222. Memorandum From Acting Secretary of State Katzenbach to President Johnson1
SUBJECT
- Action Program to Carry Out the Recommendations of the Korry Report on African Development Policies and Programs
Following your approval in principle of the Korry Report last August, and pursuant to NSAM 356 of October 5, 1966, the Secretary of [Page 364] State designated Assistant Secretary Joseph Palmer to develop a program of action to carry out the Korry Report recommendations. Mr. Palmer and his staff undertook extensive consultations within the State Department, with AID and with the other ten Departments and Agencies to whom the NSAM was addressed. All these Agencies carefully reviewed the Report and gave Mr. Palmer their views on the recommendations of direct concern to each of them. He also kept in close touch with Mr. Walt W. Rostow and his staff
As a result, we now have an “action program” on each of the forty-two recommendations in the Korry Report (Enclosed).2 Where there was disagreement with the specifics of many of Ambassador Korry’s recommendations, an alternative course of action has been agreed to and a program to carry it out has also been approved. Many of these programs are already under way. Others will now be able to proceed along the approved course of action.
There was broad agreement with Ambassador Korry’s proposed strategy and the essential elements of his Report. These could be characterized as follows:
- —Development and strengthening of multilateral donor coordination mechanisms for dealing with African development;
- —Concentration of assistance to Africa on functional sectors of fundamental importance and on programs around which regional and sub-regional institutions and activities can be built or reinforced in such fields as infrastructure development, agriculture, education and health;
- —Stimulation of increased U.S. private investment in Africa:
- —Concentration of major economic development assistance in those countries where it can be utilized most effectively, and reliance on regional and multilateral organizations and methods as our primary means for development support elsewhere;
- —A modest annual increase in AID development assistance to Africa, as well as an increase in the total resources available to the IDA so that it can also increase assistance to Africa;
- —A revision of AID procedures for its work in Africa;
- —Participation in an effective international cocoa agreement;
- —Support for arms limitation and control in Africa.
While all of the individual action programs should be considered together as a new approach to African development, we wish to draw your attention to certain of them which are of particular interest and are described in the immediately underlying enclosure.
[Page 365]Follow-Up
At the end of each action program, we have noted the agency which has follow-up responsibility for that program. In keeping with the spirit of NSAM 356, the Secretary of State will report to you again on the status of the major action programs at the end of March 1967 and then as regularly thereafter as he deems advisable to keep you fully informed of how we have implemented the Korry Report.
Now that the review of assistance policies and programs in Africa, which you called for last May, has been carried out, we plan urgently to address the question of public presentation of the results. Such presentation must take account of several distinctly different audiences: the recipient African nations, interested European and other donor countries, the United States Congress and the American public. We need to describe how this combination of actions will maximize our responsiveness to expressed African needs, while contributing to orderly economic and social development and serving U.S. national interests.
We shall inform you no later than January 1967 of how these courses of action can best be presented to other nations and to the American Congress and public.
- Source: Johnson Library, National Security File, Hamilton Files, Korry Report on African Development Policy & Programs. Confidential.↩
- Not printed. For the Korry Report, see Document 215.↩