ABSTRACT
Blindness opened the eyes of seven West African governments to the need for united action in the basin of the Upper Volta a decade or so after colonial power had taken a formal departure. Africans have come to realize as well their need jointly to fight diseases not mentioned by Dr Rowe: diseases of malnutrition, such as rickets and pellagra. Political factors lay behind this major failure of the international rescue effort. There is more myth than mystery over why Africans so long suffered disease, poverty and underdevelopment. One of the sad realities for Africans was that the Arab traders who crossed the Sahara in their caravans, back and forth regularly over the centuries, usually left their tools behind. The structure of colonialism ensured for the next seventy years that the underdevelopment of Africans would be perpetuated, so that white men would benefit from Africa's valuable resources, from black labour and from sales to a black captive market.
