ABSTRACT
In 1990 it was just on forty years since the first African colony emerged to independence from the colonial systems of Europe. That country was Libya, and the independence which it gained had to be at best a partial one. Many changes and upheavals lay unavoidably ahead; but this has had to be true, and remains true today, of every country in the black continent. Its peoples have had to cope with great political problems of adjustment, as well as harsh economic problems. These derive from the legacies of the past as well as from the conflicts of the present; and in a continent of such rich diversity of culture and experience, it cannot b~ surprising that human disasters have been added to natural disasters.
