Crystal ball gazing is hardly the province of social scientists. The best one can do, in attempting to assess the prospects for real economic growth by the year 2000, is to examine the contradictory trends and struggles shaping the political economy of Africa and the world today, and suggest potential alternative outcomes. Even the possibilities are obscure.What is clear is that, despite over ten years of independence for over 40 African countries, the majority of African peoples still confront the overriding problem of poverty. Living on a continent endowed with extensive mineral agricultural resources, they still suffer from among the lowest per capita incomes and the highest mortality rates in the world.
William Van Royen: The Agricultural Resources of the World (Prentice-Hall, Inc., New York), 1954. 58 p., 383 fig.