The Commission for Technical Co-operation in Africa, 1950–65

Abstract

General Smuts was one of the first to draw attention to the diverse and often conflicting principles applied to Africa by the various European colonial powers. In his Rhodes Memorial Lecture delivered at Oxford in 1929, Smuts made a plea for a survey of the whole situation to find a way to exchange information about Africa. This proposal developed into Lord Hailey's African Survey, published in 1936. After World War II, European governments began to think seriously of co-ordinating their efforts in Africa. In 1945 the French and the British engaged in mutual discussions and were joined two years later by the Belgians, the Portuguese, the South Africans, and the Rhodesians. Scientists working in Africa expressed the need for a framework for co-operation at the Royal Society's Empire Scientific Conference held in London in 1946. This led to the convening of the African Regional Scientific Conference in 1949, where scientists working in nearly every country in Africa south of the Sahara met to review the role, problems, and possibilities of co-operation.2