Page 175 - Afrika Must Unite

i6o AFRICA MUST UNITE
and economic co-operation between Africans, both French­
speaking and English-speaking.1

This argument, despite the gratuitous magnanimity expressed,
is a special plea for collective colonialism of a new order.
For if technical and economic co-operation between Africans
(whom he is careful to divide linguistically) is a feasibility, as
President Senghor’s inference allows, then where is the need to
tie it in with the European Common M arket, which is a European
organization promoted to further European interests? The
overseas associated members have gone in as providers of raw
materials, not as equals dealing with equals. W hat reasons have
they to assume that cohesion and co-operation will be fashioned
by those controlling the instrumentalities of the M arket for the
good of Africa’s common development? All the evidence, both
past and present, surely points in the other direction; that the
design is to m aintain the historical relationship of European
industrial convertor and African supplier of prim ary products.
Notwithstanding the outward signs of change that have taken
place at m any points of the continent, the nature of African
economy has remained practically unaltered since the first
European adventurers came to its coasts in the fifteenth century.
It is purely and simply a trading economy. O ur trade, however,
is not between ourselves. It is turned towards Europe and em­
braces us as providers of low-priced prim ary materials in ex­
change for the more expensive finished goods we import. Except
where we have associated and formed a common selling policy,
we come into a competition that acts to force down the prices
we receive to the profit of the overseas buyers. It is because of
the effects of this colonial relationship in limiting their economies,
that some of the African states have joined the European
Common M arket. They have the hope that by this means they
will inject new life into their economies. But this is an illusion,
because the benefits received by way of aid will do nothing to
change the fundam ental nature of these economies, and they
can, therefore, never thrive in the way that most advanced
countries do. They may well regress, because, while inter-

1 Leopold Senghor: Some Thoughts on Africa in International Affairs, April
1962.