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What Role for E.C.A.? or Pan-Africanism Revisited

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 November 2008

Extract

For most organisations, a tenth anniversary session is a time for dwelling on the significance of past achievements while resolutely insisting that the best is yet to come in terms of new initiatives. The United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (E.C.A.) proved to be no exception when it met in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, during late January and early February 1969. Yet, behind the formal façade of celebration, one sensed an anxious attempt to overstate the results of past efforts in order to enlist support for a dynamic future which seems highly improbable. Because E.C.A. as an institution faces a serious crisis of confidence, its secretariat and its supporters seemed to seize on the tenth anniversary celebrations almost as if this were the last chance to change radically the Commission's role and image in the eyes of both Africa and the world. Indeed, the 1969 Commission session marked the culmination of an attempt by Robert K. A. Gardiner – the Commission's able Executive Secretary – and his associates to reverse the downward trend of E.C.A.'s influence and prestige since those halcyon early days of 1958–9 when Africans had such great hopes for their Commission.

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Article
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1971

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References

Page 74 note 1 There are also U.N. commissions for Europe (E.C.E.), Asia and the Far East (E.C.A.F.E.), and Latin American (E.C.L.A.). While the Arab–Israeli conflict has precluded the establishment of a commission for the Middle East, there is currently a U.N. Economic and Social Office in Beirut (U.N.E.S.O.B.), which attempts to serve this region as a sort of minicommission.

Page 74 note 2 The reasons for E.C.A.'s situation within the U.N. system and its ramifications are explored in Magee, J. S., ‘E.C.A. and the Paradox of African Co-operation’, International Conciliation (New York), 580, 11 1970.Google Scholar

Page 75 note 1 African countries fully associated with the E.E.C. under the Yaoundé Agreement include, besides the francophones, Congo-Kinshasa, Rwanda, Somalia, and Burundi; more limited terms of association have been secured by Nigeria, Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania, and are being sought by others.

Page 75 note 2 A distinction must be made here between poor and less poor. The better-off francophone countries, such as the Ivory Coast, led by Houphouët-Boigny, and Gabon, under the late Leon M'ba, have benefited handsomely from French aid. But their resistance to substantive multinational African co-operation arises from an additional concern. Any such scheme, aside from giving up the help from rich Europe for unknown ‘benefits’ to be gained by co-operating with poor Africans, would be bound to enable their poor neighbours to present claims on the resources of the richer countries under the guise of multinational co-operation and equitable distribution of resources. Houphouët-Boigny and the Gabonese have preferred to avoid this by emphasising links with France (and Europe), and with organisations such as O.C.A.M. and Conseil de l'entente, which they can control.

Page 76 note 1 For more detail on the anglophone–francophone quarrel, see Magee, op. cit. ch. II.

Page 76 note 2 Obviously Nkrumah is not the only one to have analysed and argued about Africa's problems in the terms described below. As perhaps the most influential and well-known of these advocates, however, his name will serve as an adequate shorthand for a larger and more diverse group of men.

Page 77 note 1 Wallerstein, Immanuel, Africa: the politics of unity (New York, 1967), p. 225.Google Scholar

Page 77 note 2 While the argument is briefly rendered here, it has been developed with considerable sophistication in many places. For example, see Green, Reginald and Seidman, Ann, Unity or Poverty? the economics of pan-Africanism (London, 1968).Google ScholarPubMed

Page 77 note 3 Ample documentation of these failings is found in Thompson, W. Scott, Ghana's Foreign Policy, 1957–1966 (Princeton, 1969).CrossRefGoogle Scholar However, Thompson must be read with care since he tends to be so critical of Nkrumah that he ‘finds’ evidence for every possible criticism, even when some of them are mutually contradictory.

Page 78 note 1 Rivkin, Arnold, The African Presence in World Affairs (Glencoe, Ill., 1963), p. 165.Google Scholar

Page 78 note 2 Quoted in Thompson, op. cit. p. 58.

Page 79 note 1 Green and Seidman, op. cit., base a good deal of their case for pan-African economic co-operation on E.C.A. documents. A recent E.C.A. evaluation of the situation, U.N. Document E/CN. 14/435 (Addis Ababa, 1969), is summarised in ‘Background to African Poverty’, in West Africa (London), 18 01 1969, p. 61.Google Scholar

Page 81 note 1 In this regard, E.C.A. secretariat behaviour recalls Quaison-Sackey's comment about strong ideas but an absence of Concrete strategies.

Page 81 note 2 On Nkrumah's tendency to do this, see Thompson, op. cit. p. 25 and passim. Gardiner believes he has no choice but to employ non-Africans since African governments themselves feel unable to release either the numbers or the kinds of personnel needed. His position is spelled out in U.N. Document E/CN.14/W.P. 9 (Addis Ababa, 1969).

Page 81 note 3 Typical of the kind of criticism over the slowness of ‘Africanisation’ that consumes major portions of time at every E.C.A. session were those encountered by Gardiner at the ninth. See Africa (Paris), 14 02 1969, pp. 35.Google Scholar

Page 82 note 1 Azikiwe, Nnamdi, ‘The Future of Pan-Africanism’, quoted in Legum, Colin, Pan-Africanism: a short political guide (London, 1962), p. 272.Google Scholar

Page 83 note 1 Quoted in Arnold Rivkin, op. cit. pp. 163–4.

Page 83 note 2 Ibid. p. 164.

Page 83 note 3 Quoted in Thompson, op. cit. p. 430.

Page 83 note 4 Legum, op. cit. pp. 46–63.

Page 83 note 5 See Nye, Joseph S. Jr, Pan-Africanism and East African Integration (Cambridge, Mass., 1965), pp. 1317.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Page 83 note 6 However, they soon took courage again and virtually restored it in the guise of L'Organisation commune africaine et malgache (O.C.A.M.) in early 1965.

Page 83 note 7 He was especially active in trying to wean Uganda away from proposed federation with Kenya and Tanzania; Nye, op. cit. pp. 196–7.

Page 84 note 1 Mazrui, Ali A., Towards a Pax Africana (London, 1967), pp. 70–1.Google Scholar See also Nye, op. cit. pp. 16–17.

Page 84 note 2 For his detailed argument, see ‘Political Commitment and Economic Integration’, in Ali A. Mazrui, On Heroes and Uhuru-Worship (London, 1967), pp. 6372.Google Scholar

Page 84 note 3 In U.N. and E.C.A. parlance, ‘regional’ means the whole of Africa and ‘sub-regional’ refers to a sub-division of the continent, such as West Africa. Currently E.C.A. divides the continent into four sub-regions: East, North, West, and Central Africa. Obviously the Republic of South Africa, Rhodesia, Namibia (South-West Africa), and the Portuguese territories are excluded from E.C.A.'s planning until the racial attitudes and political policies of their régimes are markedly changed.

Page 84 note 4 For example, see the ‘Report of the E.C.A. Mission on Economic Co-operation in Central Africa’, U.N. Pub. Sales No. 66II, K. II (New York, 1966), which suggests how the sub-region might plan an integrated approach to its development in various sectors.

Page 84 note 5 For a recent suggestion of how to do this, see U.N. Document E/CN. 14/462 (Addis Ababa, 1969), p. 50.Google Scholar

Page 85 note 1 Claude, Inis L. Jr, Swords into Plowshares: the problems and progress of international organization (New York, 1956), p. 382.Google Scholar

Page 85 note 2 There is an increasingly vast literature on the inadequacies of functionalist theory and the failure of functionalist practice to lead to wider and more comprehensive multinational co-operation and integration.

Page 85 note 3 Thompson, op. cit. p. 374.

Page 86 note 1 See the strong pan-African case made by the E.C.A. secretariat in U.N. Document E/CN. 14/AS/VI/5 (Addis Ababa, 1965).

Page 86 note 2 For further details, see U.N. Documents E/CN. 14/INR. 27 (Addis Ababa, 1963), and E/CN. 14/324 (Addis Ababa, 1964).

Page 87 note 1 For chapter and verse on this situation, see the hard-hitting but sympathetic analysis of current U.N. aid machinery in A Study of the Capacity of the United Nations Development System (New York, 1970).Google Scholar

Page 87 note 2 A useful discussion of the problems of central planning offices may be found in Frederick F. Clairmonte's unpublished monograph, ‘Structural Change and Development Planning’. Not surprisingly, the U.N. specialised agencies oppose this E.C.A. thrust, and join with their sectoral ministerial allies in proclaiming the virtues of sovereignty and ‘country planning’ – as opposed to sub-regional priorities. See Magee, op. cit. chs. 3 and 4.

Page 88 note 1 A reasonably complete catalogue of E.C.A.'s achievements is found in the secretariat's report to the Ninth Session, ‘A Venture in Self-Reliance: ten years of E.C.A.’, U.N. Document E/CN. 14/424 (Addis Ababa, 1969). Since the secretariat, naturally, tried to put the best face possible on the decade, the glowing list of accomplishments must be taken with considerably more than a grain of salt.

Page 88 note 2 See the provocative essay, ‘Tanzania versus East Africa’, in Mazrui, On Heroes and UhuruWorship.

Page 89 note 1 The details of E.C.A.'s new institutional machinery are found in U.N. Document E/CN. 14/RES/187–191 IX (Addis Ababa, 1969). For an analysis of them, see the comments of a very able ex-secretariat official, Ewing, A. F., ‘Reflections from Afar on the Ninth Session of the U.N. Economic Commission for Africa’, in The Journal of Modern African Studies (Cambridge), VII, 2, 07 1969.Google Scholar

Page 89 note 2 Legum, op. cit. p. 131.