A Wager in West Africa
MCCORD, WILLIAM
THIRD WORLD REPORT-II A Wager in West Africa BY WILLIAM MCCORD This article is the second in an intermittent series that will compare the achievements of liberal and authoritarian Third World...
...Between 197080, the gross inflow of capital, largely French, rose markedly, from $77 million annually to $1,426 million...
...Per capita income has retrogressed at the rate of 0.3 per cent annually since 1960...
...They forbade white settlers, left tribal political structures relatively intact and built an extensive educational system that produced the best civil service on the Dark Continent...
...But in 1958 Sekou Toure made the first of many disastrous decisions: He severed all relations with France in pursuit of total self-reliance...
...In 1984, under military rule, Ghana's national debt has reached $3 billion, inflation has topped 100 per cent and the peasants are starving...
...He died there in 1972, after issuing final cabalistic statements about pan-Africanism...
...The economy has surged forward steadily, stimulated particularly by export agriculture...
...Five thousand of the best-educated Ghanaians fled abroad, and another 2,000 people spent time in concentration camps...
...The country did have a small African elite epitomized by Felix Houphouet-Boigny, its President, a physician of elegant taste who was the first African to serve metropolitan France at the ministerial level...
...His books include The Springtime of Freedom (1965), American Social Problems (1977) and The Psychopath and Milieu Therapy (1982...
...The British had governed "indirectly" during the colonial period...
...Liberal capitalism isnot African," hedeclared...
...Indeed, as the output of all goods tripled between 1965-80, agriculture was sharply diversified...
...Samir Amin, a neo-Marxist, has denounced the country's dependence on France, its emphasis on export trade, the supposed unevenness of development, and the profits taken out...
...At the beginning of the "great wager," Guinea too had glittering promise: It was once the richest nation in its corner of the world, its well-tended farmlands fed most of French Africa, its earth contained one third of the world's bauxite reserves, and its hills had major deposits of iron ore, uranium, diamonds, and gold...
...In any event, what seems evil to the Westerner may appear a system of functional reciprocity, entirely natural in the West African tradition, to the Ivorian or Ghanaian...
...Many observers believe his daring to leave the country recently for a six-month vacation throughout the world indicates that a stable, educated civil service has been, built up, capable of pursuing the gradualist, productive policies he has initiated...
...First, advances in export-oriented agriculture have been the life-blood of economic progress...
...A civilian government headed by K. A. Busia tried to rebuild the economic base between 1969-72 but, confronted with a world drop in cocoa prices, it failed...
...In endeavoring to change some traditional practices (for instance, in amending the law permitting polygamy) the PDCI government has moved pragmatically and humanely...
...The Council is but one mechanism for the expression of dissent...
...French capital, skills, techniques, markets, managers, and military power are f ar more prominent now than in colonial times...
...he asked...
...In the face of world-trade fluctuations coffee production increased threefold, yet other products assumed even greater importance...
...A gold bed imported by one of Nkrumah's cronies, "Crowbar" Edusi, merely epitomized the graft that enriched the politicians and stained the Civil Service...
...The government has encouraged investment by large landowners (30 per cent French) and peasants, promoted new crops and opened up fallow lands...
...It has avoided expenditures on heavy industry, defense and large-scale monuments to nationalistic prestige...
...In 1982, displeased with this man's ineptness, Rawlings personally seized power once again...
...In fact, the Franco-Ivorian relationship, symbolized by a statue to an ex-colonial governor in the main square of Abidjan, demonstrates that "dependency" is a two-way street...
...In this period Toure turned to Moscow for aid...
...For peasants, a special meal into day's Ghana is a broiled jungle rat...
...Despite his bitter opposition to the French system of draft labor, Houphouet-Boigny accepted leadership of the new nation with reluctance...
...Ivorians can be heard debating the future of their country after the death of the "Old Man...
...During an incipient coup in the 1960s, for example, some rebels planned to kill Houphouet-Boigny by putting needles into miniature effigies of him that they carried in suitcases...
...By 1978 the tragic rupture —a product of nationalistic pride and ideological blindness on both sides— was partially mended when Toure welcomed French President Valery Giscard d'Estaing back to Conakry...
...Twenty per cent of the people have sought refuge in neighboring Nigeria (which last year tried to ship them back) and in the Ivory Coast (now harboring 500,000 Ghanaians...
...In the years since independence, critical yardsticks of the general quality of life have shown important improvements, too: The death rate has fallen by 33 per cent, infant mortality has dropped by 40 per cent, and the crude birth rate has been reduced by 7 per cent...
...It had immense foreign exchange resources, large bauxite deposits, cocoa exports of $1 billion a year, and hydroelectric potential...
...Three factors stand out in explaining the Ivory Coast's success...
...Of equal importance, he has not found it necessary to follow Lenin's dictum that "Liberty is precious—so precious that it must be rationed...
...The lure of substantial profits notwithstanding, they distrusted Toure, a Lenin Peace Prize winner and a man with close links to the French Communist Party...
...To be sure, pursuing one variant of capitalism exposes the Ivory Coast to the dangers involved in depending on foreign favor, the risks of shifting world market conditions and all of the problems inherent in close dealings between a small, poor country and powerful outside interests...
...Believing Ghana should become an industrial power, he squandered huge sums on fruitless projects: A drydock in Tema that was never used cost $17 million...
...Akuffo, alternated in office until 1978...
...Disgruntled with the resulting austerity, General Ignatius Aehampong, a drunk who stole $ 100 million, and his chief of staff, F. W.K...
...Thus the experiences of the contrasting models of development have dramatic importance today not only for Africa but for all of those "Fourth World" areas remaining in the grip of poverty...
...and the previously arid North was cultivated, yielding sugar cane and cotton...
...But the state also contained approximately 100,000 Lebanese immigrants...
...Foreign capitalists must bribe the proper ministry for permission to construct a sugar refinery...
...Instead of executing opponents who planned a coup d'etat in the 1960s, Houphouet-Boigny met with them in jail and talked for hours about the future of the Ivory Coast...
...Second, Houphouet-Boigny consciously adopted a "gradualist" and capitalist policy, telling his people, "We must go slowly, my children, for we are in a hurry...
...The country has yet to recover...
...Between 1958-65 Nkrumah frittered away $481 million, transforming his foreign exchange surplus into a $1/billion national debt...
...In 1983 the Ivory Coast's President returned the compliment...
...Its discussions can result in the installation of a village well in some distant area, the resolution of a strike in Abidjan or the dismissal of a Cabinet minister who has dipped into the public purse too blatantly...
...Inhuman terms, too, the regions were somewhat similar...
...Unlike Ghana and Guinea, the Ivory Coast, besides feeding itself, nourishes the migrants from other hungry lands...
...Houphouet-Boigny carefully nurtured their skills, rather than taking the lead of other African nations and molesting or expelling them as hated aliens...
...Tribal systems of land tenure have been modified to provide clear titles needed for bank credits and foreign investment...
...None of this is to suggest that the Ivory Coast is an unblemished illustration of a liberal or social democracy: The rich Francophones in Abidjan participate much more fully in the political process than Moslem tribesmen in the North...
...Schooling is free, conducted in French and virtually devoid of ethnic, tribal or religious bias...
...Toure, who imposed his own iron rule, survived until last March 27...
...Are the French not the very life and wire of most of its industries...
...Nonetheless, in their initial days of liberation the three equatorial countries had several salient features in common: They shared a similar geography and climate...
...A bare 12 per cent of its previously verdant farmland is cultivated...
...Bribery and favoritism stretch to the highest level, affecting all activities...
...Like most of the Francophone African elite, he originally felt that the Ivory Coast was not ready for independence when it was thrust upon the territory in 1960...
...The arrangement might have led to the establishment of indigenous aluminum factories, but instead the ore is shipped to the USSR for processing...
...The lack of responsible opposition and accountability permitted unbridled nationalistic, prestige spending...
...Their diverse tribes (whose territories overlapped the three national boundaries) were united only by the leadership of a single charismatic figure...
...The Soviets also contracted to mine 90 per cent of Guinea's bauxite...
...In addition, reasonable marketing policies and wise land use have aided production...
...The presence of a contingent of French troops, invited by Houphouet-Boigny, has allowed the government to expend large amounts on education and virtually nothing on external security (even when Nkrumah threatened invasion...
...Crises—such as a university strike in 1977, when Houphouet-Boigny spent three days listening to student grievances—end in dialogue and compromise, rather than bloodshed...
...Instead, it has concentrated its energies on building an infrastructure of roads, electricity, communications, and dredged harbors that contribute directly to the expansion of the agricultural sector...
...Courts function independently...
...In handling plots based on witchcraft, the riots of university students or the disaffection of Army officers over the last 30 years, Houphouet-Boigny has consistently relied on reason, discussion and compromise rather than force as a means of achieving consensus...
...Health services and mass literacy could be even further improved...
...In return, Russia extracted fishing rights, so that now the bulk of the fish consumed in Ghana is sold by the USSR yet comes from Guinean waters...
...French concerns are exploiting offshore oil reserves first discovered in 1977...
...Its forests and deserts discouraged exploration, and its treacherous harbors appeared to prohibit an export trade...
...But it has not brutally repressed dissent, tried to gain total control over the people, banned elections, dismantled the courts, or killed its opponents...
...The people subsisted on about one third the income in the neighboring nations...
...Of course, like many newly formed nations, the Ivory Coast has suffered from ethnic tensions, generational conflict, religious and tribal dissensions, and battles between immigrants and native workers...
...Palm-oil production rose seven times, making the Ivory Coast the largest producer anywhere...
...The French presence, so strikingly different from the situation in Guinea, invites bitter charges that the Ivory Coast has surrendered to neocolonialism...
...All were released, and the chief conspirator, Jean-Baptiste Mockey, has since become a friend of the President and served as minister of health, minister of agriculture and ambassador to Israel...
...Favored officers, in contrast, import Mercedes-Benzes at a cost of $110,000 each for their personal use...
...Granted the dangers inherent in dependence on a former imperialist master, France's having major economic and human stakes in the country makes French capitalists and the Paris government tread lightly in the Ivory Coast...
...They emerged from colonialism in the same era...
...Nkrumah, however, calling himself "The Redeemer," used his great popularity to have himself elected President for life in 1962...
...One could go so far as to argue that it may serve useful functions for an entrepreneur eager to cut through red tape or a newcomer to the city seeking favors from the tribal cousins...
...even taxi drivers must pay a price for their permit...
...The country's mineral resources, ports and agriculture hardly equaled Guinea's or Ghana's either...
...From 1960 on, Ghana's economy has actually shrunk at an annual rate of 1 per cent, its once abundant food supply has dwindled by more than that and the price of staples has increased 25-fold...
...A scanty agriculture depended on the volatile fortunes of one crop, coffee...
...This new wealth has trickled down to the peasantry: Per capita income jumped from $70 annually in 1960 to $1,150 in 1980—the highest on the continent except for South Africa...
...At the time, many Westerners were convinced that Nkrumah and Toure would be the winners...
...After the coup, those who were left proved incapable of reviving a free government or curing the economy...
...In July 1982, Toure asked in Washington for American private enterprise to help exploit Guinea's "fabulous economic potential...
...To this de Gaulle said, "Then all you have to do is vote 'No.' I pledge myself that nobody will stand in the way of your independence...
...Predicting eventual disaster for the "neocolonialism" capitalist and gradualist path already chosen by the Ivory Coast, which would gain its freedom in 1960, Nkrumah confidently asserted that his socialist policies would transform Ghana into an abundant, free society within two decades...
...Houphouet-Boigny scoffed at the conceit...
...He sought agricultural expertise from the American Midwest and welcomed French capital and advice...
...between 1970-80, it expanded at a 6.7 per cent pace...
...But back when the "great wager" was made the Ivory Coast seemed an unlikely model of African development...
...Although still dictatorial and repressive, Toure was eager to rejoin the Western economic network after the collapse of his economy became clear in 1978...
...The Ivory Coast was, after all, the poorest, least educated of the three nations...
...He instituted a police state, crushed dissenters, and set himself up as the leader of Pan-Africanism...
...During the preceding two decades, Toure had devoted his attention to avoiding assassination attempts, building an army equipped with Czech weapons and instituting a reign of terror and constant indoctrination...
...What he received amounted to the most blatant form of "neocolon-ial exploitation...
...Eventual "Ivorization" of the economy has been promised, yet except for the very highest levels in government (and the lower ranks of the peasantry), the French are still dominant...
...Nkru-mah purchased a $600,000 yacht, remodeled Christianborg Palace (a former slave depot) as his personal home at a cost of $6 million, spent $8 million for a State House, $9 million for a superhighway that went nowhere, $16 million on a Hall of African Unity, and $20 million for a fleet of Russian jets carrying an average of two persons per flight...
...There are no political prisoners or political executions in the Ivory Coast, and no one is forced into exile for political or religious reasons...
...it had the weakest agricultural advantages and, relatively speaking, meager mineral resources...
...civil servants buy their jobs from superiors...
...Most important, Houphouet-Boigny has preserved all of those mediating institutions—courts, churches, tribal councils, unions of immigrant workers, etc.—that protect individuals from the untrammeled exercise of state power...
...THIRD WORLD REPORT-II A Wager in West Africa BY WILLIAM MCCORD This article is the second in an intermittent series that will compare the achievements of liberal and authoritarian Third World governments...
...Adult literacy has doubled since 1960...
...In 1957, ebullient with independence, Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana challenged Felix Houphouet-Boig-ny of the Ivory Coast to a "great wager...
...Third, Houphouet-Boigny has increased his country's dependence on France...
...But even in the treacherous trade currents of the 1980s, the gamble has paid off...
...It includes representatives from the elected National Assembly, labor leaders, spokesmen for tribes, feminist leaders, heads of religious communities, and even representatives of immigrants from Guinea and Ghana...
...Domestic food consumption increased at the same time that foreign shipments, protected by membership in the French Community, moved ahead...
...As the bodies of opponents swung in the wind over Conakry's bridges, the life expectancy of Guinea's inhabitants declined to 41 years, its people starved, and only 10 per cent of the population learned how to read and write...
...As the first African nation to achieve independence, Ghana, well-endowed by nature and boasting the most educated populace, seemed the one likely to come out on top...
...His policies—economic waste combined with an intrusion of dogmatism and terror into universities, courts, unions, and the bureaucracy—had decimated Ghana's elite...
...he spoke of Toure as "my close friend" and cited the Guinean's conversion as proof of the validity of the gradualist approach toward African economic and political development...
...A party-owned newspaper spreads its coated version of the truth, and, as in the days of America's political machines, wise Ivorians consult their local ward heelers for favors...
...In 1966, while Nkrumah was visiting China to announce his solutions to the Vietnam crisis, the Army overthrew him, the Civil Service notified Interpol that he was wanted for graft and the people tore down his statue in Accra...
...Per capita annual income, meanwhile, is $290—less than 80 cents a day...
...The greatest danger to its future stability and civility may arise from urban demagogues who have up to this point been more observers than participants in the race for greater wealth...
...sugar, cocoa, bananas, and pineapples all became leading exports...
...one Nigerian critic asked...
...In fact—as I reported in these pages ("Long Night in Ghana," NL, November 26, 1962)— Nkrumah's megalomania both destroyed liberal democracy in Ghana and resulted in desperate deprivation...
...It has sponsored price supports rather than price ceilings for food, resulting in a steady growth in farm output...
...Each of its primitive tribes—the Baoule (refugees from Ghana during the slavetrading epoch), the Senufo, Bete, Wobe, and Guere—spoke its own language and had its unique culture...
...Some 2 million Guineans (about 40 per cent of the population) have emigrated to seek their fortune elsewhere in Africa, particularly in Sierra Leone and the Ivory Coast...
...Toure advised his people to reject membership in the French Community, and in the only free plebiscite held in the nation, 98 per cent of the people voted to follow his lead...
...In the conventional sense of the word, as David Lamb has noted, he may not be a "revolutionary," but he has wrought fundamental changes in his country's structure and has led a revolution in a climate of open dialogue...
...If much of the prosperity is evident in Abidjan, a city of 900,000 dotted with skyscrapers, highways and busy docks, the countryside has not been neglected: Electricity, roads and running water have reached the most remote northern villages...
...The Ivorian 'miracle' is a sham...
...De Gaulle responded with vengeful pique, ordering French technicians, doctors and teachers to leave Guinea within one month of the referendum...
...Called irregularly, this ingenious invention exercises more real power than the civil administration or the PDCI...
...they were heavily dependent upon the export of single crops (cocoa in Ghana, bananas in Guinea and coffee in the Ivory Coast...
...The once miserable little nation has turned itself into the "African miracle," a magnet attracting millions of refugees from Guinea, Ghana and the starving Sahelian areas...
...The Parti Democratique des Cote d'lvoire (PDCI) has an effective monopoly on political offices at all levels...
...The Ivory Coast can maintain its affluent independence with more dignity and efficacy than a Guinea —and vastly more than a true dependency, such as Chad—precisely because it is no longer a mere beggar...
...The country has devoted an extremely high proportion of its national budget (20 per cent) to education...
...Students openly criticize the government...
...If I could have twice as many Frenchmen as we have to help us build the Ivory Coast," he has said, "I would take them...
...Where money or other favors do not succeed in getting lenient, genial but rather cynical bureaucrats to do their jobs, dialogue apparently does...
...By 1984, its motley collection of peoples, abetted as well by expatriate Frenchmen, had transformed the Ivory Coast...
...Large proportions of their populations were illiterate and plagued with disease...
...Part of this corruption derives from the West African tradition of "dash": the custom, wholly honorable in atribal context, of paying for the Chief's services with gifts...
...They took with them machines, medical supplies, typewriters, and even pencils and ceremonial plates...
...The Council, in short, is a cross section of the society...
...Nonetheless, the issue of neocolonialism rankles many Ivorians, particularly well-educated youth who lose out to Frenchmen in the competition for jobs...
...Exports to France soared by 6 per cent annually between 1960-80...
...The first installment of his current series was "China's Hong Kong Experiment" (NL, August 6...
...Guinea must now import most of its food...
...Russia sent two snow-plows to the tropical area, a corps of teachers who spoke only Russian, 10,000 toilet seats, and six combine harvesters that could do little more than add to the surfeit of peasants...
...Political issues have been fought out in a magical, superstitious atmosphere...
...When de Gaulle flew to Conakry to dissuade Toure, the Guinean leader proclaimed that it was better for his African country to live in poverty than to accept "riches in slavery" as a member of the French Community...
...Journalists have freedom of movement and of investigation...
...If the Ivory Coast's political atmosphere is relaxed and noncoercive, it is also highly corrupt...
...at present the once healthy economy produces a mere $140 a year per person...
...Endemic in many developing countries—and not unknown in New York's school system, Jersey City courts, or the halls of Congress—corruption in the Ivory Coast has not demonstrably impeded economic growth...
...Between 1960-70, it grew at an annual rate of 8 per cent...
...A "fully developed democracy" was impossible in Africa, they said, because anarchy or military dictatorship were the only options besides authoritarian rule...
...What are we supposed to share...
...Quite appropriately, considering that he donated $28 million every year to support the government, Nkrumah went into exile in Guinea, where Sekou Toure declared him "co-President...
...That year, a young Air Force lieutenant, Jerry Rawlings, executed his superiors and installed his own puppet, the former head of Nkrumah's secret police...
...Toure became an African and Islamic hero, and the unquestioned radical leader of the only French African territory to opt for autarky...
...Clearly, whatever the Ivory Coast's remaining shortcomings, it has won the "great wager" with Ghana and Guinea...
...He contends that his economy is vastly sounder and more varied, and his people much better off, than in countries such as Guinea or Ghana, which have, through choice or mismanagement, remained isolated from world trade...
...In 1958 Guinea, another state on the border of the Ivory Coast, joined in the gamble...
...It is the political choices they made over a quarter of a century ago, though, not their similarities, that have had the greatest impact on the shape of these societies...
...All but 20 Frenchmen left...
...The Ivorians actually have been able to exact a price: quota preferences in Europe, generous flows of aid, the continuing investment of private capital, and favored access to export markets...
...and their jungles held untapped riches in timber, crops, minerals, and hydroelectric power...
...Long-time NL contributor William McCord, a professor of sociology at the City University of New York, is spending the current academic year at Singapore's National University...
...His policies are based on the assumption that a country lacking skills, managers, capital, technology, agricultural scientists, and access to markets must call upon foreign factors of production to mobilize its economy knowledgeably and efficiently...
...Its leader, Sekou Toure, disregarding Charles de Gaulle's pleas that Guinea join the French Community, set out on a course of total self-reliance and "Marxism in African clothes...
...Abidjan, the capital, housed 20,000 people in squalor...
...Nevertheless, adult literacy reached 41 per cent in 1977, four times that of Guinea, even though Sekou Toure claimed that "for the first 20 years, we in Guinea have concentrated on developing the mentality of our people...
...An extraordinarily hot and moist area of West Africa, checkered with impenetrable jungles, an unnavigable coast and barren deserts, the Ivory Coast appeared destined, in Henry Kissinger's phrase, to join the ranks of international "basket cases...
...The superiority of the Ivory Coast to Guinea in the economic realm is unquestionable...
...Although he has not demanded the trappings and obeisance that are often characteristic of charismatic heads of state, Houphouet-Boigny has provided decisive leadership and his death will leave a vacuum...
...Since the government did not tolerate criticism, corruption in high circles ran rampant...
...If it does not, he argues, it will suffer the kind of stagnation that now imprisons Ghana and Guinea, although they once enjoyed greater advantages than the Ivory Coast...
...It did not possess Ghana's well trained Civil Service, a unified culture, a stable polity, or a broadly educated mass...
...Many Westerners—including Im-manuel Wallerstein, Patrick O'Dono-van and Sidney Lens—justified Nkru-mah's ambitions and repressions by arguing that a social revolution required discipline...
...Following a visit to Guinea, David Rockefeller formed close links with Toure and sponsored business conferences advertising the country's undeveloped resources...
...Later, touring the Ivory Coast, Toure openly expressed amazement at the economic marvels he had denounced as "neocolonial shams...
...By manipulating a "neocolonial" relationship to his own advantage, by invigorating his peasantry with capitalist incentives and by making full use of his nation's advantages in the world market, Houphouet-Boigny has transformed his country's economy...
...In the 1980s, although plagued by world recession and by a shortage of electrical power, the Ivory Coast has managed to boost its GNP by about 6 per cent a year...
...The Lebanese have therefore played an important role as small merchants, financiers and industrialists...
...Bureaucrats too amiably relieve capitalist visitors of "free will donations...
...Houphouet-Boigny admits that France has gained by the "exploitation," but observes that there would have been nothing at all to "exploit" without French investment...
...Hou-phouet-Boigny has created a National Council that discusses all major issues in face-to-face encounters...
...Because of a strong orientation toward French culture, the educational system of the Ivory Coast has been criticized as elitist and neocolonial...
...Further, the Ivory Coast lacked the "human capital" for development...
...few in these groups had passed beyond the hunting and gathering stage of existence...
...Between independence and 1984, the number of French nationals in the Ivory Coast went from 10,000 to 50,000, many of them serving in the Civil Service and in education...
...Unlike the rest of Black Africa, the Ivory Coast does not suffer from tribal conflicts, the rise of new fanatical religious factions (particularly within Islam) or threats from the military...
...hundreds of millions more were spent on the giant Volta Dam, designed to power factories that were never built...
...Western powers refused to help ravaged Guinea...
...A small bauxite mine operated by Western interests, for example, provides 70 per cent of the country's hard foreign currency...
...Unlike most African nations, the Ivory Coast has not favored city-dwellers over the rural population...
...In 1967, he predicted that Ivorian development "would reach a ceiling which is now near"—a prophecy invalidated by the subsequent tripling of average income for villagers...
...Socialists complain that Houphouet-Boigny—a complacent "bourgeois" who does not hide his preference for silk suits and Swiss chalets—is not sufficiently dynamic, or "authentically" African...
...Frenchmen now own 30 per cent of all manufacturing firms and serve every function from deputy cabinet minister to maitre d'hotel in Abidjan's elegant restaurants...
...In the uncertain period that will follow Houphou-et-Boigny's death, demagogues are sure to appeal to racial pride regardless of how badly it may cripple the economy...
...After its initial concentration on agriculture, the Ivory Coast expanded industrial production by 10.5 per cent a year between 1970-80...
...On the world market Guinea's minerals could have great value...
...His approach has opened doors to foreign capital, emphasized exports, allowed the free movement of profit, slowly built an elite of technicians, and welcomed the expansion of an indigenous and propertied middle class...
...Each other's poverty...
...Moscow pays in rubles used to reduce Guinea's enormous debt for Russian "assistance...
...School attendance has gone from 22 per cent of the school-age population at independence to 55 per cent in 1980...
...According to Amnesty International, Toure's subordinates practiced torture, executed 18 of his Cabinet ministers (including Diallo Telli, once secretary general of the Organization of African Unity), sentenced other ministers to life imprisonment, and periodically displayed the corpses of dissidents as a warning to the masses...
...Conakry, the capital, offered an excellent port, a good transportation system to the inland and great possibilities for developing industry and hydroelectric power...
Vol. 67 • September 1984 • No. 16
