ABSTRACT
One way of approaching the question of armaments in relation to African development is to examine first the rationale for African military expenditures and their effect on economic and social development. There are three broad arenas from which the urge for African states to seek arms or military establishments might arise: the outside or non-African world, the African world, and the internal domestic world of each African state. There are several basic elements in the attitude of the majority of black African states towards Southern Africa, and all have military implications, which in turn have expenditure implications. The estrangement, accompanied by mutual threats of military measures, between Uganda and Tanzania from 1971 to 1973 was yet another symptom of the conflict potential of Africa’s state system in the failure of pan-Africanism to make good its promises. There is a related respect in which military disbandment would contribute positively to African development.
