On Growth Two

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17. Léopold Sédar Senghor

Léopold Sédar Senghor was born October 9, 1906. He attended the Lycée in Dakar and the University of Paris. After several teaching assignments in France, he became a member of the Constituent Assemblies in that country (1945-1946). From 1946 thru 1958 he served as deputy from Senegal to the National Assembly in Paris. In 1960 he became the first President of the free African Republic of Senegal and leader of the Partie Union Progressiste (PFA). In 1965 he was awarded the Dag Hammerskjöld prize. President Senghor attends the meetings of the Club of Rome. He is a well-known poet and has published among other literary works, Chants d'ombres, Hosties Noires, and Nocturnes.

What was your reaction when you became familiar with the report published by the Club of Rome, which has, in the meantime, become common knowledge?

My first reaction was a positive one, because I had already recognized the dangers of growth, for growth had been cultivated at the expense of development. I once said to President John F. Kennedy, I think it was during my visit to America in 1961, ‘You are beaten in advance by the Soviets because you waste too much. For instance, you are constructing buildings with a height of hundreds of meters and all this while your reserves of raw material are limited.’ Because I know what wastages are rampant in the Western world, I have welcomed the publication of this report. I first read the English and then the French edition. I made extensive notes.

Do you believe that this shocking report had better not yet be published on the African continent because, as a Nigerian scholar advised, Africa was not yet ripe for it?

I believe indeed that the report by the Club of Rome is first of all meant for the Western world. It is a problem of the West. As I stressed before, there is too much waste. Western man stuffs himself with fat and sugar: we have not yet reached that stage. We need a minimum of growth. In spite of this, I

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believe that the report is also useful to Africa because it draws our attention to the fact that quantitative economic growth is by no means sufficient and that our attention also has to be drawn to qualitative growth. The report of the Club of Rome contains much food for thought, also for us. I have therefore given it a great deal of attention. It is a fact that we followed a policy as indicated by the club long before the publication of the report. For instance, in 1972 we spent thirty-three percent of our budget on matters such as education and general training, in other words, on cultural activities, whereas our defense only got twelve percent of the budget.

In the Ivory Coast 500 million dollars will be spent by 1980 to educate young people through television. There appears to be a shortage of teaching staff in Africa. What is the situation in Senegal?

In a way it can be compared to the situation in other African countries. However, we do not use television education, as is done in Nigeria and the Ivory Coast. We use practical secondary education. The reason is that our problem is the following: We are unable to let all children that have left primary school have secondary education. But, in spite of this, we believe that they should be able to go to school up to their sixteenth year. This means that after primary school we have to arrange for their further schooling, lasting four years. We have found the solution in practical secondary education. Our aim is to complete the general knowledge of these children and at the same time teach them a job so that they can become good fishermen, shepherds, farmers, bricklayers, or furniture makers. This confronts us with the task of building up an entirely new educational system, and in view of this we have applied to the World Bank to obtain credits which are necessary for applying this new pedagogical method. Practical secondary education will be extended to eighty percent of the children who have left primary school. The remaining twenty percent will be able to follow higher education. As you see, we are therefore working in a different way than is being done in the Ivory Coast. However, if television teaching should lead to positive results - and we are closely following the developments in the Ivory Coast as far as this is concerned - we will undoubtedly change over to their method.

This morning, when you brought up the subject of your son, who is studying music in the United States, your remarks led me to ask you how you see the future of African young people.

I am an optimist by nature. I believe that all problems can be solved as long as they are systematically and rationally studied and no short-term

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solution is considered. We aim at raising the per capita income of the population, which was 200 dollars the year we achieved independence, and which has now risen to 243 dollars, to 600 dollars by the year 2000 so as to enable us to enter the industrial period by that time. We also wish to make economic and cultural developments run parallel to each other but in a different way than is customary in Europe. In Europe the aim is to enable all children to receive compulsory free and public education, whereas we can only allow forty percent of our children to go to school in spite of our spending thirty-three percent of our national budget on education and general training. In our practical secondary education we are trying to find a means of enabling our children, both those who have been in school and those who have been unable to do so, to achieve further training. In addition, we created in all provincial districts - each district numbers about twenty thousand inhabitants - a district expansion center where the younger generation can learn modern agricultural methods, taught in the African languages: for instance, the use of selective seeding, harvesting corn, working with plows drawn by oxen, operating sowing machines, and so on. As you will understand, we have every hope of being able to keep our promises, all the more so as we have found bituminous oil below the bottom of the sea along our coast, even though its exploitation is not yet profitable. In addition, we have iron and we will construct flood-control dams. We therefore think that we can reasonably expect to be able to enter the industrial era by the year 2000. Then we will be ready to compete with values from other parts of the world, particularly from Europe, but always without denying our own African background.

You are thinking of the spiritual and psychological values of your people?

Exactly - of the psychological values of our people. Since achieving our independence we have already created a Senegalese art of painting, sculpture, and textile designs. In the middle of June, 1974, an exhibition of Senegalese art will be held in Paris which will afterward go to Stockholm, Helsinki, Vienna -

Also to the Netherlands?

I will be able to talk about this when I pay an official visit to your country during the latter part of 1974.

The Emperor of Ethiopia, Haile Selassie, once said to the Organization for African Unity that he was of the opinion the African continent would be free from all foreign domination by 1983. Do you believe that as well?

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Apart from South Africa and Rhodesia, yes. I believe that the Portuguese colonies will be free and independent before the year 1983.¹ As far as Rhodesia and South Africa are concerned, this process will probably last a little longer, but, in spite of this, I believe that by the year 2000 all Africa will be free. However, I do not mean to say that we intend to drive out the whites. The Africans have solemnly declared in the Lusaka Declaration that the white people and particularly the white people of South Africa and Rhodesia have the same rights as the black people, the Arabs, and the Berbers. However, we are not prepared to grant additional rights to the white population. In other words, when I said that South Africa and Rhodesia will be liberated by the year 2000, I mean that around this time they will have become democratic states.

The Club of Rome has received an invitation from the President of Mexico to hold its 1975 meeting in Mexico. Will you go there?

When I have time, I shall be glad to go to Mexico. All the more so since I am following developments in Mexico with a great deal of interest. For Mexico is an integrated society, a society which consists of eighty-five percent of various races of peoples. This is in my opinion an extremely interesting situation because, after all, all great cultures are mixed cultures.

1 This interview took place a few months prior to the coup d'état in Lisbon in 1974.