137 138   139

p Africa with its vast resources of valuable minerals, agricultural raw materials, fuel and hydropower is one of the richest continents of the world.

p The continent’s natural wealth and manpower resources, provided they are rationally used, can ensure all-round and rapid development of the majority of African countries, and guarantee sufficiently high living standards in the foreseeable future. But the realisation of these potentialities is impeded by the undeveloped economic structure inherited from the colonial period. The colonialists organised the production of raw materials expressly for economies of the home countries, and wholly ignored all problems related to the material and spiritual life of the African peoples.

p Every newly free African country remained fully dependent on the West both in marketing its produce and in importing industrial and consumer goods. In the period of colonial enslavement a disunited, fragmented economy, typical of the dependent-type social relations, took shape in the African countries.

p The national and per capita income, the correlation between consumption and accumulation funds, the branch structure of the economy are all very important indicators characterising the level of development of the productive forces, and help to ascertain the objective possibilities of promoting their growth and improving the well-being of the people. In this respect African countries lag behind not only the industrialised capitalist states, but also many of the less developed countries in Asia and Latin America. 140 Of the 29 countries which the UN lists in the category of "least developed”, 18 are African. Other objective data are also indicative.

p In 1975 the gross national product (GNP) of independent African countries was $139.9 billion (in the current prices) or less than 2.9 per cent of the GNP of all the capitalist and developing countries taken together.

p The same year the mean per capita product in Africa was a mere $350 (in current prices) compared with $500 in the developing countries and $5,855 in the industrialised capitalist states.  [140•1 

p As regards per capita consumption, the majority of independent African states occupy the last place in the world, and the per capita consumption of fairly large population groups living in conditions of natural economy is approaching the minimum level.

The structure of the African countries’ GNP (Table 1) clearly shows how backward their economy is.

Table 1 Structure of the Developing African Countries’ GNP (per cent; in the 1970 prices) Branch I960 19G5 1970 1975 Agriculture 41.3 36.6 32.6 30.3 Mining 4.4 7.5 11.3 7.2 Processing industries and power generation 10.2 11.4 11.4 12.0 Construction 5.3 5.1 5.1 7.9 Trade 16.8 16.4 15.3 15.9 Transport and communications 5.9 5.9 5.2 6.1 State administration and defence 7.9 9.4 9.9 11.6 Other branches 8.2 7.6 9.2 8.9 Source: U.N. Statistical and Economic Information Bulletin for Africa, No. 10 E/CN, 14/SEIB 10, p. 118.

Agriculture is still the most important branch of the economy in African countries. Although its share in the GNP by the mid-1970s dropped considerably in comparison with 1960, it was higher than the share of industry. In spite of the high rate of urbanisation Africa’s population is 141 predominantly peasant (in some regions from 60 to 80 per cent of the population live in rural areas). Furthermore, African agriculture is still the most backward and unproductive in the world, and its rate of growth (Table 2) in effect does not exceed the population growth rate.

Table 2 Agricultural Growth Rates in the Developing Countries of Africa (per cent) 1960-1970 1970-1974 1970-1971 1971-1972 1972-1973 1973-1974 1974- 1975 2.1 2.7 3.9 3.9 —1.6 4.5 1.2 Source: EGA. Survey of Economic and Social Conditions in Africa in 1976, Part I. E/CN, 14/654, 16 November 1976.

p The potential of the African countries to increase their agricultural output is enormous. At present, owing to water shortage, the contamination of extensive territories with various epidemic diseases and due to other reasons, not more than 10 per cent of the potentially cultivable land is used. The destruction of the tse-tse fly alone would make it possible to increase the area of cultivated land by eight times.

p So far, however, inhabitants of huge regions in Africa are doomed to undernourishment and even famine which assumes catastrophic proportions in periods of adverse climatic conditions. Drought in the countries of the Sahel zone (regions adjoining the southern part of the Sahara), in Somalia and Ethiopia in 1971-73 caused the death from starvation of more than 200,000 people.

p The mining industry, which until recently was the monopoly of foreign capital, is now the most dynamically developing branch of production in Africa. In the 1960s its output increased almost 4.5 times.

p In the early 1970s the African countries accounted for 28 per cent of the total value of world output of mineral raw materials.

p In recent years many African countries took steps to build up their processing industry, but so far this key branch of modern economy is underdeveloped in the liberated states. The few industrial enterprises that were built in the past, chiefly by foreign capitalists, specialised in the 142 initial processing of agricultural raw materials; there were relatively large manufacturing enterprises only in North Africa (Egypt and Algeria) and in some countries in Tropical Africa which had a large-scale mining industry (Zaire).

p The development of the manufacturing industry in the majority of the newly independent African countries was mainly connected with the processing of local agricultural raw materials, primarily for the purpose of doing away with the need to import consumer goods. By the early 1970s the food and light industry in the African countries accounted for more than 60 per cent of the value of the output of the manufacturing industry. Only countries in the North of Africa, chiefly those which had proclaimed socialist orientation, began to set up various branches of the heavy industry—metallurgy, metal-working, petrochemistry, building material and fertiliser production—as the foundation of their economic independence.

p It is the need to meet the vital requirements of industrial development and the urban population, which has increased very considerably in recent years, that determines the importance of construction in the economy of the African countries. About 60 per cent of their accumulation funds are expended on construction. These outlays are almost equally divided between investments in the building of industrial projects and the construction of housing and communal services.

p But construction, which is almost wholly dominated by foreign capital, is still a backward branch of African economy. In the first place this applies to the construction of large infrastructure projects.

p Still another feature of the economy of the independent African countries is the steadily increasing role which the service industry and trade play^ in the composition of the GNP. A considerable part of the activity of this sphere does not involve material production and is confined merely to redistributing the product created in other industries. In keeping with the African method of calculating the GNP, the value results of the non-material activity are included into] overall indices so that the GNP is overestimated. The disproportionately great share in the African countries of the service industry has even increased (from 38 per cent in 1960 to 40 per cent in 1971) in the years of their independent development.

143

On the whole economic growth rates in the newly free African countries are slow. From 1960 to 1970 their annual GNP increment was 5 per cent as compared with 6 per cent in all the developing countries. Since the beginning of the 1970s this indicator of the development of the non- petroleum exporting African countries has sharply declined and amounted to 4.1 per cent in the period from 1970 to 1974 and 1.6 per cent in 1975. In terms of economic growth, particularly per head of population (2.3 per cent in the 1960s and 1.8 per cent between 1970 and 1975), the African countries are among the most slowly developing countries. As a result, the enormous gap in level of development between African countries and the industrialised capitalist states is widening.