The purpose of this work is to provide an overview of the topic under study. In doing this we shall of course discuss a series of texts, but it is no part of our intention here to place any particular emphasis on a critique of methodological approaches, of textual quality, or even of the authors' background and training. We shall address ourselves, instead, to what at the present juncture seems to us a set of more important considerations, namely : a delineation of the general environment of the enterprise of research in the five Portuguese-speaking African countries; the identification and highlighting of the principal obstacles confronting it, and a description of advances made in the teeth of these obstacles.