Report of the fourth meeting of the technical committee of experts

Abstract

The first biennial review of Africa's progress during the Second Development Decade which was prepared earlier this year although it was based on incomplete and inadequate data, showed that the overall rate of progress had been below the target growth rate of 6 per cent a year set for the first five years of the decade. The average growth rate achieved was only 4.4 per cent a year although the performance of 5.4 per-cent in 1972 was very much better than in 1971. Poor world trading conditions for many of Africa's basic export commodities, together with the cutback of production of crude petroleum in Algeria and Libya, had caused the poor result in 1971. In 1972 an indifferent agricultural year reduced to a large extent the benefits that would have accrued from the very much improved world trading scene as the countries of Western Europe and the United States of America began to aim at higher growth rates in their-economies to reduce unemployment.