Page 124 - Afrika Must Unite

TOWARDS ECONOMIC INDEPENDENCE l o g
secondary industries. We have begun to export bananas,
coconuts, copra, palm kernels, and palm oil, kola and other nuts,
plantains, rubber, coffee, spices, and tobacco. Several of these
products, such as palm oil, tobacco, coffee and rubber, we shall
use in increasing amounts in our own industries.
The government has provided grants for the regional
development of water resources, for soil conservation and
improvement projects, for financing experimental plantations
of new crops, and for the application of new techniques to old
crops. O ur farmers are getting practical advice on how to use
their land to the best advantage and to produce greater yields.
They are being assisted by hire purchase and co-operative
schemes to acquire modern agricultural machinery and process­
ing equipment. More rational marketing procedures are being
steadily introduced. G hana has begun to export agricultural
products which have never been grown here before, and im ­
proved methods of growing established crops have led to
substantial increases in yield.
Diversity of agriculture has been accepted as a shibboleth, but
if the development is simply towards the end of exportation, this
can defeat the aim, since the fact that so m any countries are now
concentrating upon similar objectives can produce an over­
extension of the sellers’ m arket with subsequent depression of
world prices. The fall in world prices of raw materials since the
end of the Second W orld W ar has deprived the less developed
countries of the staggering sum of £574,000 million, an amount
greater than all the so-called aid which these countries have
received from the advanced nations. This in itself represents a
denial of tremendous capital for much-wan ted development that
would not have happened had we newly emergent states been
united and strong enough to make our bargaining on the inter­
national commodity markets effective.
The m ajor advantage which our independence has bestowed
upon us is the liberty to arrange our national life according to
the interests of our people, and along with it, the freedom, in
conjunction with other countries, to interfere with the play of
forces in the world commodity markets. ‘Under-developed
countries, utilising their newly won independent status, can by
purposive policy interferences manage to alter considerably the