Introduction

Sub-Saharan Africa has experienced profound social and economic changes during the course of the twentieth century. These changes have involved brutality, disruption and suffering for millions of Africans and, as is well known, many millions of Africans continue to starve, remain illiterate and are subject to violence and cruel forms of exploitation. The quality of life of the mass of the population in the 1980s must be regarded as appallingly unsatisfactory by any criteria.