Page 172 - Afrika Must Unite

ECONOMIC AND POLITICAL INTEGRATION I57
for internal air services has been limited, but this is something
which is changing with the growing need for inter-continental
communication and trade.
The necessary capital for all these developments can only be
accumulated by the employment of our resources on a conti­
nental extension. This calls for a central organization to formu­
late a comprehensive economic policy for Africa which will
embrace the scientific, methodical and economic planning of
our ascent from present poverty into industrial greatness.
Internal customs barriers can be eliminated; differences in
domestic structures accommodated. Currency difficulties must
disappear before a common currency. None of our problems is
insuperable unless we are set against their solution. In July
1961 customs, barriers between Ghana and U pper Volta were
removed. An African Development Institute is to be set up at
Dakar to train economists, to provide experts who can be sent
on request to African States, to carry out research, and to co­
ordinate policies. This Institute, when it is operating, will, it is
hoped, go some way towards counteracting the excessive dupli­
cation of experimental work that now goes on in Africa because
we have no central economic planning organization for directing
research and pooling knowledge and experience.
There are some who refute the requirem ent of continental
unity as the essential prerequisite to full industrialization. Others
refer to economic confederations like the Zollverein of nine­
teenth-century Germany as likely patterns upon which we might
model our African co-operation for industrial fulfilment. This
ignores the historical fact that the Zollverein proved unequal to
the task of creating the capital formations Germany needed to
carry forward her industrialism, which only got fully under way
when the states surrendered their sovereignty to the German
Empire. It was the unification of Germany which provided the
stimulus to expanding capitalism and gave a suitable popula­
tion basis for the absorption of m anufactured goods, particularly
as population growth in Germany was high and quickly reached
forty-one millions. At that period of scientific invention, this was
a large enough consumption group to enable Germany to pro­
gress from a mainly agricultural country in 1871 to the industrial
achievements that led her into the scramble for colonies before