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African Problems and the Cold War
Summary --
Since we achieved our independence, several distinguished foreigners have visited our young Republic, and among the many questions they have asked have been those concerning our approach to Pan Africanism, our views on policies intended to keep Africa free of the restrictive forces of the cold war, and the measures we would suggest to implement our policy of neutrality. In the lines which follow we will endeavor to answer these significant questions.
Related
Essay, Jan 1964
No one who looked down from the galleries last May on the glittering array of African heads of state assembled in Africa Hall at Addis Ababa could fail to see that this meeting constituted an historic landmark. But just what sort of landmark was it? Clearly it had greater significance than a gathering of emperors, kings, presidents and prime ministers at a single sparkling event-like, say, a coronation in Britain. But was there as much common purpose in Addis as moved the 55 men who met in Philadelphia in May 1787? President Nkrumah of Ghana had hoped and intended that there should be; in speeches, memoranda and even a full-length book he had urged the states to form a single parliament forthwith. But gazing down on the patrician head of the Mwami of Burundi facing the taut Ben Bella, observers must have realized that the differences of past experience and future problems impeded any such swift fusion into one close entity. It is still too early to assess the full achievements of the Addis conference-how far short it fell of Nkrumah's ideal, how much more important it was than just an imperial jamboree. But enough has happened in the months since May to attempt at least a progress report.
Essay, Special 1984
There is always something new out of Africa," said the ancient Greeks, as recorded by Pliny the Elder. The contemporary Africa-watcher, however, might be forgiven for wondering whether it is not all more of the same. In 1984, as in 1983, events in southern Africa and the devastating drought and famine which cost the lives of countless tens of thousands again dominated the year. For Nigerians, the new year began with yet another military government, which had ousted the elected civilian administration on the last day of 1983. In Chad, civil war ground on with no solution in sight. Libya's unpredictable leader, Colonel Muammar al-Qaddafi, continued to make headlines with stories ranging from the killing of a British policewoman in London to his dabbling in the affairs of Chad and other countries. At the United Nations, the controversy over Namibia continued to set records as the longest running debate in that organization's history. And U.S. suggestions that its policy of "constructive engagement" with South Africa was succeeding continued to be greeted with skepticism in many quarters.
Essay, Oct 1962
An attempt to solve specific African problems out of context, according to some half-understood universal concept, neglects the especially important social factors. Such an approach assumes that science has reached its limits, that mankind's present knowledge is absolute and immutable, and that in these matters there is nothing further to be expected, attempted or desired. It implies that human society, having reached maturity, begins to decline. On the contrary, everything indicates that it is still full of contradictions and imperfections and that these are the causes of its difficulties, its crises and its disequilibrium. Thus the course of progress, far from being limited, is infinite in time and space.
User Comments
Togo in the 1980s
I worked at a YMCA summer camp in Florida in the 1980s and worked with two young students from Togo. Twenty years after independence the students fit in very well with American young people. We were all on summer break from colleges in our countries. I remember they were very knowledgeable in a positive way to Togo coming from German colonialism. That surprised me since I knew Germany had lost its colonies after WWI and this was the 1980s.
John Navarra
Daytona Beach, Florida