Office of the Historian

228. Memorandum From Edward Hamilton of the National Security Council Staff to President Johnson1

Washington, August 22, 1967.

SUBJECT

  • What We Are Doing in Africa

Senator McCarthy’s speech (ticker clipping at Tab A)2 charges that we don’t pay enough attention to Africa except in crisis; that U.S. aid should be concentrated on long-term problems, particularly agriculture; and that we are too optimistic about African development. In reply, I would cite the following facts:

1.
U.S. aid to Africa in FY 1967—excluding food—totalled $202 million, more than 14% above the 1966 level. The budget request now before the Congress ($195 million) would support a continuation of that high level.
2.
Food aid to Africa increased by 18% in 1967 and will rise by a further 11% in 1968—a total increase of 25% over three years.
3.
AID is now financing more than 1,800 technicians in Africa working on health, agriculture and education, the long-term problems of development. This is a 20% increase over 1966. The 1968 request provides for a slight increase.
4.
About 25% of the 1968 request would be used for agriculture projects, an increase of almost 50% in agriculture spending over the previous year.
5.
Supporting Assistance, the AID account which finances non-developmental, crisis-related activities, is declining in Africa. It amounted to about $22 million in 1967, more than $1 million less than in 1966. It should take another drop in 1968.
6.
The President has worked harder than any President in history to make sure that U.S. policy toward Africa is energetic, sensible and realistic: [Page 379]
  • —he commissioned the first general study of African development ever undertaken in the U.S. government—the Korry Report.
  • —he gave the first speech entirely addressed to African development problems ever given by an American President (the OAU speech, May 26, 1966).
  • —he sent his Under Secretary of State on the first tour of Africa ever made by an American official of his rank.
  • —within the past year alone, he has received and exchanged views with President Senghor of Senegal, the King of Morocco, Emperor Haile Selassie I of Ethiopia, President Banda of Malawi, President Kayibanda of Rwanda, and President Houphouet-Boigny of the Ivory Coast. Within the next two months he will receive President Diori of Niger, General Ankrah of Ghana, and probably Presidents Ahidjo of Cameroon and Nyerere of Tanzania as well. (Last three not announced; last two not finally approved.)
7.
AID’s attitude toward African development problems is evident in the following quote from the Agency’s Congressional presentation for FY 1968:
  • —“Economic problems and the development challenge moved even more to the foreground …(in Africa) … with the difficult realities of the task becoming more widely and clearly recognized and the long-term nature of the development process becoming more generally accepted.”

This isn’t rampant optimism. It is recognition that many Africans are finally coming to realize that there is no future in grandiose posturing on the world stage or in gratuitous adventures against their neighbors. More and more, Africa is looking inward to the immense labors required to achieve political stability and economic growth. This doesn’t make those problems any easier; nobody pretends that it does. But it is the first necessary step toward dealing with them at all. We are right to hail it as reason for hope.

EH
  1. Source: Johnson Library, National Security File, Hamilton Files, Africa, General. No classification marking. An attached transmittal note from Hamilton to the President reads: “Mr. President: Attached is the memo you wanted concerning Senator McCarthy’s speech on Africa. You should know that the final version of the speech is (1) much more complimentary to us than the AP report suggests, and (2) vastly improved—due to hard lobbying from AID—compared with the original draft which would have called upon you to scrap the current program and start over. I will send a copy of the speech as soon as I can get my hands on it.”↩
  2. An August 22 press release from the Senator’s office about his speech in the Senate that day is not printed.↩