Comprehension of most of the contemporary events and developments in sub-Saharan Africa requires that they be explained in the larger context of the modern world system. Specifically, conflict within and between African nations —often involving various kinds of outside aid, including the use of foreign troops—and racial conflict in Southern Africa could be better understood if they were treated under larger categories related to topics in international relations. Some of the categories would be: Africa’s strategic importance to the superpowers vis-à-vis the Indian Ocean and the Horn of Africa; the extension of support related to racial community; the importance of African natural resources; the dynamics of African internal politics and their aussenpolitic in relation to superpower ideologies; and various forms of development strategies utilized by African nations.

After winning a war of national liberation, FRELIMO faces the vexing question of whether socialism now can be established. With respect to Guinea-Bissau, Amilcar Cabral emphasized: ‘This depends on the instruments used to effect the transition to socialism; the essential factor is the nature of the state....“ No doubt his statement was premised on the belief that socialism begins with the conquest of the state by the producing classes. They must seize the state apparatus to defeat the ruling class whose power is concentrated there. Both the means of coercion and the forces that reproduce the system itself are part of this domain. It is only by gaining control of state power, which is a political act, that the working classes can subsequently organize a socialist economy.

With different names and under different guises ethnicity is old. Despite often drastic changes in the world around it, it remains in most places a lasting vessel containing and fusing individual and collective identities. Words like traditional and primordial are so frequently used to describe it that they now seem almost synonymous with it. Little wonder. As terms deriving their force from their connotation of strong basic emotional attachment and implicit shared commitment, ‘they suggest the sources of ethnicity’s pulling power.

Resting on language, place, faith, phenotype, origin, and passages through common glory or common disaster, ethnicity encapsulates and summarizes a near infinity of spoken and unspoken clues and assumptions which serve to set apart those who know and feel them from those who do not.

On June 25, 1975, following ten years of armed struggle by the Mozambican people against Portuguese colonialism, the People’s Republic of Mozambique was born. Led by the Front for the Liberation of Mozambique (FRELIMO), which was formed out of the merger of three nationalist organizations in 1962, the Mozambican people had seen many social, political, and economic changes come to the liberated areas in northern Mozambique long before the formal declaration of national independence. FRELIMO, even during the struggle, had begun to confront the legacy of over 400 years of Portuguese colonialism and systematic exploitation and underdevelopment of Mozambique’s human and natural resources.

The population of Africa in 1977 is estimated to be 423 million, which is about 10.3 percent of the world population. For a quarter of the world’s land area, that is a small population.

Sources: Willcox, Durand, United Nations, PRB.

Africa’s share of world population declined between 1650 and 1920, partly because the population of Europe and the Americas was increasing gradually through factors associated with the Industrial Revolution, and partly because of the ravages of the slave trade and the European colonial pacification measures. Since the 1920s, however, Africa’s population has been growing fast, and its share of world population could reach 13 percent by the year 2000.

On June 25, 1975, Mozambique became independent. The transfer of power from Portugal to FRELIMO (The Mozambican Liberation Movement) marked the first phase of national liberation. FRELIMO, unlike many nationalist movements whose exclusive concern was to capture the colonial state, emphasized that independence marked only the beginning of a longer process to dismantle exploitative institutions and transform basic economic and social relationships. The new era of “People’s Democratic Revolution” based on socialist principles envisioned “the construction in Mozambique of a society ... where the material living conditions of the people are constantly improving and where their social needs are increasingly satisfied.”

The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) administers a number of programs which involve African countries. These programs range in scope from direct food aid to foreign market development to technical assistance. USDA’s largest responsibility concerning Africa is the administration of the Public Law 480 (P.L. 480) programs in conjunction with the Agency for International Development. In Fiscal Year 1976, USDA spent or helped manage the spending of $349,524,000 in Africa, of which $345,063,000 fell under P.L. 480. Because the P.L. 480 programs are so extensive, and are funded with money appropriated to AID, they are discussed in their own separate section. In this section, USDA programs, aside from P.L. 480, are reviewed.

The population of Africa is roughly estimated to be 300,000,000 and believed to be growing at a very high rate, perhaps as much as 3 percent per annum. If these figures are accurate, Africa will have a population of over one-half billion by the year 2000. In light of this prospect, a question asked more from desperation than curiosity is whether these millions can all be fed, at least enough to avert mass starvation and pandemic malnutrition. Paul Ehrlich and others have argued it is not possible. “The battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970’s the world will undergo famine, hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death.”

A striking aspect of the on-going revolution in Mozambique and Guinea-Bissau is the insistence on the need for the liberation of women to be an explicit and integral part of that process. “Liberation of women,” reads an oft-quoted statement of Samora Machel, FRELIMO president, “is a fundamental necessity for our revolution; a guarantee of its continuity and a precondition for victory.” In a similar vein, Amilcar Cabral, assassinated leader of PAIGC, used to state firmly that their revolution could not be successful unless it ensured the full participation of women, or, “In Guinea-Bissau we say that women are fighting two colonialisms; one against the Portuguese and the other against men.”

Within the Department of Commerce, the Domestic and International Business Administration, the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and the Bureau of the Census have ongoing involvement in Africa and African affairs. NOAA and the Bureau of the Census operate in Africa as well as in Washington.

The Domestic and International Business Administration puts out information on economic and marketing conditions in African countries in two series of annual publications: Foreign Economic Trends and Their Implications for the United States (FETs) and Overseas Business Reports (OBRs). Both of these series are published in conjunction with the U.S. Foreign Service.

Africa is now the least urbanized of the continents but is becoming more so at one of the fastest rates in the world. The history of urbanization in Africa predates the birth of Christ; it may have developed as early as 3500 B.C. in the flood plain of the lower Nile for control and administration of the Nile Valley by the Pharaohs, though most of the ancient and pre-colonial African urban centers are now insignificant towns and some have become extinct. Between 1500 B.C. and 500 A.D., the Mediterranean coast of North Africa saw the creation of many cities, which flourished because of trade between the Phoenicians and Carthaginians.

Our schools, our syllabuses, our independence—without which we would not be here—are the fruit of scarifice, of the struggle of generations of our ancestors, of our grandparents, of our parents. They are the fruit of Revolution.

To the students we say: you are those who continue the Revolution. We leave in you all our hopes, the hopes of the future of our country. But in order that you can continue the Revolution, you must assume the deep significance of your mission as students. You must understand that the school where you study is the fruit of the blood of sacrifice of our People.

The following information was received from the Department of Defense (DOD). Since no narrative information was provided, the material is reproduced exactly as received. Both dollars figures and personnel classification codes appear under the heading “Annual Costs” below. A key to DOD’s personnel classification code was requested but not received.

A volume published some years ago, called How to Lie with Statistics, took an extremist view of the problem raised by its title. Unreliability of statistics is my starting point for a necessarily brief analysis of what appears a significant problem for sub-Saharan Africa: how can Africa develop in the interests of its own people, as distinct from the largely European beneficiaries of the African economy today; and how can “development” take place, as opposed to mere “growth”?

The distinctions between development and growth have been analyzed penetratingly in, for example, Basil Davidson’s Can Africa Survive? and in the articles in Africa in the Seventies and Eighties, edited by Frederick Arkhurst, especially in the editor’s comments.

The challenges ahead for Mozambique as it engages in cultural transformation as well as in other areas of fundamental change are enormous. But the record of conquests and victories over the last 15 years has been equally enormous and remarkable. The Mozambicans are determined and confident in their ability to build a new and revolutionary people’s culture, based on the worker-peasant alliance, transforming antiquated and exploitative culture into one which allows for a rich blossoming of the human personality and potential. In this confidence and determination, there may be lessons for us all.