Gromyko Anatoly. Africa: Progress, Problems, Prospects (An Analysis of the 1960s-1970s)

Moscow : Progress Publishers, 1981. — 260 p. Much literature on Africa is published in the Soviet Union: in 1981, the USSR Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Africa alone published some twenty books and hundreds of articles on questions of the economic and social development of African countries, of their politics, ideology, and international relations. The scope of research being conducted by Soviet scholars into various questions concerning Africa grows ever broader. This is not surprising. Africa is a dynamic continent. Over the last quarter century the colonial system, in its classical form, has been virtually eliminated there. Fifty independent African states have risen up from the ruins of the colonial empires of yesterday and entered the path of independent development. The position of African countries in world affairs has changed perceptibly in our times. Newly independent states have come into the foreground of international politics. At present they account for one third of the UN’s membership. Serious and _positive political, social, and economic changes are taking place in most of these countries. The need for theoretical generalisation concerning new phenomena and processes in Africa is dictated by the entire present-day political and social situation on the continent and around it. It was precisely this task that the author of this work set himself.