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FREEDOMWAYS       FIRST QUARTER 1973

fense ("joint defense"), and agreements in the spheres of economics, currency, finance and technical assistance. They involve belonging to the franc area.

  Other agreements, negotiated since independence, express a lesser degree of political cooperation. This is the case in the Ivory Coast, Dahomey, Niger, Mauritania and Togo. In the cases of Upper Volta and Cameroon, joint defense is not the question but only assistance for the training and formation of national armies. The agreements with Mali are only economic and technical.

  These agreements are inequal. They include They include clauses which were imposed which were harmful to the sovereignty of the States and provide a legal basis for French imperialism's privileges. The African states' attempts at independent production and economic cooperation between states came up against French neo-colonialism.

  This orientation explains the policy of isolation directed against Guinea. Modibo Keita's policy in Mali has also aroused French hostility; this was one of the causes of the economic difficulties which brought about the Franco-Malian monetary agreements in 1967, followed a year later by a military coup d'etat. The reorientation of exchanges in the direction of the capitalist countries (twenty percent of foreign trade in 1965, seventy percent in 1969) has put Mali in a dependent position once again. France has regained its dominant position in the country's economy, over half of the imports come from the franc area. Exports have withered away (13.2 billion Mali franc in 1969, and 8.4 in 1970). Debts have risen at the rate of four billion a year. This is therefore a typical case of a rebellious country being brought to its knees by neo-colonialist integration. In Congo-Brazzaville, which remains in the franc area, the leaders have only moved along the way to development by exercising extreme vigilance against the intrigues to which they are subjected.

  What are the means and the results of this defense of French imperialist interest in its traditional African sphere?

  This means that the French government provided virtually no credit for industrialization (over two percent FAC funds for the period 1959-1968) and that it supports agricultural production for export and the infrastructure. Money spent on education is increasing and is as much as a third of the aid, but most of it is used to pay French teachers and not to train African teachers (Guinea has Africanized its trainees). This policy is expensive for the African governments who have to pay the remainder of the cost (sixty percent for the

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