EDITORIAL 
Wth
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Journal 
THE arriva 
of Social Development 
l of a new editor 
i
, change 
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s 
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are bein 
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make the journal easier and more pleasant to read. They include changes to 
make the house style conform more closely to the Harvard or author-date 
style used for social science publications. Spelling is in the Oxford house 
style. Contributors are being asked to communicate with the editor by Email 
where possible and to submit their MSS in electronic form. We are using 
a PC format as is common in most parts of the English-speaking world. AH 
these changes are designed to make the journal more professional and to 
speed up the process of refereeing, proofreading and editing. 
Some of the changes that will be taking place are designed to take 
advantage of the arrival of the Internet to our continent. The point of an 
academic journal is to make research findings available to as wide an audience 
as possible. This editor believes that our primary audience consists of fellow 
Africans working in situations that are recognizably similar to each other in 
significant ways - one of which, of course, is our common legacy in recent 
history of colonialism and post colonialism. African scholars urgently need to 
find quick and easy ways of communication. For too long we have been cut 
off from each other by language barriers and poor postal services - to say 
nothing of the censorship and self-censorship that has made it difficult to 
share information and insights, even on an academic level. For too long has 
communication been limited by the situation in which African scholars find 
themselves, ranging from poor working and living conditions, inadequate 
libraries, teaching loads and demoralized students to a shortage of books 
and, in many countries, war, famine, disease and poverty. The conditions that 
keep people in poverty in Africa take their toll on scholars and intellectuals 
as well. Now at last a tool is available for making it possible for us to address 
fellow Africans and their concerns. By making our work relevant to ourselves 
we will make it relevant to those who live outside our continent. 
Journals such as this one provide an ideal means of communication for scholars 
and we do not intend to abandon paper and the haphazard process of posting 
our journal to other countries. All the same we recognize the astonishing 
JOURNAL OF SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT IN AFRICA VOL 15 NO. 2 JULY 2000
usefulness of the Internet. It is cheap, (given the original technology), quick 
and easy to use. We are therefore exploring ways of making the journal 
available on the Internet, while acknowledging that Africa is under-equipped 
in all means of mass communication. 
A recent conference noted, for instance, that Africans have access to only 
two per cent of the world's telephone and, on average, one public telephone 
is available to 15 000 African users. The world average is one telephone to 
600 users. Community radio networks are being installed but they are not 
available in all parts of Africa, especially where governments practice rigid 
control of the mass media. About 1.5 million Africans have access to the 
Internet. One million of these live in South Africa. This means that there is 
one Internet user for 1400 people on our continent, compared with a world 
average of one in 35 people and, in the West, one in three. 
On the positive side, many African tertiary institutions are creating their 
own web sites and providing E-mail links for their faculty members. Three 
years ago only 12 countries in Africa had full Internet access. Now it is 
available in every capital city in Africa and several virtual universities have 
been established. As a result the primary target audience of this journal now 
has much greater access to the type of research we publish than it had three 
years ago. 
Barriers, of course, remain. Internet provision is patchy. The new 
technology looks intimidating and too many of us are still prisoners of our 
own inhibitions - let alone our lack of typing skills. Yet this will change. A 
combination of electronic communication and traditional methods of 
publication will greatly enhance the spread and reputation of scholarship in 
Africa and may even help to speed up social development and the alleviation 
or elimination of poverty that is the main focus of this publication. 
Carole Pearce 
Editor 
JOURNAL OF SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT IN AFRICA VOL 15 No. 2 JULY 2000