As a short-term employee of the US State Department’s Bureau of Eastern and Southern African Affairs in the summer of 1963, I witnessed first-hand the decision not to provide US funding to the proposed Tanzania-Zambia (“TanZam”) railway project — a decision Sam Williams calls myopic (Letters, March 17).
As I recall, the State Department’s desk officers favoured participation in the project to help the two countries become less dependent on Portuguese-controlled Mozambique for their exports. But USAID officials were opposed, arguing that the project looked economically dubious and that in any case funding railways was not in their mandate. The emphasis then was on small-scale “appropriate technology”, spearheaded by Senator Hubert Humphrey, on humanitarian grounds. “Let the Chinese pay for it” was not an unreasonable position at the time.
In short, the decision makers were not shortsighted but were professionals grappling with a complex issue.
Ellen Frost
Washington, DC, US
