ABSTRACT
The creation of a single unitary state with centralised powers over wide areas and among people who, notwithstanding racial or ethnic affinities, exhibit much regional diversity of characteristics and social heritage, could only be achieved in the short run by aggressive, dictatorial measures, and maintained by the methods of the police state. The colonial heritage will probably leave a permanent influence in part of the continent, first, and most obviously, because it started the process of modernisation in Africa, and, second, because it introduced different forms of culture and different modern languages. Doctrinal elements will continue to play a part in the relationships of the African states, but lines of doctrinal cleavage are likely to be blurred and indistinct. African states may use some of the economic methods used by communist states, but they will do so incompletely and only as part of a structure that, taken as a whole, is incompatible with Russian and Chinese communism.
