Portuguese Colonial War and political rights, corruption, poverty, inequality, and failed central planning eroded the initial revolutionary zeal. A level of social order and economic development comparable to what had existed under Portuguese rule, including during the period of the Colonial War, became the goal of the independent territories. The former Portuguese territories in Africa became sovereign states, with Agostinho Neto in Angola, Samora Machel in Mozambique, Luís Cabral in Guinea-Bissau, Manuel Pinto da Costa in São Tomé and Príncipe, and Aristides Pereira in Cape Verde as the heads of state. When the Portuguese began trading on the west coast of Africa, in
West Africa (magazine) to every cause which holds out a prospect of advancing the position of West Africa as a prosperous and contented member of the Empire...". Having begun as a source of news about events and issues in the British colonies of West Africa as well as a link between the colonial power and its administrators in the field, for 80 years "West Africa" magazine was considered a major source of information about the region. In the mid-1960s it was the target of a successful takeover bid by Cecil Harmsworth King's media empire. In 1978 it began to publish poetry and fiction