ABSTRACT
National aid budgets have been steadily cut back during the world economic recession to the minimum needed to finance national exports. The position of African and other Third World producers will not be truly improved in world markets until people in Africa work together and people in the North succeed in several major actions that go beyond a mere show of solidarity. The very idea of challenging the giant companies’ control over world trade and concealed internal transfers must appear at first sight to be a quite hopelessly utopian dream. If African governments were to unite in pressing for reforms, other Third World countries could join with them and some progress might be made in reforming the Bretton Woods institutions. There is a growing understanding that African ideas and customs are different but are equally valid, in African conditions superior, to those more familiar in Europe.
