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Salient. An Organ of Student Opinion at Victoria College, Wellington, N.Z. Vol. 19, No. 1. March 2, 1955

"A Poverty-Stricken Continent" — Some Views on Africa

"A Poverty-Stricken Continent"

Some Views on Africa

Professor K. Buchanan, professor of geography at Victoria University College, addressed the students at Curious Cove on the problems of the Commonwealth in Africa. Professor Buchanan deprecated the picture of "Happy, happy Africa."

"It is a poverty-stricken Continent," he said, "pervaded by a deep torment of the spirit, an unease that affects all the people of Africa, black and white."

Introducing his subject, he traced the changes in British colonial policy towards Africa up to the present time, and showed that the present problems facing the Commonwealth in Africa were political, economic and social. Britain was applying the concept of the national state to the plural societies of Africa. This concept produced difficulties both in the communities dominated by white settlers and in those solidly African, but comprising a variety of cultural or ethnic groups. Nigeria, he said, was the typical example of this.

The major economic problem of Africa was the urgent need for capital from outside and equipment for developing Africa's resources.

It was essential, said Professor Buchanan, that Africa should receive a fairer share of the Commonwealth sterling and dollar funds. The transition of the African people from a state of primitive self-sufficiency to an urban industrial state, a process that had taken centuries in Europe, was being telescoped into a lifetime in Africa, he said. How to ease the transition of the African people during this period of rapid change was one of the major social problems facing the Commonwealth today.