Draft report of the technical preparatory committee of the whole on its third meeting

The document examined the principal characteristics of the developing international crisis and its implication for Africa. It argued that the conventional north/south system of relationships could not, taken solely, offer a viable framework for the implementation of the Lagos Plan of Action. It expressed the opinion that limits to growth in Africa might have actually been set not by the developed countries or foreign transnational corporations but by African policies which, in effect, confined the exploitation of growth potentialities to the production and export by each country of one or two primary commodities. The document maintained that attempts to grapple with the various aspects of the challenge facing policy-makers in Africa could have meaning only if such attempts were organized along the lines of the Lagos Plan of Action.