| | Recent issues of ROAPE have carried timely articles on the post-cold war developments and their effect on the economic and political processes in Africa, on the debt crisis, on the so-called structural adjustment programmes, the consequent crisis manifest in the fall in the living standards of the popular masses and the erosion of achievements in health, education etc. The gap between the rich and the poor, the gap between the South and the North are ever widening. Dependence on external handouts has increased and external agencies - the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and some NGOs - and western governments are increasingly setting the agenda for Africa. Pessimism in the West on the future of Africa is all pervasive. The sovereignty of African states has been gravely eroded (Hanlon, 1991, Tandon, 1991). Already in the advanced capitalist countries, particularly the US, imperial arrogance has reached an all time high. D G Dubois (1993) cites examples in The New York Times Magazine. It asks whether Africa is fit to govern itself - whether it is not yet opportune to recolonise. |
