Political Awakening of Black Africa

Report Outline
Wide Current Ingterest In Tropical Africa
Progress Along Road to Self-Government
United States and Lands of Black Africa

Wide Current Ingterest In Tropical Africa

Black afeica—an area between the Tropic of Cancer and the Tropic of Capricorn which is three times the size of the United States—has been taking an increasingly prominent place in the world's news. Evolution of the Gold Coast and British Togoland into Ghana, an independent member of the British Commonwealth of Nations, has dramatized a snowballing movement toward self-government in what used to be the darkest part of the Dark Continent.

The European powers which still have colonies in Africa —Belgium, Britain, France, Portugal, and Spain—are all facing the necessity of adjusting to the drive for political independence, which has been gaining momentum at a startling pace. In the meantime, the United States and the Soviet Union are beginning to compete for the favor of the 140 million people who inhabit a region that is rich in mineral resources.

Nixon's Recent Tour of Middle and North Africa

Vice President Nixon's attendance a month ago at Ghana's inauguration as a state, and his tour of seven other countries or colonies in Middle and North Africa, demonstrated the high degree of significance attached to the awakening continent by the United States. When Nixon departed from Washington, Feb. 28, he said that Africa's future political course might well be “decisive in the struggle which is taking place today between the forces of freedom and the forces of slavery.”