'Scientific salvation' and development : Britain, South Africa and the African regional scientific conference, October 1949

Abstract

The African Regional Scientific Conference took place in Johannesburg, South Africa in October 1949. With delegates drawn from South Africa, Britain, France, Portugal and Belgium, the Conference was an attempt to chart a way forward for development in Africa. This article draws upon the voluminous correspondence and reports held at The National Archives Kew, supplemented with other primary and secondary material, to consider the workings of the Conference from its inception with its commitment to delineate a distinction between science and politics to its culmination and the subsequent formation of the Scientific Council for Africa South of the Sahara. The Conference was contextualised by development policies predicated upon colonial and South African expertise and leadership which created a sense of tension and contradiction related to the racial exclusions of the apartheid state, the attempt to maintain colonial hegemony through science and impending decolonisation. This paper therefore uses the Conference as a lens to explore the changing relationship between Britain and the apartheid state and nevertheless shows that, while Britain and South Africa held opposing views regarding African development, the shared assumptions of western ‘civilisation’ led to the maintenance of hierarchies of power and knowledge that excluded those at whom development was aimed – indigenous Africans.