ABSTRACT
Overseas contacts have become an increasingly vital factor in economic growth in the developing countries, and the land-locked states have to increase the capacity of their trade routes to avoid economic stagnation. The general inadequacy of the West African communications network makes competition for the limited facilities between neighbouring states inevitable. During the colonial period the federal organization of French West and Equatorial Africa meant that such friction as occurred was internal, but with the attainment of independence there has developed an understandable hyper-sensitivity on questions of national sovereignity, and competition has become a matter of political rivalries. Ultimately, the transportation problems of the land-locked states will be solved only by large-scale regional co-operation. The ease with which political associations makes it reasonable to assume that the necessary co-operation will be most fruitful and most stable where it is founded on basic economic projects involving the active participation of adjacent countries.
