Dilemmas of American Policy on Africa

Abstract

IN THE COURSE of the last decade-the decade of African independence-the United States has come to be involved in greater or less degree with all the countries of Africa. This has meant the opening up of a host of new relationships since, leaving North Africa aside, the only countries which were independent before the colonial logjam started to break in the mid-1950's were Ethiopia, Liberia, and South Africa, and American relations with the rest of Africa under colonial rule were minimal. As thirty-odd new states came into existence in Africa south of the Sahara, a new set of assumptions as to how to deal with Africa had to be brought into being, and to manage the relationships the Africa section of the Department of State had to be greatly elaborated, inevitably challenging the vested superiority of the European desks. American embassies had to be created in the African countries with all the accompanying paraphernalia of intelligence, aid, information, and other such missions. African embassies had to be accommodated in Washington and African missions appeared at UN headquarters in New York, always with the danger of racial incidents which at the best were embarrassing and at the worst verged on the disastrous.