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Abstract This paper looks at the origins of ideas about community development as they emerged during Britain's administration of its African colonies from the 1920s to the 1950s. Significant influences on development policy and practice include changing ideas about state intervention within the British government, international scrutiny from international organizations, US interest in Africa, ideas and activities of missionary societies, technological developments, great leaps forward by key individuals, examples of state‐sponsored mass education schemes in Russia, colonial disturbances, and cataclysmic events such as the Great Depression, the rise of Hitler, and pre‐eminently, the Second World War itself. The evolution of community development ideas in Colonial Office practice will chiefly be illustrated through instructional films. Those which illustrate the argument are a striking example of community development in action because they are a visual medium in a visual age; they were seen as having a pivotal role in mass education schemes; they illustrate through their topics and scenarios what were seen as the hot development issues of the day; they capture the flavour of the period; and because they are a concrete illustration of the continuity of community development schemes in Africa in the colonial and post‐colonial eras.

Major factors inhibiting the production of feature films in black Africa have been identified as: lack of foreign exchange; foreign control of distribution; national markets too small to support a domestic film industry on commercial lines among other things. The paper looks at these factors in operation in Tanzania, the scene in colonial times of several pioneering experiments in film production for African audiences. (DÜI-Sen)

Die Autorin kommt zu dem Ergebnis, daß der Versuch der Regierung, Unterstützung für Großbritanniens Kampf gegen Deutschland zu bekommen, zu einer Mobilisierung der afrikanischen Öffentlichkeit führte, die sich in zunehmender Kritik an der Kolonialherrschaft äußerte. (DÜI-Spe)