Office of the Historian

298. Letter From President Eisenhower to President Nkrumah0

August 7, 1960.

Dear Mr. President: It has given me great pleasure to receive your letter of July twenty-sixth concerning the Volta River project.1 The United States Government has followed your endeavors in this regard with sympathetic interest, and the Under Secretary of State, Mr. Douglas Dillon, has given this matter his personal attention. Last year, you will recall, Mr. Dillon suggested to Ambassador Chapman that you request the cooperation of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development in reviewing the Volta River project in the light of your country’s development plans and that the Bank be looked to as the focal point for mobilizing international financing.2 The Under Secretary did so with the confidence that you would receive sound and objective economic advice, and I understand that the Bank has submitted a report to your Government. Especially in view of your report on the developments which have taken place since then, I quite understand your desire to proceed with the more tangible aspects of this project as soon as possible.

I agree with you that it is now desirable to pursue negotiations with the Bank and the aluminum companies here in Washington. In the absence of Mr. Dillon, I have requested the Acting Assistant Secretary of State for Economic Affairs, Mr. Edwin M. Martin, to follow these discussions as closely as possible. The Secretary of State and the Deputy Under Secretary for Political Affairs, Mr. Raymond Hare, as well as Assistant Secretary of the Treasury Grady Upton, will also be [Page 658] discussing the Volta project with your Finance Minister, Mr. Gbedemah, next week.3 These officials and others in the United States Government will be pleased to cooperate with him in his efforts to conclude arrangements so that construction may proceed with a minimum of delay.

With this letter I send you may warmest personal regards and my very best wishes for the progress of your country and its people.

Sincerely,4

  1. Source: Eisenhower Library, Whitman File, International File. No classification marking. Attached to an August 10 memorandum for the record by John S.D. Eisenhower. The letter was transmitted in telegram 135 to Accra, August 7. (Ibid.)↩
  2. This letter declared that the project had reached a “critical stage” and expressed the hope that the United States would take an active interest in negotiations which were to begin on August 8 between Ghana and the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development concerning its financing. (Ibid.)↩
  3. Dillon suggested this to Ghanaian Finance Minister H.K. Gbedemah on October 6, 1959; a memorandum of the conversation is in Department of State, Secretary’s Memoranda of Conversation: Lot 64 D 199.↩
  4. A memorandum of a conversation on August 9 between Herter and Gbedemah is ibid., Central Files, 845J.2614/8–960. The Department of State announced on August 18 that Ghana had been informed that the United States was prepared to provide funds totaling $30 million toward the financing of the Volta River project when Ghana reached a satisfactory arrangement with the owners of the proposed aluminum smelter and when the additional necessary financing was assured. (Department of State Bulletin, September 5, 1960, pp. 364–365)↩
  5. Printed from an unsigned copy. The letter as transmitted by telegram 135 bears the President’s typed signature.↩