ABSTRACT
In this book we have unashamedly taken an environmental and resource management perspective of the African continent. We adopted this viewpoint firstly because the fundamentals of African development are at least partly rooted in the characteristics of the resource base and secondly because these fundamentals are often ignored or at least misstated. There are clearly complex factors at work in the conditioning of any particular country or continent to its current economic and social situations. We have tried to introduce some of these factors but have clearly not presented a total view of development issues in Africa. Rather, we have tried to contribute a resource management perspective to the pressing development problems of the continent.
