‘Bread … before politics’ was the aim set for this session of E.C.A. in an early address by the Commission's retiring chairman, M Oumar Baba Diarra of Mali. Fittingly enough, these words were attributed to Cyrille Adoula, whose host government had been striving to transform those energies yielding Congolese friction into efforts to satisfy the basic needs of human existence, so appallingly evident on every hand to guests in Leopoldville. The conference agenda prepared through the initiative of E.C.A.'s secretariat was laden with economic questions of both short-and long-term significance.