Abstract: | This article deals with the set-back to De Gaulle's plans for the community: the break between Soudan and Senegal; the stillborn confederation between French Congo, the Cemtraij African republic, Tchad and Gabon; the demand of independance of the Ivory Coast, Upper Volta, Dahomey and Niger. The big question which faces the all African states, with in or without the community, is whether to follow Houphouet-Boigny in a politically cautious, European-orientated regime, with loose confederalties with neighbours and priority for economic projects over political, or to join in a nascent Guinea-Soudan axis of a more militant kind, looking to the East. A third alternative is to go it alone as Tchad, but this would amount to the 'balkanisation' nobody wants. Map. |