This is a podcast from the archives of the BBC Reith Lectures.

This lecture in the series The African Condition, given by Ali Masrui,

was originally broadcast in 1979.

Until the 1970s, the terms poor countries and underdeveloped countries were virtually interchangeable.

But the emergence of oil power has shattered this easy equation.

Virtually all third world countries are still technically underdeveloped, but only some of them are now poor.

South Yemen and Tanzania are still good illustrations of the old equation.

But in the 1970s, it's become difficult to think of Saudi Arabia, for example, as a poor nation.

On the contrary, this is one of the best endowed countries in the world in oil wealth and dollar reserves,

while being at the same time one of the least developed. What is true of Saudi Arabia as a country is substantially true of Africa as a continent. In terms of resources, Africa is one of the best endowed regions of the world, but it is still the least developed of the inhabited continents. This is the pathology of technical backwardness.

A related paradox is that per head of each group's population,

the richest inhabitants of Africa are non-Africans.

The poorest in per capita terms are indigenous Africans themselves.

This is one reason why the highest standards of living are among white people in southern Africa.

This is the pathology of maldistribution.

The third interrelated paradox is that while the continent as a whole is rich in resources,

it is so fragmented that it includes the majority of the poorest nations of the world.

This is the pathology of a fragmented economy.

Let us look at this paradox of a well-endowed continent inhabited by underprivileged natives.

Estimates of Africa's resources are on the whole tentative,

but it's already fair to say that Africa has 96% of the non-communist world's diamonds,

60% of its gold, 42% of its cobalt,

...