African Agricultural Development: The EEC's New Role

The 'Strategic' Approach The apparent agricultural failure of most African developing countries, especially their failure to increase food output per person, has led to a great flowering of 'strategic' proposals. The World Bank's plan for 'accelerated development', known as the Berg Report, advocates not only a sharp rise in the proportion of public outlays (and of international aid) that supports private African agriculturists, but also sharp shifts of the domestic terms of trade in their favour, and heavy concentration on export crops [World Bank 1982a]. The OAU's 'Lagos plan of action', like its offspring in the work of the Southern African Development Coordinating Committee, is orientated to the replacement of food imports, but despite much stress upon agriculture's 'priority' seeks aid above all for new publicly-owned transport links and industrial producers; both emphases might help farmers indirectly, but both are geared primarily towards greater political independence, and towards securing Africa's share in 'targets' set by UNCTAD for growing Third World proportions of industrial production [OAU 1981].