The struggle against neo-colonialism is not aimed at excluding the capital of the developed world from operating in less developed countries. Investment under neo-colonialism increases rather than decreases the gap between the rich and the poor countries of the world. The result of neo-colonialism is that foreign capital is used for the exploitation rather than for the development of the less developed parts of the world. The control of the Congo by great international financial concerns is a case in point. It is possible that neo-colonial control may be exercised by a consortium of financial interests which are not specifically identifiable with any particular State. For example, in the case of South Vietnam the former imperial power was France, but neo-colonial control of the State has now gone to the United States. Where neo-colonialism exists the power exercising control is often the State which formerly ruled the territory in question, but this is not necessarily so. Control over government policy in the neo-colonial State may be secured by payments towards the cost of running the State, by the provision of civil servants in positions where they can dictate policy, and by monetary control over foreign exchange through the imposition of a banking system controlled by the imperial power. The neo-colonial State may be obliged to take the manufactured products of the imperialist power to the exclusion of competing products from elsewhere. More often, however, neo-colonialist control is exercised through economic or monetary means. For example, in an extreme case the troops of the imperial power may garrison the territory of the neo-colonial State and control the government of it. The methods and form of this direction can take various shapes. In reality its economic system and thus its political policy is directed from outside. The essence of neo-colonialism is that the State which is subject to it is, in theory, independent and has all the outward trappings of international sovereignty. In place of colonialism as the main instrument of imperialism we have today neo-colonialism. Existing colonies may linger on, but no new colonies will be created. Once a territory has become nominally independent it is no longer possible, as it was in the last century, to reverse the process. It still constitutes an African problem, but it is everywhere on the retreat. Old-fashioned colonialism is by no means entirely abolished. Today this process is no longer feasible. In the past it was possible to convert a country upon which a neo-colonial regime had been imposed - Egypt in the nineteenth century is an example - into a colonial territory. THE neo-colonialism of today represents imperialism in its final and perhaps its most dangerous stage. Neo-Colonialism, the Last Stage of imperialismKwame Nkrumah 1965 Introduction Neo-Colonialism, the Last Stage of imperialism by Kwame Nkrumah