Although the oldest independent African republic, Liberia ranks among the continent's poorest states,1 despite the existence of a small but prosperous foreign enclave dominated by iron ore and rubber plantation companies. Prior to 1950, even this sector was non-existent, with the exception of the Firestone rubber plantation at Harbel which was started in 1926.

For a contemporary observer of African affairs, the year 1960 is a convenient date of departure. A large number of new nations appeared on the scene with a bang. The economist, political scientist, and sociologist have hardly begun to evaluate and examine the consequences of this transformation. A significant fact has often escaped attention. Each independent country as it emerged from the darkness of colonialism began by accepting economic planning as an instrument of policy. As the development plans were being drafted, almost simultaneously new investment laws were debated and enacted.

During colonial times, Italian studies on Africa were always concentrated within narrow academic limits. Even after the increasing Italian expansion in Northern Africa (Libya) and Eastern Africa (Eritrea and Somalia), when Italian interests in Africa increased considerably, only small groups of scholars focused their studies on the African continent. Today, by contrast, since the independence of the former Italian colonies (and of almost all the European colonies), there is in Italy, as throughout the world, a strong tendency to extend and encourage research work on Africa, and particularly to develop university teaching programmes on Africa.

The 55 countries and territories of Africa can be classified today from the monetary point of view into six major groups. Of these, four are monetary areas based on the currency of the former or actual metropolitan country: the French franc, the pound sterling, the Portuguese escudo, and the Spanish peseta. The sterling area includes the area of the South African rand; and finally there is a group of independent countries, some with very new central banks and others with a longer tradition of monetary independence.

Events in Southern Africa during the early 1990s have re-opened a debate over the effectiveness of the Reagan Administration's policy of ‘Constructive Engagement’. This was a controversy that had previously been laid to rest with the US Congress passing its Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act in October 1986, since the ensuing punitive sanctions imposed by the enactment of this legislation scuttled Ronald Reagan's strategy of using friendly persuasion to encourage the South African Government away from its practice of apartheid. Yet, with hindsight, it may appear that the President's method of drawing the Pretoria regime into the international community, through offering recognition and encouragement in exchange for reform, has been triumphantly vindicated. After all, has not the African National Congress (ANC) come to power via a democratic process, thereby avoiding a bloodbath on the scale that so many had predicted?

This short article has two themes: it is prompted first by a feeling that many African countries, in their natural impatience for maximum economic development in the shortest possible time, are in some danger of getting their strategy and priorities not quite right in regard to the rural—urban, agricultural—industrial balance. More specifically, a plea is made for greater attention being given to traditional food farming (for subsistence or cash), which has been somewhat neglected in research, in spite of the fact that it must inevitably continue for a long time to support increasing numbers.

There are ideological, political, and economic incentives for nationalising foreign-based companies which operate in the export sectors of African economies. The basis of this appeal is the expectation that significant positive net benefits will arise from partial or complete acquisition of company assets. The expected gross benefits which serve as the basis for calculation are subject to risk, because national owners often become decision-takers within global markets over which they are constrained from exerting control.

This brief note will argue the case for certain lines of investigation, both empirical and theoretical, in African cities. It is increasingly recognised that the constellation of issues revolving around urbanisation and its effects will be a major factor in development for the rest of the century: witness the convocation of the Habitat Conference in Vancouver, June 1976, and the World Bank's new Urban Policy Task Force. Yet, as always, comprehension trails behind actual developments.

The Poets' conference held under the auspices of the Berlin Festival had the same theme as that of the entire festival this year, Africa's contribution and relation to the arts and culture of Europe. It is at once debatable whether a conference can decide what culture is: whether culture can be talked about across a table among 70 men and women from different parts of the world via tri-lingual instantaneous translations and other kinds of static that fill the air at such times. To appreciate the even subtler intervention of Africa into western culture, in these circumstances, might prove to be impossible. Fortunately conferences have a way of finding their working levels, even though these may not always coincide with the subject assigned them.

Many Nigerian intellectuals have persisted in their enthusiasm for a socialist revolution. Historians, political scientists, sociologists, economists, novelists, and playwrights in the universities have presented a Marxist critique of the political economy and society, and variously sought to provide a socialist solution to the multiple ills of their country. For example, in November 1985, Tunji Braithwaite was insisting that ‘socialism is the way out’ of the political and economic impasse besetting the nation, while Krees Imodibie was claiming that the Nigerian social ethos expressed the essential precepts of socialism. Even the National Political Bureau appointed in 1986 by President Ibrahim Babangida to devise the blueprint of a civilian government for the 1990s recommended, albeit rejected by the Armed Forces Ruling Council, ‘that Nigeria should adopt a socialist socio-economic system’.

A world conference on agrarian reform and rural development came to the conclusion a decade ago that since real progress could only be achieved in these fields if the peasants participated in both the necessary planning and practical work, the prerequisites were democratic organisations for local self-administration and self-reliance.

The Epistemological status of their own consciousness is the core contradiction of Marxist thought. This difficulty has not been acknowledged by African Marxists, nor do they explicitly admit to the varieties of radical scholarship which form their intellectual heritage, and which their own worl seeks to modify and elaborate. Marxist scholars have been unable to develop a cogent, persuasive justification for radical theorising as an alternative to positivist social science, largely because of their unwillingness to confront and affir, their own historical specificity. As argued by Bogumil Jewsiewicki:

The University introduced area courses on the Middle East and North Africa into its regular offerings in the academic year 1960–1. This Program is a part of the School of International Relations, and focuses on contemporary area problems, in contrast to the more traditional approach of oriental studies. It also differs by concentrating on both the Mashriq (East) and the Maghreb (North Africa), rather than solely on the eastern Mediterranean. The community of interests, language, and culture of these two regions, plus the increasing importance of North Africa in world affairs, emphasises the practicality of this treatment.

At the outset of the 1970s it is estimated that there are upwards of one million refugees in Africa, with about equal numbers from independent African states, and from non-self-governing and minority-ruled states. The largest single group are the Angolan refugees in Congo-Kinshasa, now estimated to number 400,000. Other large groups of refugees are from Rwanda, Sudan, and Guinea-Bissau. There are also smaller groups from Congo-Kinshasa, Ethiopia, and Zambia, as well as from Mozambique, South Africa, Namibia, and Rhodesia.