Africa: Casebook of Success

In a decade of fiery anticolonialism, nearly every European colonial power has felt the sting of Black Africa's invective. One unlikely exception is General Francisco Franco's Spain, which still presides over a small African colonial empire of 120,000 sq. mi. and 1,400,000 people. Spain's African provinces—Spanish Sahara, Spanish Guinea, the Canary Islands and three scattered coastal outposts—stand out as a rare casebook of how to win friends and create prosperity on a violently turbulent continent. Now Spain is preparing to grant independence by July 15 to the most prosperous and politically mature of its African possessions, Spanish Guinea.

Acquired in piecemeal fashion over the past 500 years, Spain's African empire languished in neglect until after the Spanish Civil War, when the new government began showing interest in its overseas possessions. Aid and advice have been flowing from Madrid ever since, but recently Franco has stepped up both, partially as insurance against possible disorders and partly to help Spain win African allies in its bid to recover Gibraltar from Britain.

Working Off Steam. Today, the brightest jewel in Spain's African crown is Spanish Guinea, which Consists of the verdant, volcanic island of Fernando Poo, a few other smaller islands and the larger, rain-forest mainland province of Rio Muni. Thanks to steady help from Madrid, Fernando Poo boasts bountiful harvests of coffee, bananas and cocoa. It has a model road system, one of Africa's highest rates of primary school attendance (89%) and per capita income ($246)—and probably its biggest leisure class. When the Spanish government gave the island's Bubi tribesmen their own farms, many of the placid, easygoing natives simply leased the land to Spanish and Portuguese settlers, then sat back and began taking in income. The settlers, in turn, imported Nigerian laborers, who now make up two-thirds of Fernando Poo's 60,000 population. Other mainlanders from as far away as Sierra Leone moved to the island to set up business. Today, hundreds of the island's people are wealthy, dress formally for dinner and send their children off to Spain for college.

Along the way, Fernando Poo pulled steadily ahead of timber-and coffeegrowing Rio Muni, sharpening a longtime rivalry between the two provinces. But, departing from his policy in Spain, where politics remain tightly controlled, Franco has permitted Spanish Guineans to form at least half a dozen noisy political parties to work off their steam. Many politicians in Fernando Poo want the island to remain part of Spain. Those in Rio Muni want independence, but they also hope to keep the $7,300,000 a year in export subsidies and $670,000 a year in budget support that Spain now provides. "Guineans do not want their independence to resemble a bottle of euphoria," says champagne that Bonifacio Ondó evaporates in Edu, 48, Prime Minister of Spanish Guinea and the man most likely to lead the new nation.