The Yoruba of Southwestern Nigeria have been known as an ‘urban people’ because of their unique settlement pattern. They have traditionally lived in large, dense, permanent settlements, some of which had populations more than 50, 000 in pre-colonial period. These traditional towns (ilu) were independent political units comparable to Greek city-states. The towns were enclosed by a high wall and ditch, with the palace of a sacred ruler at the center. Yoruba kingdoms such as Ife, Oyo, Ijesha, Ijebu, Ondo were the confederation of these towns. The aim of this paper is to reconsider the political organization of this unique urban settlements, referring to the data of Ayedun-Ekiti, a small town where the present author has conducted a research from April 1982 to January 1983, and comparing it with the society of the Igbo in Eastern Nigeria.
Ayedun-Ekiti is located at the northeastern corner of Ekitiland. The town has a segmentary structure composed of wards (ona), quarters (ogbon), and patrilineal kin groups (ebi) (see Figure 1). The chieftaincy system and age-grades constitute the main political organizations of the town. The chiefs have councils at each level of quarters and wards, ascending to the ‘town council’ (ijo agba ilu). The chiefs are ranked in accordance with the rank of respective segment which they represent, and the senior chief of the lower level (e.g. quarter) becomes the head of the upper level (e.g. ward). In this way the Alaaye, the head of the whole town, is at the same time the head of Olootu ward and Irutu quarter. One notable feature of the Alaaye is that he is not a sole authority above the chiefs as is often the case with Yoruba kings, but one among the chiefs. This could be accounted for by the historical process of town formation. The data on religious organization, land holding, and oral tradition suggest the formation of Ayedun as follows. Originally present quarters had been independent villages scattered around the present site. These villages moved spontaniously to the present site in need of defence under the pressure of war, forming federative organization, and the Alaaye whose group was the largest became the head of the whole groups probably without any quarrel. The agee-grade is deviled into three sets, i. e. Amuyeye, Boronje, and Elegbe. The former two are of boys and youths whose tasks are to do communal work, to keep the order of the community, and to be soldiers in case of war, under the control of the third grade whose members are titled men and merge into the chieftaincy system as lower chiefs.
The society of the Yoruba and that of the Igbo have often been regarded as having quite opposite characteristics such as the residence pattern (large urban settlement/dispersed small hamlets) and political system (centralized government/egalitarian unilineal segmentary system). But the comparison of Ayedun and Igbo reveals much similarity as summarized below.
(i) The average size of village groups, which is the largest political unit among the Igbo, compares favorably to the wards of Ayedun which once was the federation of villages. Most of Ekiti towns are similar in size and structure to the wards of Ayedun, so that we can not say that the Igbo have not developed the large political organization comparable to that of Yoruba.
(ii) Constituent institutions of the political organization in both societies such as age-grade, cult association, title system and their functions are quite similar. (iii) Both societies have federative segmentary system, though it is based on the unilineal descent leaving the title system as the secondary institution in case of the Igbo, while it is based on chieftaincy system restricting the function of kin group at the lowest level of segments in case of Ayedun. But this contrast is not absolute. We can find village groups with unilineal segmentary organization like that of the Igbo in Kabba area, northe

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The aim of this paper is to shed light on an aspect of the differentiation and stratification of peasant cash crop producers in high potential areas of Kenya. Rapid expansion of cash crop production among peasants since the Swynerton Plan of 1954 had several important implications for the differentiation of peasantry. The study examines the impact of capital and/or state intervention on differentiation process. This concerns the struggle between peasants and capital/state over the conditions of production and the terms of exchange.
Three areas of Murang'a, Kericho and Mumias are selected for the cases of coffee, tea and sugarcane production. The organisational bodies of peasant cash crop production varied from cooperatives for coffee, para-statal body (KTDA) for tea to private company with the Government being the majority shareholder for sugarcane. The control of production and exchange included the supply of prescribed package of inputs on credit, the supervision of cultivation and the imposition of producer prices through monopsony. In Mumias outgrower scheme, the control culminated in the vertical integration of outgrower production where the minimum decision making was left to peasant producers. The reactions of peasant farmers to the control were manifested in a number of ways: the overt political actions for resistance to planting regulations and for the realization of a new plan; evasion of control by “illegal” or “private” planting and “black market” sales of fertilizers supplied on credit.
The diffusion of cash crop production under the control of capital/state and the overt and covert reaction of different strata of peasants in different ways contributed to the emergent three groups of peasant cash crop producers with different patterns of consumption and investment.
A small stratum of rich peasant producers with larger landholding had considerable incomes from cash crop production. But they were less dependent on a single cash crop because they had access to other sources of income from food and livestock production and often from trade or salaried employment. While they invested their surpluses in farm improvement, they also invest in non-farm business and secondary education so as to diversify their economic activities.
The middle group, within which the vast majority of peasant cash crop producers fell, received the cash crop income which was not sufficient to generate a sizeable surplus for investment. Most of their income was spent on such basic needs as food and clothes, and the rest, on school fees, consumer goods and improvement in housing. While cash crop income was the important source of cash for the middle group with food crop production for home consumption, it acted as a safeguard against their proletarianization. It allowed the peasant farmers to meet basic cash expenditure without having to dispose of the land or depending on off-farm wage labour. It is also significant that the uniform credit systems of inputs, technical assistance and marketing services enabled middle peasant to compete successfully with the upper stratum of rich peasants in cash crop production.
While the rapid expansion of cash crop production in high potential areas reached the smaller land owners, they were marginal cash crop producers who were obliged to supplement their income with casual wage labour. Growing cash crop on the smallest land holdings created such a pressure on subsistence food production that the farmers had to depend on the purchase of staple food.

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Kaposi's sarcoma (KS) in equatorial Africa, mainly in Kenya, and of AIDS were studied geopathologically and histopathologically. The results obtained in western Kenya during the period 1979-1983 were as follows: 1) KS accounts for 73 cases (2.80%) out of the total of 2, 607 maligant tumors of surgical specimens. 2) The high incidence of KS is found between the age of 50 to 59. 3) Male to female ratio is 7.5:1.0. 4) In adults, the most common site of the body of primary lesion is the foot, followed by the leg, the hand and the forearm. 5) In children, KS is predominantly primarily of lymphatic origin. 6) The high tribal incidence is found among the Luhya and the Luo who are living in Western and Nyanza provinces respectively. KS is classified epidemiologically and clinically into several categories: a) Endemic type in Africa, classical type in Europe and US, and epidemic type of AIDS, b) Cutaneous type, lymphatic type and visceral type, c) Acute or aggressive type and chronic or slightly benign type, d) Adult type and infantile type. KS was divided histologically into three types; hemangiomatous, fibrosarcomaoous and anaplastic types. KS of African endemic and US classic types were fibrosarcomaotus pattern predominant, while some of KS in AIDS were hemangiomatous.

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Various types of zoonoses are prevalent in every part of Africa from time to time. Millions of people living in this continent are at high risk from zoonotic infection, and almost all animals both domestic and wild are in danger of their health and life with such diseases. Consequently, socioeconomic development has been retarded by the outbreaks of zoonoses in many African countries.
Important factors affecting the spread of zoonoses, some clinical sign of major zoonoses due to bacterial and viral infection, and the prevention and control measures of zoonoses in Africa were briefly reviewed.

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