Western Aic (Continued from Preceding Prge) cern should be an accelerated ef- fort in the field of African educa- tion-in our contributions to their universities, in multiplying their technical colleges, in adding train- ed teachers to the African teaching' force. Such universities as that of Ghana or Ibadan or Makerere have their special relationships with London University and they receive intellectual and moral sup- port from the mother institution,I but I do not think there is any doubt that, if we seriously looked at this problem of African educa- tional needs, we would do more than we are doing now, and thati we could do something much more1 systematic and thought-through,9 provided-and this is the point toI which we come back again andI again--provided our effort is not1 simply for one year's lease. Therei is one thing you cannot do, and that is educate a child in one year.4 THEN THERE IS the question of educational exchanges and of enabling Africans to go abroad to train., The consensus of opinion amongi educators in Africa appears to be1 that the results are better if theI overseas study is undertaken at1 the graduate level. If the studentI can be brought to university level in his own country, he gets a sense of his own society, of his own status, of his own possibilities; hea I Still Needed in Africa will profit very much more by his' and of expanded UN Technical later training if he has this solid Services. Might we not also look period of education in his own at a possible coordination of the country. efforts of Western nations to I am sure that the field of edu- provide technicians on a systema- cation is an area in which a more tic basis so that we do not cancel decisive impact could be made each other out, or indulge in than in any other and an impact avoidable overlapping? which would have a speedier and We' might also ask ourselves more direct effect upon the social whether our own foreign services fabric of Africa than any other in the Western world are equipped type of assistance. to fill in these gaps, always re- New Public Hw-ealth Problem foi Yet inevitably there will be a gap before this new trained class is ready to take over. The Ghana government real- istically recognizes this in its de- sire to persuade ex-colonial Brit- ish officials to remain. The same process may soon be observable in French West Africa, because I have the impression that the French African leaders today are probably fully as alive as the gov- ernment of Ghana to the benefit of retaining French administrative officials as servants of the new governments. HOWEVER, every if all the gov- ernments concerned behave with the utmost imagination and generosity, I feel convinced that there are still likely to be posts in the administrative structure which it will not be possible to fill from local or ex-colonial resources. I therefore wonder whether we should not explore the possibilities of, say, a United Nations Inter- national Administrative Service, membering that it is not simply a question of moving a man onto the job for two years and then taking him away again, but of putting in someone who is going to do this longer-term job of help- ing to maintain the framework of social order over the years while Africa, young Africa, grows. It is a broad scale of variety and choice in our Western eco- nomic, industrial and agricultural background that convinces me, if we dedicated ourselves to this pur- pose and saw it as a legitimate concern of our foreign policy, that we could call on infinitely greater resources than the so-called Com- munist world. GIVEN SOME stability of ad- ministration, we can look at the prospects for further economic growth. We come back to the four prime movers of economic develop- ment. Let us take, first of all, export incomes. I believe that the biggest contribution that we can make to UNTIL RECENT TIME malaria was considered one of the chief hindrances to progress in many regions of the world. But with a better knowledge of the biology of the mosquito vectors and the skillful use of insecticides, it became possible to control ma- laria. The disease now considered by many experts as most likely to' retard development in Africa is called human blood fluke, Bilhar- ziasis-or -Schistosomiasis. As im- plied in its common name, this disease results from the presence of trematode worms or "flukes" living in the adult worm stage in the rich venous blood vessels sur- rounding the intestines or around the.-urinary bladder. The eggs produced by the adnt warms escape from the human Human Blood Fluke Has Replaced Malaria cas Major Block to Progress By HENRY VAN DER SCIlALIE incidence is clearly evident; theI Sudan is faced with the problem of checking a situation in whichI human blood fluke is just begin- ning to increase at a steady rate. In many ways both countries are quite similar. For example, al- though the people of- Egypt and the Sudan are ethnically differ- ent; they are for the most part Islamic and ablutions are prac- ticed in both regions. Both are I The African is being educated t well as politically Africa in this area is the biggest contribution we can make to our- selves-and that is not to afford ourselves the luxury of a recession. For the last twelve years during which .the whole Western world has boomed along, Africa has been doing quite nicely. It has been do- ing nicely because everybody else has been doing nicely too. But if the Western world reverts to pro- longed recessions and avoidable slumps it is the primary producers who will take the knock first, be- cause-they are the least protected and it is there that pauses and hesitations at the industrial cen- ter have seismic effects on the out- side world. So I would say that what Africa really needs of the Western world in this matter of export incomes is what in some measure the Western world needs for itself-a reasonably stable upward trend of growth. If we grow, we help to pull Africa up with us, and if we do not grow, then Africa by virtue of its vulnerability, its single-crop economies and so forth, falls quickest off the hook. some are a -HfE N- WHEN WE turn to dynamic agri- culture, I have yet to meet any Ored; some economist interested in Africa who does not believe that the most im- have soft portant and the most useful field for technical assistance and for ouches o ithenvestment of some capital is that of agricultural and extension cke, work. Increased productivity is the pre- peatscondition of genuine agricultural dynamism and without dynamic trimagriculture general economic de- ~A 816.velopment is dubious indeed. But! the truth is that we do not know enough about the conditions of ad- vance in African agriculture., In West Africa very little re- search has been accomplished; yet this is surely one of the areas in which we probably could get more results with perhaps less capital than in any other field. Now, passing on to infrastruc- ture, this, I think, is one of the great fields for future aid. Here is a legitimate and effect- ive sphere for intergovernmental assistance and here, too, in Africa, w _ the needs are vast. For instance, Africa needs a transportation grid and a power grid as a pre-condi- tion of any further genuine eco- nomic advance. 3I MYSELF FEEL that nothing could do more to create a long- term African sense of confidence s in the support and interest of the Western world than to make it r eknown that we were prepared to 'consider a sustained, say a twenty- five year, approach to plans for providing Africa with a power and transportation grid. This is a shorthand way of de- scribing it, but it would entail taking those schemes which are economically sound, which give promise of growth, which open up THE MI o develop his land artistically as and economically. new areas of development and an- nouncing that we are prepared to consider and back them as a sym- bol of our sense of responsibility for the future growth of Africa. Then lastly in the matter of in- dustrialization, although African governments will undoubted- ly sponsor industrial schemes un- der public management-as the government of Uganda is doing today-the area is likely to be one predominantly of private enter- prise. Certainly foreign enterprise has a great part to play if the in- coming companies underline at all points their desire to build up Af- rican entrepreneurial techniques, African management, to go out for African stockholders, to create lo- cal companies and to give what they alone can give-practical training in entrepreneurial and managerial techniques which are not yet familiar or accustomed in most of Africa, but which the Af- ricans want to develop for them- selves and for which they absolute- ly need outside help. AT THIS point, I should perhaps try to widen the canvass a lit- tle. I have talked at length of the needs and possibilities of the Af- rican communities where no spe- cial racial, problems are at issue and tried to suggest that political advance there may outstrip de- velopment resources in capital and trained manpower. But in the booming Southern communities of Africa, where, in spite of the un- certainties of our current reces- sion, the prospects for the continu- ance of rapid economic advance are good, the political outlook is 'more uncertain. I do not bring in South Africa which has cut itself off from the main current of African advance. But the Rhodesias with their 'white settler communities are committed to the idea of partner- ship between white and black. A multi-racial university has been established as a symbol of that in- tent. And in the Congo, the raising of the African to full membership in a modern community is a goal to which many present policies -such as progressive urbanization, expanding educational and indus- trial opportunities without a color bar-all contribute. The question in these communi- ties-and indeed, though it is de- nied, in South Africa as well-is whether- the wealth that is being so rapidly increased can be shared equitably and in time with the Af- rican majority and an African body of educated men and women. created with whom partnership becomes a genuine responsibility. NOW ALTAOUGH the problems in.these two large areas of Af- rica-the black areas of moderate growth and the booming south-= (Concluded on Next Page) FOUR programs were then under- taken concurrently to test whether it would be possible to reduce the infection rate. These four programs were nor- mally carried by groups in differ- ent parts of the country and at different times. The teams organ- ized for work in the Quliub proj- ect engaged in: 1) medical work involving measuring incidence and treating with antimony drugs; 2) sanitation involved providing wells and latrines; 3) health education was carried on to inform the peo- ple of the villages about the dan- gers of contaminating water and being exposed to infection; and 4) biology of the snails - a program in which the distribution of in- fected snails was determined and the snails of the tract were then eradicated with a molluscicide (copper sulphate). Incidentally, the first treatment of this tract cost about thirteen thousand dollars for the chemical alone. The next year there were half as many snails but just as many sites of snail infection; in the third year conditions were back to the state they were before any treatment! IT IS CLEAR that at present it is not possible to control schis- tosomiasis even when all known measures are applied. The inci- dence in the Nile Delta is known to be at least 60 per cent with the people suffering from both species of human blood fluke. On the other hand, the inci- dence for about 500 miles along the Nile from Cairo to the Aswan Dam is now only about 6 per cent and this region is infested only with the vesicular type. If Egypt succeeds in building the new High Dam at Aswan the upper Nile region will have per- ennial irrigation and with that system the area will become in- fested as heavily as is the Delta. The question might well be raised whether ill health will not take away most of the advantages gained from a four crop system possible with perennial irrigation. the silk shir a solid hit on that share. But, both species of blood fluke are now slowly climbing in incidence even though effort was made to keep the dis- ease from getting established there. It is now at 10 per cent and is climbing at a steady rate. Plans are under way to put an- other million acres under culti- vation. T HE SUDANESE are very pro- gressive and are making good use of the funds they earn. Whole villages are being reconstructed with many improvements in such problem areas as sanitation. The Gezira scheme is typical of many similar projects through- out Africa. Most such programs are doomed to failure unless means for controlling human blood fluke can be developed. At present there is no drug that is satisfactory as a cure for human schistosomiasis. A num- ber of well known laboratories Women washing clothes in an African stream can easily be infected by schistosomiasis. The disease is prevalent where water is found. body with the feces or in the urine. When the eggs reach water in nature (canals, drains, ponds) a smnall larva hatches and it pene- trates certain species of snails. AFTR ABOUT a month .of de- velopment irf the snail, an- other free swimming larva (a cer- carium) is released. Humans in contact with water containing cer- carie are then liable to infection. These minute larvae, which are hardly visible to the naked eye, bore into the body of people ex- p~osed to infection by drinking, swimming, irrigating fields, wash- mg clothes, watering the gamoosa, performing ablutions, and so on. It is now known that this blood fluke was widespread throughout Africa for manycenturies. Eggs of Bilharzia worms were found in the intestines of mummies in Egypt. In many undeveloped regions this disease is usually in a latent form and the incidence is often relatively low (about 5 per cent). But when areas hitherto wild and uncultivated become subject to intensive cultivation and irriga- tion schemes and when water pow- er developments are initiated, the incidence of this disease begins to rise at an alarming rate. The in- cidence can rise to a level at which the ill health produced may well cancel out the benefits pro- duced by the agricultural develop- ments. AT PRESENT two countries .in Africa serve very well to il- lustrate these extremes in the growth and development of Bil- harziasis: Egypt and the Sudan. In Egypt the harmful effects of the disease with its unusually high Henry van der Schalie hi professor of zoology and Cur. ator_ of Mollusks in the m' seum of Zoology.,, mainly agricultural with cotton the main crop. Both are depend- ent on the Nile for the water used in their irrigation programs and these waters harbor the same vec- tor snails and the inhabitants are subject to both species of Schis- tosomiasis. Y ET, THE STATUS of human blood fluke in these regions is strikingly different. While Egypt clearly shows the adverse conditions brought about by Bilharziasis, the Sudan is faced with the problem of having the benefits of a wonderful irrigation scheme cancelled out by the dis- ease situation that can develop there, The struggle against Bilharzia- sis inEgypt has been long and dif- ficult. It is estimated that at least half of the population is afflicted with it. A special project was under- taken between 1951 and 1954 in a 5,000 acre tract on the Delta about 12 kilometers north of Cairo. Following a house to house survey to register all the inhabitants of the five main villages, it was de- termined that more than half of the 32,000 inhabitants were in- fected. (s N i iA tc 11 fir ft hi ai es cc ai ew re f w in ss bi ei lij w to R THE ENGLISH started a very successful irrigation project known as the Gezira Scheme. A large canal which parallels the Blue Nile was constructed about 40 years ago; a million acresI were planted to cotton and otherI crops. This region with only 16 inches ofrrainfall has a climax flora of scrub acacia and was in- habited by only a few nomatic bedouin people. It has now been transformed into a remarkablyj successful project with a popula- tion of 300,000 and with an eco- nomic development that is the envy of many other African countries. The profits of the scheme are shared so that 40 per cent stays with the company, the sharecrop- pers get another 40 per cent, and the government receives 20 per cent. Virtually all of the govern- mental activities are supported 4 I edited cilass ics Sign fic the soT I Co0/ state and Nl DAILY MAGAZINE )AY, Y22, 1