Following visits to three less developed countries (LDCs) in Sub‐Saharan Africa (Tanzania, Kenya and Zimbabwe) to study public sector personnel systems, the author offers a review of personnel practice in Civil Service and parastatal organizations. In the main, despite a recognition that personnel issues were crucial to organizational success and thereby, ultimately, to economic development, the personnel function was found to be a largely reactive administrative operation, often combined with non‐personnel ‘housekeeping’ roles and lacking a strategic role within the organization. Reasons for this restricted role are suggested and include a lack of alternative models of best personnel practice, the historical legacy of colonial administration, and the continuing need for administrative controls in the face of favouritism and corruption. Prospects for reform are considered in the light of current conditions and the view is advanced that changes in the personnel practices and policy are most desirable and urgent in the parastatal sector, and that a reformed parastatal sector might serve as a model for selective improvements to personnel management in the Civil Service.

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The measurement of the frequency responses of machine tool structures is necessary because of the association between frequency response and chatter with consequent limitation of productivity. Various alternative techniques have been suggested. The paper describes comparative measurements of the frequency response of two systems using several techniques. The techniques examined were (1) Sinuoidal excitation with digital analysis, frequency incremented manually. (2) Slowly swept sinusoidal excitation with analogue analysis. (Traditional method). (3) Fast swept sinusoidal excitation with digital analysis. (4) Impulse excitation with digital analysis. (5) Band-limited random excitation with digital analysis. The results show the fast swept sinusoidal and impulse methods to be the most satisfactory.

Electrical and electronic measuring instruments are used today in all branches of science and engineering. There is a considerable fund of knowledge which is fundamental to all measuring instruments and which will still be valid when today's instruments have been superseded. This one year M.Sc. course aims to teach these fundamentals illustrated by many examples of sensors and instruments used for widely different purposes.

This article reports on an attempt by DfID to support wider political reform in Tanzania by supporting a pilot programme of training for locally elected councillors in an urban local authority, Dodoma. As well as hoping to deliver specific skills development for these councillors, it was also intended to influence attitudes in an emergent multiparty democracy and develop a political culture appropriate to liberal democracy rather than one‐party rule. The programme was designed locally with the assistance of consultancy support from IDPM, University of Manchester. The design of the programme was derived from an analysis of the changing role of councillors in Tanzania. The evaluation of the programme revealed a positive impact at both the learning and ‘job impact’ levels, although some of the results may have to be treated with caution. The basic curriculum developed in this pilot programme is believed to be appropriate for replication on a national basis, but there remain a number of logistical, financial and political issues that need to be resolved before ‘upscaling’ to a national level can be attempted with confidence. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.