When I wrote Introduction to the flowering plants of West Africa (1965), I was particularly aware of the needs of post-O level GCE students and their teachers, whether in schools or in the first year of some form of higher education or further training. In the intervening twenty years or so, not only has a concentrated research effort in West Africa vastly increased our knowledge of West African plants, but uses for, and attitudes to, this natural resource have changed. There have been two periods of drought and famine south of the Sahara, their severity directly and mainly attributable to economic policies, whether wrong in themselves, wrongly applied or simply non-existent.

A knowledge of species biology is not merely the basis for the academic study of a discipline such as taxonomy, but is the essential foundation for decision-making in rural economics in both its aspects, development and conservation. Famines will recur while population pressure, deforestation and traditional farming starved of investment continue. Yet India is self-supporting in food production and has no foreign debt. The difference between the two subcontinents is striking, and the expertise of a wide range of specialists is going to be needed if the lot of millions of people south of the Sahara is to be ameliorated.