Challenge in Africa
Shepherd, George W. Jr.
Challenge in Africa African Economic Development, by William A. Hance. Harper. 307 pp. $4.95. Ethiopia Today, by Ernest W. Luther. Stanford University Press. 158 pp. $4. Reviewed by George W....
...Even the enlightened leadership of Emperor Haile Selassie is insufficient force to move aside easily the castelike relationship between the landowning aristocracy and the peasants...
...One of the most inspiring accomplishments has been the creation of an integrated cooperative pattern of life in which resources are developed together and the benefits are distributed for education and social welfare...
...Peasant farmers were allocated farm plots...
...U. S. companies are particularly interested in what is considered the largest copper reserve in the world...
...But the surface has only been scratched, and we will need to learn more about changing attitudes toward democratic and public service values, as Luther tells us, while building roads, harbors, and schools and modernizing agriculture...
...Ethiopia, while remaining independent of European rule for all but a few years, has not had the necessary economic assistance for development...
...Certain sections of Africa, because of the generosity of nature and the character of existing socio-political framework, are particularly equipped for rapid advancement...
...When all is said and done about the evils of colonial exploitation and racial discrimination, still widespread in Africa, we come back to the immensely difficult job of economic development...
...One of his disturbing, but realistic, conclusions is that Africa will be for some time a continent in which there exist islands of relative prosperity in a great sea of continuing poverty...
...The Gezira scheme is the classic example in Africa of what can be accomplished through the application of capital and social planning to an arid and backward region that nevertheless possesses ample irrigation potentialities...
...Ernest Luther himself was a Point IV expert in Ethiopia, where we have one of our largest aid programs in Africa...
...Most of the signs point in the tragic direction of the permanent inequality of the Union of South Africa...
...Private capital from overseas has been pouring into the new mining and manufacturing industries...
...Although he notes these inequities, Hance does not attempt to deal with the full implications of the rapidly growing racial crisis in the Federation, where African demands for greater political, economic, and social equality have intensified and European resistance appears to have hardened...
...The whites, outnumbered by more than twenty to one, will either have to create another South Africa or adopt a more liberal policy...
...Of course, most of the benefits of this development in the Federation are being reaped by the Europeans who have an average income of $3,156 as compared with an average African income of $120 to $140 annually...
...This assistance was equally available to all and paid for out of profits...
...Today with cotton selling at such a high price, these farmers enjoy a standard of living many times greater than before the establishment of the scheme...
...Cultivation took place under the direction of scientifically-trained personnel, with mechanized equipment...
...His studies range over a wide variety of cases and materials that illustrate vividly some of the most important aspects of African development in terms of both their prospects and their difficulties...
...The rate of investment in terms of gross national product is 29 per cent as compared to that of India, which is about 6 to 8 per cent...
...One of Africa's few steel industries is developing, and already Rhodesians boast that they are turning out an automobile 4 per cent locally manufactured...
...Reviewed by George W. Shepherd, Jr...
...Unfortunately, as Hance demonstrates, attempts to emulate this scheme in other parts of Africa, such as the Niger river in French West Africa, have not been as successful because of different environmental conditions and tribal habits...
...Any analysis of economic development in Africa which does not take into account the total problems of politics and culture inevitably takes on the abstract nature of an economic model with limited value...
...The Central African Federation, consisting of Southern Rhodesia, Northern Rhodesia, and Nyasaland, is shown by Hance to be one of the fastest developing regions of Africa...
...He brings out particularly the immense deadweight of traditionalism in Ethiopia of centuries of doctrinaire autocracy in the church and state...
...Areas like Algeria have considerable productive potential, but this will only be realized under certain political conditions...
...A middle class is only beginning to emerge, and the first Ethiopian engineer has yet to be trained...
...ripHESE two books direct our atten-tion to what can be called "Our Major Task in Africa"—that of helping the Africans to construct economic and social systems capable of sustaining the essentials of dignified human existence...
...With British government aid, a series of dams and irrigation systems were constructed on a section of the lower Nile, ultimately irrigating one million acres for long staple cotton...
...This is just as true in the multi-racial sections of British Africa, where governments cannot continue peaceful progress for long without recognizing African rights...
...Arthur Gaitskill, brother of the Labor Party leader, worked for twenty years as an employee of the British government with the Sudanese people at Gezira to create a cooperative cotton producing and marketing system of unrivaled success in Africa...
...Two areas that he especially considers, although there are many others, are Southern Sudan (which has the Gezira scheme) and the Central African Federation...
...William A. Hance of Columbia University has published in African Economic Development what were originally a series of papers prepared for a study group of Africanists of the Council on Foreign Affairs...
...The value of Luther's book, Ethiopia Today, is its rounded approach to the overall economic problem...
...Since World War II the United States has taken a strong interest in assisting Ethiopia...
...The primary value of both these books is that they examine the complexities of this problem and for the first time bring together material hitherto widely scattered and inadequate...
Vol. 22 • September 1958 • No. 9
