was 1,017 females per 1,000 males. This excess was lower than the 1931 estimate which gave 1,250 females per 1,000 males. Generally, the three major factors influencing the sex-ratio of a population are the preponderance of male births, different mortality rates of the two sexes, and the differences in the migration pat¬ terns of the two sexes. The preponderance of male births is noted in advanced countries where better medical facilities are often available. Naturally, weaker males are more prone to still-births and infant mortality. In relatively underdeveloped countries where the cultural values favour the high procreation of children, excessive child¬ birth and hard manual labour tend to give men greater longevity than women. Thirdly, there is the general problem that males are more prone to migration than females.

Culturally, the population of Sierra Leone is com¬ posed of tribal groups (18 tribes were classified in the 1965 census) with certain cultural differ¬ ences and peculiarities. The major similarity among the majority of the indigenous tribes is in their patrilinial line. All kinsmen share common patrilineal ties which form corporate clans or lineage groups. Each patri-clan or lineage group has certain privileges, rights, and obligations that it must preserve in the community.

MIGRATION AND RELATED PROBLEMS

Historically, the tribes of Sierra Leone migrated into the country from the north, east, north-east and south. After these waves of sporadic migration, the tribal groups became settled in certain geo¬ graphical regions of the country. During the pro¬ cess of this early migration, there were cultural

61. TABLE 3 Tribal or Ethnie Composition of the Population: 1963 Census

Tribe/Ethnic Population % Main Location Group

Creole 4-1,783 1.9 Western Area Fula 66,824 3-1 North & N. East Gallinas 2,200 0.1 South & S. East Gola 4,854 0.2 South East Kissi 48,954 2.3 Eastern Province Kono 104,575 4.8 Eastern Province Koranko 80,732 3-7 Northern Province Krim 8,733 0.4 Southern Province Kru 4,793 0.2 Western Area Limba 183,496 8.4 Northern Province Loko 64,459 2.9 Northern Province Madingo 51,024 2.3 N.S. & E. Province Mende 672,831 30.9 Southern Province Sherbro 74,674 3.4 Southern Province Susu 67,288 3.1 Northern Province Temne 648,931 29.8 Northern Province Vai 5,786 0.3 Southern Province Yalunka 15,005 0.7 Northern Province No Tribe 1.3 Others 0.2

Source: Clarke, J. I., Sierra Leone in Maps 1966: 36-37

62. diffusions and some amount of acculturation between certain tribes. The country's two major tribal groups, the Mende and the Temne, eventually settled in the south and south east, and in the north and the Western Area respectively. The advant of missionaries, colonial penetration into the hinter¬ land, the growth of commerce, and the spread of education have all helped to reduce tribal dis¬ tinctions and differences among the various tribal groups of the country in the twentieth century.

Rural-Urban Drift

Migration is the movement of people from a familiar environment to an -unfamiliar environment, familiar¬ ity implies less hazards whereas unfamiliarity makes living more difficult for some people. Rural- urban drift in Sierra Leone, as in other West African countries, has disrupted many families. In the rural areas the dominant form of social organization is evident through the extended family which provides social security and services for its members. In the urban and mining areas life is relatively more individualistic. The migrating individual has to depend on himself. People mig¬ rate for several different reasons: social, poli¬ tical, psychological, physical, and economic. In Sierra Leone, the major factor influencing migra¬ tion is economic, that is, the urge to satisfy new desires and needs. In general, it is able-bodied people who are more prone to migrate. They leave behind their families and possibly their social responsibilities. The social effects of this rural-urban drift have been very disturbing for the economic and social development of the country. One immediate result is the high incidence of un¬ employment in the towns. In 1968, the Central Statistics Office conducted a survey which presented the following information about unemployment in the country.

Eastern Province

(i) Kenema: 9.8% of the total labour force was unemployed. The high percentage was

63. due to the rush for diamonds, better social amenities, and job attractions especially for people not skilled.

(ii) Sefadu: 11.6% of the total labour force was unemployed. This high percent¬ age was also largely due to the rush for diamonds.

In the urban areas of the Eastern Province, 9.5% of the total labour force was unemployed, whereas in the rural areas 0.8% of the total population was unemployed. This low percentage of rural unemployment was due to cocoa and coffee production which gave guaranteed returns to farmers through marketing boards and hence a source of income.

Northern Province

(i) Makeni: 10.9% of the total labour force was unemployed.

(ii) Lunsar; 12.5% of the total labour force was unemployed.

In the urban areas of the Northern Province 11.0% of the total labour force was unemployed, whereas in the rural areas only 0.6% of the total labour force was unemployed. Cattle, rice and other farm crops gave the farmer high returns.

Southern Province

(i) Bo: 15.0% of the total labour force was unemployed. The explanation for this was to be found in the decline of the diamond mining industry in the area, and the fall of the Sierra Leone Produce Marketing Board.

(ii) Baoma: 16.9% of the total labour force was unemployed.

64. (iii) Gbangbatok: 5.0% of the total labour force was unemployedo This was due to the rise of rutile mining.

In the urban areas of the Southern Province, only 0.5% of the total labour force was unemployed, where¬ as in all the rural areas of the Southern Province, only 0.5% of the total labour force was unemployed. Western Area In the Western Area, for which 1967 figures are used the position was as follows:

Freetown: 15.5% of the total labour force in Freetown was unemployed. 5.1% of the total population of Freetown were mig¬ rants from the provinces. 19.6% of provincial migrants in Freetown were "unemployed. 1.8% of the total popula¬ tion of Freetown were people who had moved into the city from the suburban areas: Kissy, Wilberforce, Lumley, etc. The low percentage is due to the rela¬ tively slight difference in standards of living between Freetown and the urban fringe.

One conclusion we may derive from these rather crude statistics is the high rate of unemployment in the urban areas compared to the low rate of rural unemployment in the country. This is due primarily to the drudgery in peasant farming, the easier working conditions and the quick money incen¬ tives of the urban centres. That this picture may remain so for some time to come should not be taken as a negative view. A realistic view of the prob¬ lem was noted by T. M. Yesufu (1972:3), Professor of Applied Economics and Director of the Human Resources Unit at the University of Lagos, Nigeria when he stated that:

Economic policies designed merely to ensure a high rate of growth of the national product are no longer adequate ...; and it cannot now be taken for granted that measures which promote

65. economic development will themselves necessarily create enough job oppor¬ tunities for the masses of the unemployed. The acceptance of the unemployment objective as a corner¬ stone in economic and development policy has therefore become impera¬ tive. This implies that employment creation must be a conscious object¬ ive of the development planners.

Continuous job creation alone in the urban areas cannot solve the problem of migration and • unemployment.

The attention of advisers and planners must be devoted also to the setting up of industries which will utilize the raw materials of the nation for part-processing and full-processing to satisfy local consumer needs. Among these v/ould be the use of:

(a) fibre crops for the manufacture of rugs, cordage handbags, mats and chairs, in the north and east with import restriction on competitive foreign goods;

(b) piassava for brooms, brushes, etc. with small industries to be established at Bonthe and elsewhere in the south;

(c) local coffee and cocoa to produce extractives for local consumption; the industry could be centred in the east and south east;

(d) palm fruit and kernels to establish an oil extraction industry in the south and south east; and

(e) citrus fruits for a juice industry in the north.

In addition, a

(f) fishing industry along the Bulom Shore should be developed; and a

66 (g) guaranteed price should be established for cereals to stimulate their production for the manufacture of feed meal for animals»

At the same time, it is also necessary to seek to improve the export trade.

My field experience in the remote rural areas of the Provinces suggests that the rural migrant whose decision to migrate is influenced primarily by the urge for high wages, would stay on his farm if he were educated and motivated to increase his pro¬ ductivity, and encouraged to get better prices for his produce. As noted earlier on, Sierra Leone is basically an agricultural country but agricul¬ ture contributes very little to our national income. The call here is for increased utilization of our human resources especially in the rural sector where the bulk of the country's population is based.

There are several other factors contributing to the unemployment problems of the country. The illegal influx of other West Africans into the country cannot be overlooked. These immigrants compete with Sierra Leoneans in the labour market and in other occupations such as, tailoring, car¬ pentry, driving, etc. It is hoped that the Govern¬ ment recent effort to check this illegal influx of foreigners into the country will yield good results.

Social Problems: Crime, Juvenile Delinquency, Prostitution, etc.

Sierra Leone is not unique in experiencing a high incidence of social problems, especially in the urban areas. Most of these problems are merely manifestations of the rapid processes of industrial¬ ization and urbanization taking place in a country where these have not been planned. Faulty educa¬ tional systems which are not inward looking enough contribute to the situation. Middle-level man¬ power training has been lacking so far. Too much of it is patterned after western nations. What

67. ought to receive attention, however, is the rela¬ tively slow growth of well-planned machineries to cope with these problems. There should be co¬ ordinated effort at all levels of society to amel¬ iorate the present rate of criminal and deviant behaviour among the young and old alike. The Department of Sociology at Fourah Bay College should be encouraged and strengthened to pursue research in some of these problems. For example, in his paper, "The Social Implications of Paupers in Freetown", for the Department of Sociology in 197?» a student, Peter Molongwe, identified four types of beggars: able-bodied and mentally normal, able-bodied and mentally handicapped, mentally normal and physically handicapped, and the mentally and physically handicapped. The author discovered that of the 150 inmates at the King George VI Memorial Home at Kissy more than 75% of them were provincial immigrants who could not cope with the urban situation.

Of course, stresses and strains are common to all world societies where money is too scarce to cope with needs. There should be plans to cope with them here.

A UNESCO survey of Sekondi-Takoradi in 194-7» revealed that of the 127 prostitutes interviewed only 9 were natives of Sekondi-Takoradi; all the rest were migrants. Again, cultural changes, new demands, and the introduction of a new pattern of living may lead people to these types of practices.

Education for Social and Economic Development

It is not intended to examine this problem in great depth; however, as education is closely related to the problems of development, one cannot avoid it. Critics of Sierra Leone's educational system, as those of other former colonial terri¬ tories, continue to attribute the blame to the so-called "colonial inheritance". The criticism is that the country's ediication is predicated on the British colonial education for gentlemen, and that it is too "bookish", providing no skills that

68 are needed in a developing country. These crici- cisms are appropriate . But how long can we go on blaming the past? This is our challenge as nation- builders. Colonial education was geared and tailored to serve the manpower needs of the era: the pro¬ duction of clerks, teachers, book-keepers, and preachers. The problem with Sierra Leone's educa¬ tion at the moment is not that of "colonial inher¬ itance" but the relative lack of foresight, tena¬ city, and capacity on the part of our educational planners to adapt the system to the changing economic, social, political, and cultural needs of the country. Nationalism - a sense of belonging and contributing to the nation - should also be encouraged and developed.

The budgetary expenditure on education in this country is relatively high. The declared policy of the government that socio-economc development planning should reflect the priorities of the masses of the people particularly in the rural areas, and its call for "self-help" to spur the rural economy ought to be reinforced by the Univer¬ sity of Sierra Leone especially through the co¬ ordinated and accelerated efforts of the Extra- Mural Departm nt and the Institute of African Studies at Fourah Bay College, and the Department of Home and Rural Science at College. People both in the urban and rural areas must be educated within their vocations and allowed to improve their skills. It is impossible to trans- f orm all rural areas into urban centres. Nobody wants to do that. Rather there should be a marked inter-dependence among the peoples of the two sectors.

The University should develop programmes for adult education so that the masses of the people can be directly involved in the process of their own environmental development. The main objective of such programmes should be to educate the illiter¬ ate masses to improve their living standards by increasing their productivity. Mass adult educa¬ tion does not necessarily intend to make a man able to read and write but rather to educate and

69. to motivate a mar about the "social causes and con¬ sequences of ignorance, disease, superstition, tribalism and apathy in society and their effect on programmes of eccnomic development". A more national approach to the economic backwardness of Sierra Leone should seek to investigate the cause of economic backwardness in relation to the tradi¬ tional basis of Sierra Leone society.

Sierra Leone like any other African country cannot develop on the basis of deficiency theory which argues that unless there is an abundant supply of all the material factors of production no economic development can be realized. There will never be that abundance because growth regenerates itself. Throughout history, socio-economic development has essentially been the result of a changed outlook about nature and society which motivated men to utilize their resources to the extent of the exist¬ ing knowledge at the time. Sierra Leone cannot afford to wait until she acquires an abundance of all the material factors of production before educating its people to -understand the whys and hows of economic development and welfare. We must estab¬ lish our priorities clearly and ascertain our develop¬ ment goals. We cannot afford to be clients of the European Economic Community as some of our econo¬ mists are predicting for the "associables". What we need is a strong regional trade system in Africa, one among ourselves with much less competition.

One of the more serious half-truths is the attri¬ bution of backwardness to illiteracy. It is true that about 75% of "the population of Sierra Leone are illiterate. But one needs to differentiate between illiteracy and ignorance. Joe Opare-Abetia (1970:265) makes this distinction when he writes:

The problem in Africa is not illiteracy but ignorance. A literate person is not necessarily one who is informed about his society. The educational systems in Africa have merely tended to push chil¬ dren through schools without training them to think about their societies. Much more can be achieved through a system

'JO. r

which trains even illiterate people to think about their society than can be achieved by merely producing people who can read and write. It is only when people are motivated about their society that they can find literacy an exciting exercise which does not end with formal education.

An educational system should aim not only at moti¬ vating people merely to read and write but also at inculcating in them the urge to endeavour and to contribute to the development of their society. The Chancellor of the University of Sierra Leone recently pointed out that we must avoid making our University "a million dollar baby" and by implica¬ tion our educational system into a million dollar system. The mere multiplication of educational buildings and institutions without relating the content and form of the curricula to the needs of the country cannot promote the changed outlook necessary at all levels of society for socio¬ economic development. The need for scientists, technicians, and professionals of all grades is vital for development. But the training of these people should be supplemented by the spirit of enquiry, ingenuity, and adventure, as well as by the utilization of existing resources. There should be a definite spread of manpower over the product¬ ive areas of the country.

As noted earlier, Sierra Leone is still fundament¬ ally traditional. And when traditional attitudes, beliefs, and values conflict with new imposed values and attitudes, economic planning for progress can be seriously retarded. We need to break down certain fals'e cultural and historical barriers: e.g. attitudes towards lfend tenure which cause limit¬ ations to progress and community development. We need to re-examine the rale of our fetish priests and diviners who continué to exploit. How can you train a university graduate completely ignorant of the life-styles, attitudes, beliefs, and values of the people he is ultimately to serve in the remote parts of the country? Contrast creates awareness while ignorance breeds contempt and hatredness.

•71. Our educators complain that our graduates do not like to work in some parts of the Provinces. It is true to the extent that a graduate has developed a trained mind and his needs and acpectations are greater. Emphasis must be put on rural development. If this is given a national priority a graduate must be induced to work in the rural sector by better remuneration.

The problem can also be phased out morally if the graduate is educated or oriented to serve the people whose well-earned incomes have contributed to his education.

V/e must begin to study our society. The mere import¬ ation and imposition of foreign experts on a society may not yield good and desired results. G. M. Poster makes a similar observation when he reminds us that:

Technological development is a process imperfectly understood even by the special¬ ists. The expression itself is misleading, for strictly speaking, there can be no such thing as technological development in isola¬ tion. Perhaps the use of the term socio- technological development would clarify our thinking, for development is a much more than overt acceptance of material and techni¬ cal developments.

CONCLUSION

Finally let me reiterate that the social effects of industrialization and urbanization cannot be ignored in economic planning for contemporary Sierra Leone. Their neglect would militate against the political, economic, social, and cultural development of the country. In any drive towards social and economic development, the attitudes of the decision makers, educators, and the executors of the programmes should be oriented towards the realisation that the masses of the people involved live in rural tribal societies.

72.

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'

A

V

- AFRICANA PUBLICATIONS FROM FOURAH BAY COLLEGE

All the undemoted publications are available from the Manager, Fourah Bay College Bookshop, Freetown, Sierra Leone. 1. Published for Tourah Bay College by Oxford University Press.

W. T. Harris and Harry Sawyerr, THE SPRINGS OF M EN DE BELIEF AND CONDUCT 1969 Le3 50

Christopher Fvfeand Eldred Jones, eds., FREETOWN. A SYMPOSIUM 1968. Le4.20 II. L Van Der Laan, THE SIERRA LEONE DIAMONDS, 1965 Le2.75.

2. SIERRA LEONE GEOGRAPHICAL Gleave ed JOURNAL, M.B. , annually at I e2.50 (overseas! per copy.

3. THE SIERRA LEONE BULLETIN OF RELIGION, P. E. S. Thompson ed., annually at Lei.50 (overseas) per copy.

4. SIERRA LEONE STUDIES, J. E. Peterson, ed., half yearly at Lei.50 (overseas) per copy. 5. SIERRA LEONE GEOGRAPHICAL ASSOCIATION Occasional Paper No. 2. A selection ol papers from Vols. 1-9 of the Bulletin of the Association at 90 cents per copv

6. G D. Field, BIRDS OF THE FREETOWN AREA. LcO 75 BIkDs OF THE FREE I OWN PENINSULA shortly to be published 7. A. Ijagbemi, G3ANKA OF Y CM shortly to be published

8. J. S. T. Thompson, SIERRA LEONE S t AST— Books, Periodicals, Pamphlets and Microfilms ir. ills F. B. C. Library LeJ./5

«» ir, i- I

THE BUILDING, FOURAH BAY COLLECE

Michael Maurice Printing Works 0300 1.74