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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 November 2008
The African countries, most of them having only recently acceded to independence, are now confronted with the task of achieving economic development in the face of immense problems arising from an acute shortage of trained and skilled personnel, lack of managerial skills and entrepreneurship, scarce capital resources, and grossly inadequate infrastructure. The old highroad to economic development through exports of primary products can no longer serve in the contemporary world as it now confronts the African countries. In the face of the new circumstances, planned development and industrialisation are imperative. But national boundaries are unsuitable to provide balanced markets and supplies to permit of planning on purely national scale for industrialisation and the necessary increase in the efficiency of primary production, beside the building up of an economic infrastructure. Import substitution on a purely national scale would often lead to uneconomically small or under-utilised industries—in either case a drain on scarce resources rather than a basis for further progress. African markets for some time to come. Though given countries may succeed without joint efforts and regional co-operation, most African countries would find it impossible to industrialise and secure the necessary markets, acting individually. The present cash market of most African countries is not larger than that of a moderately-sized European town.1 In other words, in addition to the maximum utilisation of outside markets for traditional and new products, larger markets must be developed within Africa.
Page 395 note 1 Editors' note. Cf. the following quotation: ‘If the United Arab Republic is left out at one end of the continent and the Republic of South Africa at the other and if Nigeria is also taken out, the one example of a large country in tropical Africa, there remain about 40 countries or countries-to-be, averaging perhaps 4 million people or so per country. Of these 4 million people, on the average perhaps half are at present largely outside any contacts with the market economy, living in self-contained and often inaccessible communities; this half is at present beyond the scope of any orthodox financial approach to development. The remaining half, i.e. 2 million people with some varying degree of contact with the market economy, have an average cash purchasing power corresponding perhaps to one twentieth of that of a European. Thus, they represent a cash market equivalent to a moderate-size European town of perhaps 100,000 people, but often spread out over a wide area. Evidently, it does not make sense in Europe to have separate plans and separate financing institutions for each individual town of 100,000 people, regardless of what goes on in the next town. By the same token, a purely national approach to planning and financing economic development in Africa does not make any more sense.’ E.C.A., The Project of an African Development Bank (U.N., New York, 1963), p. 3.Google Scholar
Page 396 note 1 The prospects of industrial growth in Africa and the need for co-operative action in this field have already been studied in Industrial Growth in Africa: a survey and outlook, E/CN.14/INR/1.
Page 400 note 1 These include the Conference of African Statisticians; the Standing Committee on Trade; the Standing Committee on Industry, Natural Resources and Transport; the Standing Committee on Housing and Town Planning; an expert working party, meeting annually, on Social Welfare and Community Development; and an expert working party, meeting probably every two years, on Public Administration.