Angol
This brilliant synthesis summarizes in a few pages the eventful history of the modern republic of Dahomey, recognized on the international scene as the sick child of Africa. Professor Dov Ronen makes a severe diagnosis of the disease from which this country suffers, tracing it to the tragic consequences of the slave trade and French colonization. According to him, the chronic political instability of Dahomey during the first twelve years of its independence is only the reflection of the inadequacy of the imported modern political institutions with the African tradition in which the overwhelming majority of the population still lives. As an antidote to this political bankruptcy, Dov Ronen advocates the use of traditional institutions as the basis for authentic development. This recommendation, made at a time when the Dahomean elite, fleeing from the shadow of its abominable history, threw itself wholeheartedly into the arms of a foreign ideology, takes on a premonitory meaning in retrospect.
