Page 186 - Afrika Must Unite

ECONOMIC AND POLITICAL INTEGRATION 171
establishment of secondary manufactures and the erection of
those vital basic industries which will sustain large-scale capital
development. The national components will each perform their
essential role in the practical implementation of the total plan
and feel secure in the co-operative task of eliminating the eco­
nomic unevenness that now exists between the different regions.
The individual character of population groups might properly
be expressed in special kinds of development within the universal
plan, particularly in the fields of specialized production, whether
in agriculture or industry, of handicrafts and culture. This would
infuse energy into the realization of the planned development,
as the people would be given every opportunity to expand their
individual genius.
Because of the enormously greater energy, both hum an and
material, that would be released through continentally inte­
grated planning, productivity increase would be incomparably
higher than the sum of the individual growths which we may
anticipate within the individual countries under separatism.
The cumulative surpluses that must result would achieve con­
tinuing capital formations for increasing the African investment
in expanding development. It is quite obvious that integrated
continental planning cannot find a substitute in the kind of
tinkering that limits us to inter-territorial associations within
customs unions, trade agreements, inter-communications ser­
vices, and the like. While these will naturally increase our
common intercourse and provide for certain inter-action, they
can only be partially beneficial in their effects. For such tinker­
ing does not create the decisive conditions for resolute develop­
ment, since it ignores the crucial requirem ent of continental
integration as the essential prerequisite for the most bountiful
economic progress, which must be based in the widest possible
extension of land and population. The planned industrialization,
moreover, must be geared to the social objective of the highest
upliftment of the masses of the people, and presupposes the
elimination of those acquisitive tendencies which lead to sec­
tional conflicts within society. By these means alone can Africa
m aintain the popular support without which the planned pro­
gramme cannot succeed, and arrive at that economic freedom
which is the intertwined goal of political independence.