"Try to Be Happy"

At first, the atmosphere grew so tense that the resplendently robed Honorable Chief Festus Okotie-Eboh. Finance Minister of the federal government of Nigeria, felt obliged to do a bit of prodding. "Why are we so solemn?" he cried. "Let's cheer our speakers and try to be happy!" The 175 delegates to the opening meeting of the newly created U.N. Economic Commission for Africa had first to find out whether they could even get along with one another.

For eight years--fearing that it would become just one more platform for anticolonialist tirades--European colonial powers had opposed setting up a U.N. commission for Africa like those already in existence for Asia, Europe and Latin America. Not until last spring, and after U.S. prompting, did the U.N. finally establish the E.G.A. headquarters in Ethiopia, oldest independent nation on the continent. Membership: six European nations, nine independent African countries, and associates from colonial and trust territories. In a continent with a bewildering array of problems and a disheartening lack of experience, the commission hopes to help raise living standards by pooling economic information and skill.

Open Season. In his welcoming speech, Emperor Haile Selassie insisted that "economic and political progress should go hand in hand." For the next few days it was open season on the Europeans. Outvoted 9 to 6, they got not one single office on the commission. France in particular was constantly scolded for its policy in Algeria. Sometimes the Africans even began squabbling among themselves. But just when the commission seemed about to be killed off before ever getting started, the delegates began to settle down and work together.

Never once did the British allow themselves to be drawn into the political wrangling. Instead, they contented themselves with a mild statement at the end of the meeting explaining that "our silence'' meant, not agreement with the anticolonial remarks, but only a "desire to preserve harmony." When Guinea, the only French territory to vote non to De Gaulle, proposed a resolution asking for special consideration from the U.N. in view of its "desertion" by France, the French merely stared ahead in silence, did not even bother to vote against the resolution. Africa's independent nations were clearly in the saddle, and the representatives of the European powers were resigned to the fact.

Open Doubts. As a result, the commission managed to make plans that in the long run could make the Europeans' life in Africa a good deal simpler. It called for a conference of statisticians to make the first comprehensive survey of the needs of Africa as a whole. It made plans for a study of resources and power, for a board of experts to act as permanent economic advisers, for a training program for Africans, and for ways to attract capital, promote trade, and improve transportation on a continent-wide basis.

"Until this moment," said the commission's able executive secretary, ex-Rhodes Scholar Mekki Abbas of the Sudan, when the program was approved, "I had my doubts about this job."

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