Restructuring Transnational Mineral Agreements

Abstract

Within our own generation no less than 70 countries have attained political independence and joined the international community of nation states. Third World countries now command a preponderant majority in the United Nations and other world bodies, yet it is trite knowledge that the attainment of political independence and the proliferation of nation states in the Third World have had little impact on the world economic power structure. Access to the corridors of the United Nations and other international bodies has not necessarily assured effective participation in the shaping and restructuring of the world economic system. After the first flush of exhilaration over political independence, developing countries have now grasped the sobering fact that sovereignty is not synonymous with economic self-sufficiency or development and that the rich industrialized countries still substantially control the production and distribution of the world’s resources. An analysis of European direct investment in Africa shows that by the end of 1967 the former metropolitan powers still dominated investments in their former colonies. (The percentage of the total foreign investments in these African countries held by the former imperial powers is illustrated in table 1.)