Lanterna Rally

Author: United States. Agency for International Development

Publisher:

Published: 1979

Total Pages: 172

ISBN-13:

In March 1979 the US Agency for International Development presented a voluminous report (39 volumes) to the Congress. The report consists of study papers on economic sectors, problem areas and nine individual countries in Southern Africa, prepared by consultants and contractors from a wide range of firms and academic institutions. The summary report is an overall document focusing on regional development prospects and priorities for US assistance. It contains some useful data, but suffers from inadequate consultation with the governments or liberation movements of several of the countries (Angola, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Namibia) as well as from lack of explicit discussion of political constraints to development, economic independence and a strategy for meeting "basic needs". This is particularly evident in the report on Namibia, which is very much a US perspective of what the needs of the Namibian people are and what opportunities an independent Namibia opens for the US. The study is based on the assumption that Namibia is likely to receive foreign assistance if the new government is acceptable to the UN "as well as the US and other Western powers", and that "a gradual and orderly disentanglement of the links between the two countries (Namibia and South Africa) could be accomplished without affecting Namibia's development". The strength of the report lies in the identification of some of the main economic constraints, as well as in the discussion of the potentially vital role an independent Namibia could play in a regional strategy. When it comes to specific recommendations for economic policies and priorities of assistance, the report can be regarded as a prescription for a capitalist-oriented course with more emphasis on export potential than on internal needs. There is a special review section on the reports in Rural Africana, nos. 4-5, 1979: p. 131-59. (Eriksen/Moorsom 1989).