ABSTRACT
Any development plan, whatever geographic scale people want to think about it, concerned with connecting up and integrating a large number of different things, and it is hardly surprising that the 'systems approach' is coming more and more to the fore. One of the strongest advocates of such an integrative approach has been Akin Mabogunje, a geographer with a distinguished record of service in many areas of regional and national planning in Nigeria. In many countries it is a matter of mobilizing the people and the resources for genuine national development, not merely short-term growth, and helping them most effectively to work towards those goals the people want to achieve. But the question of goals raises in turn the values that a people hold, and these should always arise from the particular culture itself, rather than being imposed 'externally'. A poor, traditional and underdeveloped Third World country is considered like a modern and developed country, only at a lower stage.
