As the pie-chart shows, the distribution of foreign investment to the "Third World" is highly uneven, with Asia and Latin America racing ahead of Africa in particular. In fact, 75 per cent of all global foreign direct investment to the Third World goes to just 12 countries - and 20 per cent goes to China alone. The president of Zimbabwe, Robert Mugabe, speaking at the Irish Times/Harvard University Colloquium in March 1997, was understating the case when he said "the phenomenon of globalisation is posing a big challenge to Africa".

African exports (despite those Zimbabwean vegetables) account for a smaller and smaller proportion of the goods available on European and other markets, a cause for great concern. For those media outlets that are interested, looking at the effects of this development and the responses to it will be a key task for coverage of development issues in 1998 and beyond.