Correspondents' Correspondence

...Traveling from coast to coast during my visit, I somehow expected Japan's industrial success and global political concerns to be the subjects of a steady stream of newspaper articles in the cities and towns along the way...

...manufacturers' failures...

...Sea and air transport are at present the most common means of moving people and goods from one part of Africa to another, since the road system-developed to suit the needs of colonial planners-is inadequate for commerce among independent states...

...All this could change during the current decade...

...And apocalyptic as 1 realize it will sound, I found myself wondering how long it will be before this country experiences a violent reaction as it emerges from the aftermath of Vietnam, the oil shocks and the spirit of conservatism now engulfing the country...

...The new expressway, financed from several sources including the Arab oil-exporting states, has cost $150,000 per kilometer...

...It is hoped that the new method will lead to an improvement of overland transport and communications in dry regions all over the world...

...In addition, they would enable groups of African states to pool their raw materials, technology, capital, and market potential for ambitious cooperative economic schemes that no one country could manage itself...

...But independent Africa has a special need for efficient, inexpensive inland routes...

...To be sure, the Japanese drive to produce and export more and better of everything is motivated by an element of pleasure in outdoing their erstwhile conquerors...

...Despite some crabbing about unemployment, high prices and crime in the streets, Americans apparently continue to live in a dreamland of suburban luxury and Monday night football, confident there will always be enough gas and money for food and rent even after jobs vanish...

...Four more major roads are being planned: The Mombassa-Lagos Trans-Africa Highway, the Lagos-Nouakchott Trans-West African Highway, the Cairo-Gaborone Trans-East African Highway and the Dakar-Ndja-mena Trans-Sahelian Highway...

...The progress of the Trans-Sahara Highway has already allowed the Algerian government to draw up comprehensive development plans for the five "Willaya" regions of the deep south Quargla, Laghouat, Bechar, Adrar, and Tamanrasset-to be financed under a special investment program.The plans call for a string of agricultural and mining settlements along the highway, plus many urgently needed measures to improve agricultural productivity, housing, and public health facilities...

...But scientists cooperating in a global UN-sponsored program have recently developed a special low-moisture technique which, using natural, lateric gravels and up to 12 times less water, meets compaction and stability standards...

...and increase employment not only in construction but in ancillary services as well...

...Food supplies will be easily trucked down to supplement Sahelian diets...

...open up areas of agricultural and mineral potential...

...The new technique!' says the UNDP, "also makes it possible to save on the amount of energy required for pumping, handling, sprinkling and mixing operations...

...Managers and workers alike here boast of their productivity in comparison to America's...

...Africa's 13 landlocked states currently spend up to 25 per cent of their trade revenues on the overland transport of the products they export...

...The projected 3,500-kilometer Trans-Sahara Highway is intended to link the North African ports of the Mediterranean with the West African ports of the Gulf of Guinea...

...Returning to Japan, one is struck all the more by the resulting decline not merely of the dollar's prestige but of the U.S...

...The experience gained from building the Trans-Sahara Highway-today occupying some 20,000 young Algerians, most of them Army recruits to hold down costs-is expected to benefit the entire African system...

...Specifically, if similar undertakings elsewhere in the Third World are any guide, the new highways should: generate the building of local feeder roads...

...Given a liberalization of border policies, the new arteries would integrate the continent for the first time and "change the entire face of African trade!' according to a spokesman for the United Nations Development Program (UNDP...

...Above all, you are too quick to blame your problems on foreign competition...

...Its effects on trade, agriculture and industry will be formidable...

...It is an unavoidable question for an American visitor who sees the nation anxiously clutching at any excuse to put off confronting its very real social challenges at home and its steadily diminishing respect abroad...

...You are too eagerly pursuing short-term profits at the expense of long-range planning...

...To the Japanese, the U.S...

...It has been estimated that traditional construction costs may be reduced by as much as 20 per cent in arid regions...

...link the continent's biggest markets...

...Indeed, the long-term consequences of the projected network-cultural and political no less than economicare as yet beyond comprehension...

...Intra-African trade was restricted by the boundary agreements of the European powers, which had a vested interest in discouraging contact among their respective overseas possessions...

...Thomas Land Visiting Home Tokyo-To a foreign correspondent visiting home last month after a year in Asia and Europe, it seemed that Americans preferred to ignore the world's most momentous problems and bury their heads in the sands of trivia...

...The signs of pride are clear enough in the tone of managers and government bureaucrats as they offer their explanations for the U.S...

...Not that Lennon's death was an insignificant tragedy, or that the salaries of baseball players are not a matter at least of curiosity...

...Many countries export a restricted number of primary commodities in exchange for a wide range of foodstuffs and manufactured-items and the lower the freight costs, the greater the profit margins to fund further development...

...But these observations on America's troubles are not smug...

...New, large-scale experiments involving the technique are now planned in Algeria, as well as in Mali, Egypt, Kenya, Niger and many other countries...

...Donald Kirk...

...Yet except for such major dailies as the New York Times or the Washington Post or the Los Angeles Times, this proved not to be the case at all...

...Thus coastal cities replaced ancient trading centers as the main points of commerce...

...The mourning for John Lennon eclipsed the threatened Soviet invasion of Poland on front pages for a week, and how many millions Dave Winfield would grab from which New York baseball team sold more newspapers than the dizzying fall of the dollar and the stock market...

...In their own ways, though, they both represent our escapism: We can tune out fears for Poland's future and anxieties over our economic woes while listening to still more hours of Beatles music and contemplating the impact of winter deals on next season's baseball standings...

...These, together with several minor projects, are expected to provide adequate vehicular access between any two African countries...

...And the ports are so congested that incoming food supplies often spoil while waiting to be unloaded, resulting in losses of income and often in acute human suffering...

...political impact abroad as well...

...The Algerian government is now building a modern, all-weather highway along that old trail...

...The Japanese are nervous that a waning America makes for an expansion of Soviet power, acutely evident in the troops that menace the large northern island of Hokkaido from their base on a small archipelago captured by the USSR in the last week of World War II...

...Advancing southwards through inhospitable terrain, the road already is completed to Tamanrasset, the administrative capital of Algeria's Saharan provinces, and may well cross the Niger frontier in a year...

...You Americans, they tell me, have lost your pioneering, innovative spirit...

...The Trans-Sahara Highway is only part of the planned Trans-Africa Highway System that will eventually criss-cross the continent from Botswana to Tunisia and from Kenya to Senegal...

...Correspondents' Correspondence BRIEF TAKEOUTS OF MORE THAN PERSONAL INTEREST FROM LETTERS AND OTHER COMMUNICATIONS RECEIVED BY THE EDITORS Roads to Progress Geneva-In the 14th century, when West Africa boasted great centers of civilization, some 12,000 camels a year bearing silk, salt and artifacts followed a single caravan route across the desert...

...One often hears South Korea or Haiti or the Philippines' being described as "another Iran!' meaning a potential scene of political upheaval...

...Livestock and other produce from sub-Saharan Africa will be moved to markets in North Africa and Europe far more quickly and at less cost than at present...

...Road construction, for example, usually requires up to 300 cubic meters of water per kilometer, a significant expense in dry locales where water must be transported over long distances...

...Speaking of the Trans-Saharan Highway alone, one UNDP observer here predicts that "its completion is likely to have a significant development impact on both North and West Africa...

...Trade figures persist in proving their point...

...appears on the brink, and they're not quite sure whether to feel the deepest concern or indulge in a tinge of vengeful satisfaction...

...They also envision a broad range of profitable industrial enterprises, such as the export of concentrated uranium oxide by 1985...