Friendship, descent and alliance are basic forms of relatedness that have received unequal attention in social anthropology. Offering new insights into the ways in which friendship is conceptualized and realized in various sub-Saharan African settings, the contributions to this volume depart from the recent tendency to study friendship in isolation from kinship. In drawing attention to the complexity of the interactions between these two kinds of social relationships, the book suggests that analyses of friendship in Western societies would also benefit from research that explores more systematically friendship in conjunction with kinship.

Modernist approaches to socioeconomic development have been used by governmental and non-governmental institutions to address general issues of poverty and underdevelopment in Guinea and most African countries since the 1960s. Such approaches guided a variety of development programs, particularly to improve agricultural, education, and health (Nnadozie, 2003). However, increased discrepancies between expected and observed outcomes of such approaches increased objections among academics and development practitioners who overtime found the need for and favored more participatory approaches to social change (Chambers 1995, 2002; Cernea 1985; White et al., 1994; Servaes et al.,1996; and Jacobson, 2004). This study argues that the success of such participatory initiatives is strongly dependent of the level of genuine participation of the beneficiaries. The study identified, examined, and measured indicators of beneficiaries' genuine participation in social change programs. The results indicated significant differences between beneficiaries and benefactors in their overall opinions and in their profiles on the issue of beneficiaries' participation in social change programs in Guinea.