Africa is today at mid-course, in transition from the Africa of yesterday to the Africa of tomorrow. It is no less important that we know whence we came. An awareness of our past is essential to the establishment of our personality and our identity as Africans.

This world was not created piecemeal. Africa was born no later and no earlier than any other geographical area on this globe. Africans, no more and no less than other men, possess all human attributes, talents and deficiencies, virtues and faults. Thousands of years ago, incomparable civilizations flourished in Africa.  Africans were politically free and economically independent. Their social patterns were their own and their cultures truly indigenous.

The obscurity which enshrouds the centuries which elapsed between those earliest days and the rediscovery of Africa are being gradually dispersed. What is certain is that during those long years Africans were born, lived and died. Men on other parts of this earth occupied themselves with their own concerns and, in their conceit, proclaimed that the world began and ended at their horizons. All unknown to them, Africa developed in its own pattern, growing in its own life and is finally re-emerging into the world's consciousness.

In this issue, authors weave a rich tapestry of Africa’s transition challenges as it blends the past in its construction of the future.

The African Executive identifies with Indonesia in this moment of grief generated by the recent earthquake and hopes that soon, entrepreneurial ventures shall shield man from such catastrophes.