Page 184 - Afrika Must Unite

ECONOMIC AND POLITICAL INTEGRATION 169
capital formations. We would still need to exchange prim ary
products for capital goods, and I have explained how an African
Common M arket and common currency would facilitate the
accumulation of reserves from our pooled production and
common selling policy. Moreover, within the unity of integrated
economic planning, we should be better placed to extract the
most advantageous aid agreements free of clauses that would
jeopardize our independence of action. The larger potentials of
greater land area and numbers would offer greater attraction to
outside investment capital because of their anticipated higher
profitability ratio. Another advantage for outside investment
capital would be the soundness of the guarantees that unified
continental development could offer. No single individual could
undertake such investment, so that it would have to be done by
corporate or public investment. In fact, the trend today is
towards public investment, because public guarantees are
demanded. Foreign countries will not loan to a private individual
in another country but will only lend to a private institution or
a public institution with a guarantee from the government. As
a rule, it will not come without this guarantee, and often enough
the investment will not be allowed to come to the borrowing
country without the approval of the government of the lender.
T hat kind of investment is the more solid kind of investment
that Africa needs from abroad, and both international and public
capital would find it much less complex to deal with and secure
guarantees from an all-African administration than from the
several governments they now have to deal with. It would make
for easier co-operation all round.
Separatism, indeed, cuts us off from a multitude of advantages
which we would enjoy from union. Though G hana is bearing
the cost of erecting the Volta dam, we would be more than
willing to share its benefits with our immediate neighbours
within a common economic framework. The Inga dam, a blue­
print dream for the Congo, may not get beyond that stage with­
out the co-operation of other African states, for no single state
could afford to build it. Yet if it were built, the dam would
provide 25 million kilowatts of electricity, which is estimated to
be four-and-a-half times the output expected from the largest
hydro-electrical plant in the Soviet Union: the Bratsk Dam.