APPENDIX A

FOREIGN AND COMMONWEALTH OFFICE OVERSEAS DEVELOPMENT ADMINISTRATION

A

S MUCH of the work of the Overseas Development Administration is connected with the Commonwealth, it has been thought useful to include information about it and its associated bodies and committees in the Year Book.

The development work of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office is the charge of a Minister for Overseas Development who has, by delegation from the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, full charge of the functional wing known as the Overseas Development Administration of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office.

The central purpose of the Overseas Development Administration is to formulate and carry out British policies for helping the developing countries to raise their living standards. In doing this it works in the closest conjunction with other government departments concerned.

The Overseas Development Administration is responsible for: the British economic aid programme as a whole and its detailed composition; the terms and conditions of aid; the size and nature of the programme for each country; the management of financial aid and technical assistance; relations with international aid organisations; the British interest in United Nations programmes of technical assistance; and relations with voluntary bodies concerned with aid and development.

The only exception is that the Dependent Territories Division (of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office), for which the Deputy Under Secretary of State (Foreign and Commonwealth Office) and the Deputy Secretary (Overseas Development Administration) bear joint responsibility, handles all forms of aid to dependent territories. The Overseas Development Administration is not responsible for military aid, which remains under the appropriate division of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office.

On the administrative side the Overseas Development Administration is organised into a number of Divisions headed by Under-Secretaries. Of these one deals with general aid policy, finance and the role of private investment in development; another with British relations with the international bodies handling aid and development, and with other aid-giving countries. Others deal with Asia, Africa and the Caribbean and Latin America. The Geographical Departments which form part of these Divisions are responsible for the capital aid and technical assistance programmes to the countries within these regions and for dealing through British diplomatic posts with the governments concerned regarding these programmes.

Other Divisions deal with various aspects of technical assistance and are responsible with the Overseas Development Administration's professional advisers for organising the resources of Britain to provide this form of aid and for contacts with the many organisations in Britain outside as well as inside the

Government which contribute to this. The subjects dealt with include agriculture and other natural resources; science and technology; schools and teacher training; social education; universities and technical education; recruitment for service overseas and the terms and conditions of service of personnel serving abroad; policy on the organisation of training in Britain; voluntary organisations and the young volunteers programme; assistance in the medical field and population control; and Britain's relations with UNESCO and FAO. An Information Department operates outside the divisional organisation.

The Economic Planning Staff is responsible for the Overseas Development Administration's work in the economic and statistical fields including the provision of advice, personnel and training where requested by overseas governments. It is divided into three Divisions. Each of the economists in the Geographical Division is responsible for studying the economic problems of a group of recipient countries as a basis for the working out of aid programmes that will best contribute to their economic development. The International Economics Division takes part, from the economic point of view, in the formulation of general aid policies, and undertakes research into economic trends which affect the rate of progress of the developing countries. Both Divisions work closely with the operational departments concerned. The Statistics Division provides statistical services including compilation of statistics of aid. The Overseas Development Administration has a staff of professional advisers on technical subjects and is also advised by members of organisations partly or wholly financed from its funds. Subjects covered include education, medicine, a wide range in the field of natural resources (including agriculture and geology), engineering, building, social development and a number of others. When engineering advice of a specialist nature is required, which falls outside the fields of its own Advisory staff, such as telecommunications, it is able to call on the experience of the Crown Agents for Oversea Governments and Administrations.

Development Divisions are maintained in Beirut (Middle East Development Division) and in Bridgetown, Barbados (British Development Division in the Caribbean). During 1972 further Divisions are being established in Bangkok (South-East Asia Development Division), Nairobi (East Africa Development Division) and Blantyre (Southern Africa Development Division). These Divisions consist of an Assistant Secretary (as Head), Specialist Advisers and supporting staff. They advise ODA on the scope and content of British aid to their respective areas and provide technical advice to governments, particularly on development projects.

Various organisations engaged in the provision of technical assistance are attached to the Overseas Development Administration; they are the Directorate of Overseas Surveys, the Tropical Products Institute, the Land Resources Division and the Centre for Overseas Pest Research. Three independent bodies operate in conjunction with the Overseas Development Administration in the field of educational aid—the Centre for Educational Development Overseas, the Inter-University Council for Higher Education Overseas, and the Council for Technical Education and Training for Overseas Countries. Details of these organisations are given in Part VIII of the Year Book (Committees, Societies and Organisations in Britain concerned with the Commonwealth).

APPENDIX B

791

P

THE COMMONWEALTH

TELEPHONE CABLE PARTNERSHIP

RIOR to 1956, intra-Commonwealth telecommunications had been carried either by submarine telegraph cable or by radio. However, by 1956 the British Post Office had solved the technical problems of using multi-channel submarine telephone cables to carry conversations over long distances and had come to an agreement with the Canadian Overseas Telecommunication Corporation to lay a 60-channel cable between Britain and Canada. It thus became necessary to consider whether this Anglo-Canadian telephone cable (later named CANTAT) should form part of the existing Commonwealth telecommunications system and whether additional intra-Commonwealth telephone cables should be laid. These questions were considered by a Commonwealth Telecommunications Conference held in London in July 1958; and it was recommended to Governments that a Commonwealth round-the-world telephone cable should be laid, section by section, Commonwealth Governments arranging between themselves to construct and finance particular sections as the need arose. The Conference was not able to recommend that these new telephone cables should be brought within the existing Commonwealth Telecommunications Partnership (q.v.) but proposed that they should be kept separate and should be operated under separate financial arrangements. These recommendations were endorsed by the Commonwealth Trade and Economic Conference held in Montreal in 1958 and were accepted by Commonwealth Governments.

As a result of the recommendations of the Conference, Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand agreed to lay and jointly finance a telephone cable (called COMPAC) across the Pacific from Canada to Australia via Fiji and New Zealand, and set up a Management Committee, consisting of one representative of each Partner, to construct and operate it. Later, Britain, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Malaysia agreed to extend this cable (called SEACOM) to New Guinea, Hong Kong, Kota Kinabalu and Singapore, and set up a similar Management Committee for the purpose. The CANTAT cable was opened in 1961, COMPAC in 1964 and SEACOM in 1967.

The telephone cables now combine with some micro-wave and tropospheric scatter systems to form the second Wayleave Scheme, which has been administered since 1966 by a unified management, the Commonwealth Cable Management Committee. This Committee consists of representatives from the telecommunications authorities of Britain, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Malaysia and Singapore and meets from time to time in each of those countries (and Hong Kong). The co-operative financial arrangements of the Second Wayleave Scheme are similar to the wayleave system operated by the Commonwealth Telecommunciations Partnership (q.v.).

The departure of South Africa from the Commonwealth and the advent of satellite telecommunications make it now improbable that a round-the-world submarine telephone cable will be completed.

BB

APPENDIX C

COMMONWEALTH

TELECOMMUNICATIONS PARTNERSHIP

T

HE first submarine telegraph cables linking what are now independent Commonwealth countries were laid by cable companies as commercial ventures and Governments were not directly concerned. However, because the cable companies were unwilling to meet the expense of laying a cable across the Pacific from Canada to Australia, the Governments of Britain, Canada, New Zealand and some of the Australian States agreed-largely as a result of the advocacy over many years of Sandford Fleming of the Canadian Pacific Railways—to subscribe money for a Pacific Telegraph Cable and set up in 1901 a representative Pacific Cable Board to construct and manage the cable, which was laid in 1902.

In 1927 on the recommendation of an Imperial Wireless and Cable Conference, the various cable and wireless interests which then served the Commonwealth, including the Pacific Cable Board, were merged and a single operating Company later to be known as Cable and Wireless Ltd was set up. A representative Imperial Communications Advisory Committee was established to lay down the policy which should be followed by the Company.

In 1945 a Commonwealth Telecommunications Conference recommended that the assets of Cable and Wireless Ltd in the various Commonwealth countries should be nationalised. The recommendation was accepted by the Commonwealth Governments concerned, and in 1948 a Commonwealth Telegraphs Agreement was drawn up to promote and co-ordinate the telecommunications services of the Commonwealth. Under the agreement, which was signed by the Governments of Britain, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, India and Southern Rhodesia, the partner Governments agreed to operate their external telecommunications co-operatively with the advice of a Commonwealth Telecommunications Board in London, on which each was to be represented. In addition, a 'wayleave scheme' was eventually adopted under which each partner retains its annual wayleave revenue and incurs payment of common user costs in the same proportion as its wayleave revenue bears to the total wayleave revenue for the partnership. This practice contrasts with normal international telecommunications accounting, whereby a portion of the revenue collected for an international call or message is passed by the originating country to the terminal country (and any transit country concerned). The 1948 agreement was somewhat modified by a second Commonwealth Telegraphs Agreement signed in 1963.

On the recommendation of a further Commonwealth Telecommunications Conference held in 1965 and 1966 the partnership was re-constituted and the Commonwealth Telecommunications Board was replaced by a new Commonwealth Telecommunications Organisation with a Constitution* which provides for periodical Commonwealth Telecommunications Conferences at which any independent Commonwealth Government may be represented, a Commonwealth Telecommunications Council of serving telecommunications officials meeting at *Published in the United Kingdom by HMSO in March 1968 as Command 3547.