Pursuing Progress: Point Four in Ethiopia

Abstract

Aristocratic nations are by their nature too much inclined to restrict the scope of human perfectibility; democratic nations sometimes stretch it beyond reason. On 16 June 1951, in Addis Ababa, representatives of the United States and the Imperial Ethiopian government signed an agreement promising “to cooperate with each other in the interchange of technical knowledge and skills and related activities designed to contribute to the balanced and integrated development of the economic resources and productive capacities of Ethiopia.”2 This “Point Four Agreement for Technical Cooperation” marked the beginning of a new era in U.S.-Ethiopian relations, one that differed greatly from its predecessor in the amount of attention Washington paid Addis Ababa. Although the agreement had specific benefits to Ethiopia, it also represented a much larger change in U.S. foreign policy. Point Four was America's first response to the newly defined problem of global poverty. A total of thirty-five countries eventually signed similar agreements. People in Harry S Truman's Washington and in capital cities around the world publicly announced their intention to work together to develop the world's underdeveloped nations.