The North–South Dialogue in an Age of Exaggerated Development Ambitions

Abstract

The decades of the 1960s and 70s can be characterised as a period of great excitement and euphoria with regard to expectations for wide-scale economic growth and development in the African Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) group of countries. Despite the vast array of literature on the reasons for the failure of most of these ACP states to achieve development, very little has been written regarding the way initial exaggerated development expectations and ambitions among ACP states contributed to their eventual disappointment. This paper, therefore, discusses the two main sets of factors which contributed to some of these initial development expectations and the general mood of optimism which helped to fuel the mood for radical demands from the developing countries for political and economic change. The discussion takes places with particular reference to the first ACP-EEC Agreement signed in 1975, known as the Lomé Convention, which at the time, was regarded the ‘litmus test’ of North–South relations.