The Foreign Service Journal, May 2008

M A Y 2 0 0 8 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 17 oth within the Department of State and the National Security Council, 1958 was the year of Africa. The British colony of Gold Coast had already achieved independence as the Republic of Ghana a year earlier. And some 30 French, British and Belgian colonies would cross the independence threshold over the next five years. The United States was initially ambivalent about that prospect. True, at the United Nations General Assembly its rhetoric was Wilsonian, calling for the self-determination of colonial peoples year after year. African intellectuals heard F O C U S O N A F R I C A A M IXED R ECORD : 50 Y EARS OF U.S.-A FRICA R ELATIONS T HROUGH THE FIRST HALF - CENTURY OF A FRICAN INDEPENDENCE , WITH ALL ITS DISAPPOINTMENTS AND SUCCESSES , U.S. ENGAGEMENT HAS BEEN A CONSTANT . B Y H ERMAN J. C OHEN B Clemente Botelho