Eleven recent books are surveyed in a review article which finds that there is still no up-to-date and comprehensive treatment of the interests and roles of the developing countries in the international monetary system. The rise of international commercial bank lending to developing countries has significantly altered the system by which balance-of-payments credit is offered. The International Monetary Fund has been relatively weakened, with especially serious implications for the poorest countries. Stabilization at both global and national levels has thus been impaired.

The central focus of economic activity in post-industrial societies is shifting from the manufacturing of objects to the handling of information and knowledge. The power of major transnational firms now rests as much upon their capacities to marshal information and knowledge as upon their traditional role in directly productive activities. There is every indication that the sharpest aspect of competition in the future may be based more on the efficient use of specialized knowledge, information, and new technological capacity for its communication and use than on more traditional factors. Information handling capacity already offers industrialized countries and firms considerable economic and political leverage in North-South interaction. Information vital to developing countries is frequently concentrated in the capitals of the North.

During the first decade of independence for the tropical African states, economic planning has moved through several stages. Before and at the time of independence the development literature still featured debates as to whether or not to plan, and what the role of the government should be in economic development. In Africa these debates were won, hands down, by the planners and by ‘African socialists’ of various types. Within a few years there appeared a host of plan documents responding to the perceived requirements, leading one analyst even to characterise Africa as ‘the continent of economic plans’1 articles on ‘comprehensive economic planning’ and simple econometric models were at that time in fashion. These plans were typically prepared by foreigners with relatively little experience of the countries concerned, and were based upon the scrappiest of data and analysis. While not as elaborate in their technique, or as far removed from reality, as many of their counterparts of the period in Asia and Latin America, these plans tended to be just as lacking in real content, political support, or potential for implementation. Their authors usually departed for home shortly afterwards, leaving the hardpressed decision-makers on the scene (many of whom were themselves expatriates newly arrived in the country) little the wiser.

There has been an extended discussion in universities, governments, and international organisations throughout the post-war years of the potential and the means for increasing the flow of private long-term capital into the under-developed areas. This flow has been intended to ease the immediate constraints, principally those of capital and foreign exchange, upon development in these areas. Yet, in 1966, private foreign investment in the under-developed areas fell by 12 per cent, and by an absolute amount greater than the increase in official aid. This investment is, in any case, highly concentrated in a very few under-developed countries. Since 1964, income payments on earlier private investments have probably exceeded the total inflow of private capital which the developing areas have received.1 What prospects exist for gaining more private capital for the use of the under-developed world?

This conference was the third in a series of biannual conferences organised by academics and civil servants working in agricultural economics in Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania. Delegates from Ghana, Nigeria, Botswana, U.S.A., and the F.A.O. also attended and participated in the discussions. The conference was financed by the Ford Foundation, organised and sponsored by the Economic Research Bureau of the University College, Dar es Salaam, and supported by the three East African Governments.