The economic condition of workers in the fast-growing urban centres of African countries is of concern to scholars and policymakers interested in developing programmes to alleviate the persistent poverty. However, there is a dearth of micro-level research on the economic activities of the numerous occupations to be found in these settings. This information would provide a more realistic basis for policies and the assessment of competing theoretical models of social change (Moser, 1980). The aim of the present paper therefore is to provide baseline data on the economic situation of one group of workers within the urban economy—vendors of street foods. Street foods are defined as edibles which have been prepared outside the consuming household and are ready for consumption at point of purchase; however, the buyer may take them elsewhere. The study does not include those ready-to-eat foods prepared within the confines of modern establishments with four walls. Modern restaurants and the cafeteria sections of hospitals, prisons, colleges and universities were therefore excluded. The small-scale businesses under study are part of what is known as the informal sector. The study was conducted in Ile-Ife, a university town in Oyo State (Yorubaland). Among the Yoruba, women became active in small-scale trade following changes in the patterns of international trade and in farming since the fifteenth century. This process was also facilitated by colonial penetration into the socioeconomic fabric of the society (Afonja, 1981). Within the trading business the marketing of street foods was dominated by women (Bascom, 1951; Marshall, 1964; Fadipe, 1970). Central to the concerns of this paper therefore are the levels of income generated by these women, the problems associated with the enterprise and possible recommendations on how to improve the situation of food vendors in the urban economy.

Recent literature on Third World households suggests that the household is a critical unit of analysis in decision-making and economic organisation for development (Smith, Wallerstein and Evers, 1984; Netting, Wilk and Arnould, 1984). Increasingly, this literature is addressing intra-household behaviour, the ways in which households relate to other institutions and the degree to which they are autonomous or embedded in more comprehensive social structures (Guyer and Peters, 1984; Folbre, 1985; Moock, 1986). Indeed, the household focus requires not only close examination of the household's internal dynamics, but also its external context. That context includes the physical setting, international as well as national political and economic structures, and the local political economic and social systems.

This article is an ethnographic account of the economic importance of information in a particular society, that of the Northern Beja of Red Sea Province, Sudan, and of one social institution, the greetings ritual, vital in the transmission of information. As such it is intended as a contribution to the anthropology of information and to economic anthropology, but also to the study of greetings rituals and ceremonies. It suggests that it may in many cases be useful to approach the study of greetings from the perspective of their connection with information.

This article examines the major visual and performing arts of one society and explores what changes have occurred to them over roughly one hundred years as a consequence of external religious and ethnic forces. This is a holistic, processual view of a people's arts in a particular region, providing a model to balance the excellently detailed studies of specific art forms which now exist for Africa. Using a holistic view we will raise certain issues concerning changes in African art. One of the most significant is the interrelationship of ethnicity and religion. Scholars (Bravmann, 1974, 1983; Prussin, 1986) have written extensively on the influence of Islam on African art, but have not seriously raised the question of the ethnic factor associated with Islam, which is equally important. In the case of Islam and its carriers there is a delicate intermixing of religion and ethnicity which is at issue and needs exploration. Further, the holistic approach employed here brings to the fore the reasons behind the wide range of responses to change of the various art forms of a people. Why do some syncretise, some disappear and others remain unchanged? Again, the holistic view allows us to ask to what extent the arts of a people merely reflect forces of change, or do they play roles in leading and directing it? The approach requires considerable background history, which is presented below.