ABSTRACT
In a curious manner Africa’s relations with the Soviet Union have quite often been part of Africa’s relations with the Western world. American distrust of non-alignment in Africa was aggravated for a while precisely by trends within Africa towards a one-party system and the espousal of socialism at least rhetorically. Both the USA and the Soviet Union have been encouraging African countries to be more self-reliant; and both have even invoked the profit motive in some form as a basis for economic reciprocity between the donor country and the receiving country. More significant than Soviet involvement in the Sudan over the years was the dramatic phase of Soviet participation in the Angolan civil war after the collapse of the Portuguese Empire. The ideological and political competition for the control of the world between the Soviet Union and the Western world gathered momentum, and the colonies benefited precisely from the tensions of the competition between the giants.
