Page 183 - Afrika Must Unite

AFRICA MUST UNITE

difficult to separate economic and political issues. This is because
they are, for us, inseparable at this time in our history. For the
radical changes that are urgently needed in economic planning
can only be brought about quickly and effectually if we are
united politically. Conversely, our national independence can
only be given full meaning if a vast pool of economic and indus­
trial resources can be created to provide the various African
states with a strong enough base to support the welfare of their
peoples.
In the isolation of purely national planning, our rate of pro­
gress can only be halting, our individual developments doomed
to slowness, no m atter how intensive our efforts or how careful
our projects. Expansion of extractive industries, extension and
diversification of agriculture, establishment of secondary in­
dustries, some infra-structure, the building of a few key industries
- this is what we may expect within the confines of our national
planning, and even this is not assured. Certainly not without the
most careful trimming and austerity, and an uneven struggle at
all times against coercive pressures, both external and domestic.
Each of us alone cannot hope to secure the highest benefits
of modern technology, which demands vast capital investment
and can only justify its economics in serving an extensive popu­
lation. A continental merging of our land areas, our populations
and our resources, will alone give full substance to our aspirations
to advance from our pre-industrial state to that stage of develop­
ment that can provide for all the people the high standard of
living and welfare amenities of the most advanced industrial
states.
It may, of course, be argued that any economic integration at
this time would be like a pooling of poverty. But this ignores the
essential core of integration: that it will co-ordinate all the exist­
ing resources, economic, agricultural, mineral, financial, and
employ them methodically so as to improve the over-all surplus,
to assist a wider capital development. Further, a co-ordinated
survey of the continental resources, actual and potential, human
and material, will perm it planning to eliminate the present im­
balance in identical forms of prim ary trading economies and
provide for the erection of a complementary pattern of develop­
ment which will give the fullest opportunity for progressive