Melte Monstead and Parveen Walji, A Demo~raphic Analysis of East
 Mrica: A Sociolo~cal     Interpretation.  The Scandinavian Institute of
 Mrican Studies, Uppsala,      1978. pp. 211.
     The authors have written a serviceable introductory monograph on
 the demography of East Africa. It covers an extensive field ranging
 from a survey of the historical trends of world population and demog-
 raphic theories to an analysis and interpretation of specific demogra-
 phic variables related to the population of East Africa. Lists of supple-
 mentary readings are provided at the end of each chapter and definitions
 of basic concepts are appended in the last three pages of the book.
     The aim of the authors effort was to produce a textbook in demogra-
 phy which ties the analysis of demographic data to a sociological frame-
work. But what they achieve is a brief survey of a wide number of
topics without providing the depth of analysis one would expect in a
textbook. The chapter on demographic theories is particularly flimsy.
The more interesting sections of the book dealing with the structure and
 characteristics of the population of East Africa provide adequate exa-
 mples from rec.ent censuses in the region but the authors seem to rely
 rather heavily on two earlier books, one on the analysis of the 1967
 census in Tanzania and the other on a comparative study of the chara-
 cteristics of the populations of Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda. Thus in
terms of new information,     the book adds little to these earlier texts.
     However this is the first book on the demography of East Africa
which treats the subject systematically and raises problems of defini-
tion and of the use of conventional criteria   developed in the West to
classify different aspects of an African population. The authors select
simple demographic techniques and illustrate      how they may be used to
study given characteristics    of the population. There is an attempt
throughout to relate demographic factors to development problems in
East Africa. However the impact of the colonial experiences in r:ast
Mrica and subsequent differences in development strategies        adopted
since independence by the countries in the region could have been
given more weight in the discussion of population policies and past as
well as future population trends in the regio~.
    On the whole the book offers a useful framework for the study of
the demography of East Africa and would be a handy introductory text
for a course on the demography of the region.
                                                  W. MLAY
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