ABSTRACT
The Tali ‘Bank’ or ‘Meeting’ was started in 1951 by two returned migrants who for this purpose had adapted the idea of a reciprocal lending or contribution club which they had experienced in the south. The aim of the Meeting was to collect and save money, the money saved being used to provide loans on interest; all the money saved, together with proportionate interest earned, was returned to the original contributors at the end of the year, before Christmas. Clan Unions were first formed by some Lower Banyang village groups in the late 1940s, the initial idea apparently being derived from the Mamfe Town Union which was set up at this time by S. A. George, a Manyang migrant who had spent many years working in Lagos and who on his return to Mamfe constituted this association on the model of the tribal unions he had observed there.
