truly to implement structural adjustment proqrammes in some countries, the situation is worse today than it was 10 years aqo. African external debt, which in 1979 was approximately $100 billion, today stands at the astronomical fiqure of $270 billion, threateninq the very existence of some African States. RM/29 A/S-18/PV.4 136 (Mr. Van Dunem, Angola) The countries of southern Africa have made enormous efforts to consolidate their political and economic independence with the rest of the countries on the continent. Ten years aqo, when those countries siqned the Lusaka Declaration as the basis for creating the Southern African Development Co-ordination Conference (SADCC), they were fully convinced that the innumerable economic problems with which they were grapplinq at the time would soon abate and all the main bases for their economic development be in place. However, that did not happen. The external factors to which I have just referred were, unfortunately, compounded by drought, epidemic diseases. hunger and the damage caused the SADCC member countries by the racist South African regime. The cost has been reckoned at $10 billion and the resulting death toll at one and a half million persons. In the case of the People's Republic of Anqola the statistics reflect a frankly discouraging picture. For the Anqolan people the so-called lost decade was also a decade in which the prices for petroleum, the main export, fell to their lowest level. Industrial production was greatly diminished, transport links were severely disrupted, a larqe number of trained personnel were obliqed to leave the economic sector to meet defence imperatives, the balance of payments showed an unprecedented deficit, and external debt skyrocketed, endanqerinq the onqoinq implementation of the economic recovery programme -known bv the Portuguese acronym "SEF" -that the country had undertaken a few years earlier. 
**Analysis**
The text discusses the economic situation of African countries, specifically Angola, and the challenges they face in implementing structural adjustment programs due to external factors such as debt, drought, and economic decline. The text also mentions the impact of these challenges on the country's economy, including a decline in industrial production, transportation disruptions, and a significant increase in external debt.

**Category**
Economic development, International trade