After the Second World War, colonial powers abandoned the policy of financial self-sufficiency for their colonies and adopted what the passage calls responsible colonialism. Britain’s Colonial Development and Welfare Act of 1945 and France’s FIDES programme of 1946 channelled development funds into the colonies. These programmes financed development while also creating markets for metropolitan goods and increasing colonial powers’ ability to influence investment policy.

The post-war boom in industrialised market economies stimulated rapid growth in African economies, but it did not remove their peripheral position. Their economic dependence intensified, while the colonial pattern of production remained largely intact. Financial transfers from metropolitan countries to the colonies were especially substantial between 1946 and 1956; France alone invested 579 billion French francs of public funds in its colonies between 1952 and 1957.

The boom in demand for tropical primary products weakened towards the end of the 1950s as world economic depression reduced commodity prices. Most African countries became independent during the first half of the 1960s while inheriting colonial economic structures and facing weaker economic performance than in the previous decade. Governments therefore confronted both the political responsibilities of independence and immediate financial pressures caused by declining export earnings.

Development planning became the principal instrument chosen by African governments to counter adverse terms of trade, accelerate growth, and promote social and economic transformation. The example of centrally planned socialist economies, particularly the USSR, encouraged reliance on centralised planning, while the United Nations’ designation of the 1960s as its First Development Decade reinforced this policy orientation. The First Decade established a minimum target of five per cent annual GDP growth, preferably achieved through comprehensive planning.

The 1970s were proclaimed the Second United Nations Development Decade, with a target of at least six per cent annual GDP growth at constant prices. Its strategy also required annual growth of four per cent in agricultural output and eight per cent in manufacturing, together with rising domestic savings and limited import expansion. In practice, a widening gulf emerged between planning and implementation, and many development plans preserved rather than transformed the colonial pattern of production.

African economic performance deteriorated sharply in the mid-1970s. Real GDP growth fell to two per cent in 1975, largely because of the world recession, and subsequently became negative in a number of countries. Inflation and recession reduced the value of export commodities and government export revenue, while wage pressures, consumer subsidies, deficit financing, and external borrowing intensified fiscal stress. External debt rose from an estimated US$5 billion in 1965 to about US$22 billion in 1973 and US$30 billion in 1975.

The structure of developing African economies changed significantly between 1960 and 1975, although the transformation was not fundamental. Agriculture’s share of GDP fell from 41.3 per cent to 30.3 per cent, while mining rose from 4.4 to 7.3 per cent, manufacturing and electricity from 10 to 12 per cent, construction from 5 to 8 per cent, and public administration and defence from 8 to 12 per cent. Agriculture nevertheless remained the dominant sector in most developing African countries.