This conference was attended by 115 participants, representing 29 member governments, three other governments and the Holy See, six units of the U.N. family, and three other organisations. Reviewing the situation over the past two years, it was clear that agriculture was not yet playing its full part in the economic and social development of Africa. The role of agriculture is to provide food and raw materials for domestic consumption; to earn and save foreign exchange; to supply capital, labour, and raw materials for the development of other sectors of the economy; and to ensure the market for other industries. Yet, taking the region as a whole, the rate of increase in production, and especially in food production, appeared to have slowed down in recent years, and had barely sufficed to keep up with the growth of population. Food imports had increased rapidly in some countries, using up scarce supplies of foreign exchange that were needed to import capital goods essential for the execution of economic development plans. Earnings from agricultural exports, which account for the great bulk of the foreign exchange earnings of almost all African countries, had risen only slowly, and the trend had been aggravated by lower prices for such commodities on world markets, and by a rise in prices of the industrial products imported by African countries.