7 - What is to be done?

Summary

The most important item on the agenda of development is to transform the food sector, create agricultural surpluses to feed the urban population and thereby create the domestic basis for industry and modern services. If we can make this domestic change, we shall automatically have a new international economic order.

Sir W. Arthur Lewis, The Evolution of the International Economic Order (1978a:75)

West Africa's international significance

There are three criteria by which the big powers evaluate their interest in Third World regions such as West Africa: in descending order of significance, (1) global strategy, (2) economic resources, and (3) humanitarian concern.

West Africa is clearly a region of low strategic significance. It is far removed from the Middle East and southern Africa, the nearest centers of global conflict. But the sixteen West African nations play a part in both through their membership in the Organization of African Unity and other international organizations. And Nigeria is a state with the potential to play a dominant role in the affairs of the continent as a whole. Nigeria is one of the few OPEC countries with a large population; it is a major oil supplier of the United States and an important market for both the United States and Britain. France has an obvious interest in maintaining close ties with her ex-colonies in West Africa, as part of a long-term plan of informal expansion in Africa.