Word: volta
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...million Volta River Project will eventually turn Ghana into West Africa's major producer of electric power and irrigate 6,000 sq. mi. of new farmland. But not for many years will there be customers for all the juice it will generate. All in all, Nkrumah's reckless spending has brought Ghana as close to bankruptcy as any nation can get. Foreign currency reserves were wiped out long ago, and the nation's foreign debt now totals a staggering $1 billion, most of it in short-term loans...
...this policy, O'Brien said, is the CIA. He explained that there have recently been four successful coups in African nations, and that in three of the four cases the first act of the new government was to expel the Chinese embassy. "In the remaining case--that of Upper Volta--there was no Chinese embassy to expel," he added. While unable to implicate the CIA with any certainty, O'Brien did say that "when a government expels the Chinese embassy it doesn't do so in an inscrutable and spontaneous demonstration of Sinophobia...
...Dahomey, Dec. 22; Central African Republic, Jan 1; Upper Volta...
Trouble had to come, and when it did, the military was the logical, cohesive force to assume leadership. Demonstrators in Upper Volta actually carried signs asking the army to take over. As products of austere French military traditions, the army commanders abhorred frivolity and waste. "France gives us money, and all we do is waste it," said Colonel Lamizane after ousting Yaméogo. In the Central African Republic, Colonel Bokassa used almost exactly the same words as he instituted a "moral cleanup" campaign for government officials: no bars, dance halls, riding in taxis. Also forbidden: tom-tom playing during...
Little Losses. By any standard, the transitions to military rule were mild enough. In the C.A.R., it was cousin ousting cousin and putting up the ousted kin in his own house. In Upper Volta, former President Yaméogo praised the coup. "Contrary to what people may think," said he in a broadcast speech, "my ministers and I are the first to rejoice in the way things have been settled." In Dahomey, not a shot was fired, nor were more than a handful of politicians placed under arrest. The only deaths in the three military takeovers came in the C.A.R...