Foreign Relations of the United States, 1952–1954, Africa and South Asia, Volume XI, Part 1

511.70/6–352

The Ambassador in Liberia (Dudley) to the Department of State¹

confidential
No. 384

Monrovia, June 3, 1952.

Reference:

• Department Airgram A–146, February 29, 1952²

Subject:

• A Revised Information Program for Africa, West Africa In Particular

I. Purpose of this despatch.

The reporting officer, presently Assistant Public Affairs Officer for Liberia and Sierra Leone, was assigned by the Department in the reference airgram to two weeks of duty in Accra, Gold Coast, and Lagos, Nigeria. Together with Monrovia these posts make up all the present U.S. Information Service operations in West Africa. The officer departed Monrovia April 18 and returned May 9, 1952.

The Department stated the purpose of this trip was to study and make recommendations on USIS West Africa with special attention to 1) the nearly complete Voice of America outlet for Africa in Liberia 2) cooperative forging of closer links among the African posts. It was suggested by the Department that at least in the Radio and Press media, West Africa might serve as a base for African^* regional production of broadcasts and printed material.

In this report the officer discusses changes in the present Information program in the light of whether they seem to officers in the field 1) advisable 2) possible. The field has not disagreed with any Department suggestion without giving full reasons in this report.

All officers felt that great improvements can be made, but that expansion alone will not be improvement unless it is in the right places and the right way. Some media are intrinsically local. Others for greater efficiency and consistency can at least begin to be regionalized.

This report is a condensation of a much larger body of information gathered by the reporting officer. For clarity and brevity, conclusions are stressed here. Arguments and evidence are not extensive, due to the paper shortage and other more important calls on the Department’s time.

Therefore it is suggested that the Department ask all posts concerned for more details on any points not adequately covered. The officer’s added information goes particularly into Gold Coast and Nigerian radio, but this can also be supplied by the two missions in those countries.

II. Radio.

A. The Present. The Department has taken steps to increase VOA coverage of West Africa and perhaps all of Africa. A 10 kilowatt transmitter has been provided by VOA to the Liberian Government with the intention of relaying and locally producing VOA and USIS programs. This should be in operation before the end of calender 1952.

In addition, receivers have been sent to the three West African posts for distribution: Lagos 200; Accra 150; Monrovia 100. These battery-110v-220v sets can pick up both VOA and local programs.

VOA–USIS use of local radio is already great in Liberia with 15–20 hours a week of transcriptions and live programs over ELBC, the Liberian Government station (and the only one). Lagos has ½ hour and Accra 1 hour weekly, Lagos being live news and recording time, and Accra unidentified VOA transcriptions only, on the respective monopoly government stations.

Although Nigeria and the Gold Coast are each putting about $1 million capital expansion into their radio systems—both rediffusion or single station wired radio, and short wave—officers do not see immediate prospects of more U.S. radio time over these local stations.

Lagos feels local power rationing is the chief block to more USIS time in Nigeria. Accra places radio last among its five media in priority, because it feels other media reach the same people with less money and less government opposition.

B. Receiver Distribution. Accra has distributed about half its sets to legislators, community centers, and schools. Lagos proposed sending receivers to the national legislature, but the government has suggested secondary schools instead. Monrovia is working through the Education Department in an information-education-literacy by radio plan, into which VOA programs will be fitted. In this connection, Liberia has been persuaded to buy 100 added sets out of its own budget.

The officer heard both Moscow in English (Red Square parade) and VOA Tangier (Songs from the Prison Camps) on May Day over one of these small USIS Riviera receivers in Lagos. Reception was fair from both Tangier and Moscow, even without adding an aerial or ground. Liberian and Gold Coast reception are roughly parallel.

A stronger VOA signal would be welcomed and listened to. The present BBC and local programs from the Gold Coast and Nigeria are already loud and clear. But Nigerians and Gold Coasters will sometimes turn away from their local stations, and if they don’t get a better VOA signal than now, USIS will be in the position of subsidizing Moscow listening. This danger is clear and present.

It is assumed that VOA into Africa through Liberia will materialize, but if not Communist converts could be won conceivably over USIS sets. The officer feels firmly that this danger cannot be played down. Long term distribution of these sets without much stronger VOA–USIS broadcasting than now would be a serious mistake, in the officer’s opinion. When strong VOA–USIS radio is a reality, receiver distribution will be a calculated risk in U.S. favor.

The community-type receivers promised the posts had not arrived at any of the three places by May 10. All the smaller sets had. Nearly half these Riviera portables had faults which required repair before they could be sent out. The Petratrix 110 volt battery is short in life, and often low in original potential. The Emce low-voltage battery is good. Many voltage selection and off-on switches have been bad. No aerial or ground wire or plugs were sent. General quality of the sets for wet tropics: fair. New supplies of batteries will be needed every 4–6 months.

C. VOA Relay and USIS Regional Radio. When the new VOA relay in Liberia goes on the air, Monrovia will need a radio officer and a Technician. Possibly all or part of the latter’s pay may be paid by the Liberian Government, but he must be an American or a European with professional transmitter tuning, repair, and operating skill.

(The Radio Officer’s job will be to supervise regional radio for West Africa (ultimately perhaps for Africa), mainly in the production of programs from Liberia. He will have to depend on a steady flow of Press Officers’ items from the other posts, which they will be turning out for local use but mailing him. He will need guidances periodically from each PAO in the listening area. Copies of all these guidances should go to the Department.)

Stories from the Gold Coast for example could be sent Restricted if needed for covering guidances, provided this plan is approved by the Regional Security Officer in Cairo.

PAO’s should remain, in consultation with their mission chiefs, top USIS–VOA field authorities. Regional media heads, in Radio as in other media, where they exist, should be steadily in consultation with the PAO’s from whom they would take any needed field guidance. Regional Media Heads should not have overall authority or responsibility; they should advise but not control, lest they interfere between a post and the Department.

Africa finds some topics more appealing than others. All officers agreed that the following list of themes are some of the more appealing to Africa, and must be constantly used to reach an African audience and affect their actions through their attitudes. Although this list appears under Radio, it should also be a helpful key to African motivations for the use of Press, Motion Pictures, Information Center, and Exchange of Persons divisions as well.

Good Recurrent Themes

1. Good color relations.

2. News: U.S., world, and African. Especially West Africans in the U.S., and U.S. activities in West or all of Africa.

3. African history and culture, including art and music, and interest shown in them by Americans.

4. Sports. American Negro and other Negro figures especially. USIS was never able to explain why the Robinson–Turpin fight was not broadcast.

5. News, fast and feature, on U.S. aid (including through the UN) to strengthen the world’s recently independent peoples. Those of color especially. Iran, India, Liberia.

6. Refutation of West African press distortions. Press errors cannot be corrected fast enough by mail. News is dead when answers arrive. Fast radio correction could be followed by a second punch: the scripts if transcribed by the post could go right to the local press within 24 or 36 hours of the original distorted story, and would be printed. Color line distortions, promoted by Communist stories in from N.Y. and Europe, above all need this fast radio service to balance the fast press turnout.

7. Jazz of all types. Afro-Cuban music of the Caribbean and the U.S. Cowboy music.

8. Interviews with people interested in Africa. Travelers, leading Negroes.

9. African record request programs, requests going to the Voice of America, Monrovia. Tangier does this very well.

10. Negro history and cultural research. This once neglected field is growing slowly. It would incidentally bring strong support to VOA–USIS from Negro newspapers and organizations in the U.S.

The question arises whether these programs should be done from New York or Monrovia. The answer lies in whichever could give closer attention to the production of the above types of tailored radio. The answer is probably a combination of both.

The Middle East beam, the officer feels, could provide daily news and other necessarily U.S.-based programs like the elections, UN, U.S. sports, or a talk by Negro Federal Judge William Hastie. Slow trend (rather than fast news) items could be airpouched as now and transmitted at any time as regular programs from Liberia. If reception of Tangier’s relay is good, (or the U.S. beam is that to be used), the Radio Officer can gradually evolve a schedule for taking some programs right off the air to relay, including features.

Exact hours must await experiment, but Monrovia believes that two hours’ USIS local production and two hours’ VOA relay could be used daily to start. This would probably include the morning, afternoon, and evening news by relay. Accra and Lagos monitor it, for example if they wish, and this news might well fill the gap which they now experience in fast news by not monitoring the Wireless Bulletin. Details of relayed and local radio must be hammered out as time goes on.

D. Audience Languages and Areas. The Department has asked if vernaculars should be used on the Radio. USIS in the field unanimously feels they should not, unless reasons arise which are more apparent than now. Apart from the great cost of multiple West African languages on the air, there is an almost total absence of persons who can read scripts in these vernacular tongues.

The audience to be reached by any one tongue is small, almost negligible. There are probably more than 100 West African tongues alone, and even the largest of these reach only a few percent of the relatively powerless tribal people. Most tribal people who do not use English have neither the interest nor the skill (to Africans radio tuning is a skill) to keep a set running or even try with regularity to tune in.

It is a safe axiom that if an African in Liberia or British Africa listens to a radio—in West African at least—he speaks English. Accra does not include illiterates and semi-literates in its target groups. While Lagos and Monrovia do to some extent, they feel vernacular radio in this area would have high cost and low priority.

The Nigerian and Gold Coast Governments are reaching some regional language groups to solidify national opinion at an annual budget cost of some $300,000 on top of $1 million each of capital radio investment. This education will tend to gradually increase interest in the U.S., but it is a rare case where vernacular peoples can yet see to their national borders. Against this organized and controlled opposition, officers feel vernacular radio would probably fall by the wayside.

The person with modern education in British Africa and Liberia has it in English. Liberia forbids vernacular teaching in school, and British schools teach it only in the lowest grades as a transition to English. Only straight English programs, perhaps later sprinkled with Arabic and French, can win the full support of the Liberian Government, over whose station all this radio will be going. Locally this is an emotional political issue. USIS thinks it can persuade some Liberian money into vernacular radio in connection with the Liberian radio literacy campaign, but this because the goal is literacy in English.

The reliable “West African Review” of April 1952 points out that though a quarter-million mostly illiterate people in the Accra area speak Ga, “These people will have to decide whether they want their literature to grow up in Ga, Akan, or English. If they do not decide and let things slide, English will win.” He calls for an African language crusade, but there is division and English is the compromise. What is true of literature is true of community and national influence and politics. English is the language of power in West Africa.

This means USIS–VOA hit hardest at a selected audience. Italy’s USIS recently threw its efforts toward converting a limited group, pro-Communist labor, in an election campaign, and the results were good. West African USIS, with limited resources, hits mainly those who have some education for this reason: Change is in the air and it is shifting power to African hands, specifically, educated hands. Many times illiterate tribal people try to form a coalition with colonial rulers as two groups of conservatives who want to stop change.

But change will continue—it is the guaranteed element in African life today. It is vital for USIS—VOA to try and guide these educated leaders who have a strong hold on political power, into democratic channels. In today’s situation it is not essentially possible or useful to IIA aims to try and influence the great bulk of the people. They cannot be reached securely; and if they could they have not yet much of grip on their nations’ destinies. The English-speaking, educated leaders have.

USIS can hope to influence these leaders, especially if it is given the green light to concentrate on them. The situation is somewhat parallel to 1789 in the U.S., except that African leaders today in West Africa have a stronger hold—this because African peoples have had less experience than the American States had in regional self-rule. British are putting a forced draft under local self-government measures to build the democratic base, but it is a rather latter day push, one which has not even generally started in Central and East Africa.

In 1789 Washington and Jefferson might have had an aristocracy—they even had at times mob encouragement of such a development. But they chose to give the country back to the people after they got it from Britain.

USIS today in West Africa, above all, has the job of influencing public opinion and political leaders to likewise create a democratic structure. Another way the U.K. is helping to do this today is in trying to nourish political opposition parties to keep criticism and orderly change in the national structures in West Africa.

Britain sees it must help be midwife to self-government, but wants it safely within the British Commonwealth—an aim to which the U.S. might well give its support. But in all this development, it is not in the cards today for the uneducated to play a part. Change is fast, time is short, and priorities must be set.

This has been both a general discussion of USIS thinking in West Africa, and a justification for opposing vernacular radio in this area. There is no parallel to East Africa’s Swahili, except English.

[Here follow 8 of 16 typewritten pages comprising the source text, presented under the following headings: III. Press and Publications; IV. Motion Pictures; V. Information Centers; VI. Exchange of Persons; VII. Recommendations for All Media.]

VIII. Winning Africa to the free world.

This section represents the reporting officer’s impressions of what USIS is really up against in Africa, and how he feels the impact of the Information program over that continent could easily be doubled without any increase in the foregoing technical machinery of the USIS–VOA set up. It seems to him particularly significant with the coming of radio to the program in growing strength.

There are two great threats to Africa, if you happen to ask Africans. The one the U.S. sees most clearly is Communism, which for the most part does not now have a strong hold on Africa.

The other threat, which to Africans is closer at hand because they are living with it, is colonialism, European style, and the more ruthless Russian style colonialism is still to them the more remote.

Under the present colonial system, there is generally no majority rule. A few white Europeans govern Africans whom they are likely to refer to as “natives” or “boys”.

Native is defined by Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary in part as “Specif., of the non-Caucasian people or peoples inhabiting a colony, dependency, or the like; as, to use native troops in India”.

The lack of dignity or equality attached to these words is clear enough, so clear than the U.K. in some areas has made use of “native” taboo.

It is even more clear to Africans, who know too that white persons no longer can “use native troops” in India unless they have the voluntary loyalty and affection of those people.

The literate African studies the use of the term “free world” with equal interest, but if this means support of colonial rule in Africa he is against it.

U.S. cooperation with France and Europe is clearly essential, but the African asks if under the heading “European Foreign Policy” the U.S. must support the principle and full practice of colonial rule.

The situation is similar to the color line in the United States, where the U.S. Government cannot solve the whole thing right away but by taking a stand where it can (has) helped to speed the solution and win powerful American Negro good will without annoying the opposition too much. But much more is at stake in Africa.

Africans recall the Monroe Doctrine, and then a little closer to home for them, the “Monrovia Doctrine”—support without domination in Liberia. Here the U.S. ruling favored the Negro in Africa, and Point Four gives it latter-day continuity.

But what about African dependencies, colonies and protectorates. One Nigerian expressed the view that Nigeria needs protection only from the British—an unfair charge since British policy in West Africa is probably granting self-rule faster than any other place or time in history except where there was war. But it expresses the yearning which now are becoming American headlines for self-rule which is becoming vocal and gradually political all over Africa.

USIS has a hard time claiming the U.S. is even neutral (a status which U.S. foreign policy hardly advocates today in the struggle with Russian imperialism) when a reported $3 million in gold has been going from white supremacy South Africa to the U.S. on recent Pan American planes through Nigeria, the Gold Coast, and Liberia—generally believed to be in payment for arms the U.S. agreed to sell this government. Africa knows that more arms can prolong white rule of Africa. Fortunately this story has apparently not hit the press to date, although the explanation of guards was given to the reporting officer at the Accra airport by several persons in the area.

If this kind of U.S. practice represents American policy toward the white-black balance in Africa, USIS is up against it trying to justify U.S. neutrality in Tunisia or Central Africa. Neutrality is taken by the African for either indifference or approval of the status quo, a status which is changing. Africa asks whether U.S. favors this change, and in this situation support of the status quo looks like endorsement of colonial rule. Africans see a new threat in the Central African Federation which looks like self-government “for whites only” to them. It is worth noting that none of the three countries, Northern and Southern Rhodesia or Nyasaland, has as much as one African in an Executive Council (cabinet), and Southern Rhodesians to vote must have £250 in a country where African annual income is about £10.

Does the U.S. favor rule “of” the majority “by” the majority in Africa as it does in Europe, the U.S., or Communist areas? One African told the reporting officer the only way to get a “strong policy” out of the U.S. was to provoke a crisis. These will probably be delivered with some violence and little good will in coming years, if more effort is not put into easing their birth. But if these things happen without U.S. support, they will end with ill will toward the U.S.

Aspirin can do a lot now because Africans today want to believe the U.S. is on their side. If cynicism sets in, penicillin later will be too late.

USIS is an arm of U.S. foreign policy. The reporting officer in this section is stating what seems to him the albatross around the neck of USIS.

USIS is what the U.S. says. But in the last analysis, it can only hold off public opinion so long if this is counter to what U.S. does in Africa. African eyes are getting keener to the fact that there sometimes is a difference.

They want to know whether a partially color-conscious U.S. favors black men or white men as ultimate masters of a black continent.

One writer on Africa recently expressed it this way:

“The African will join the ‘free world’ only if he, too, feels free.”

The stand the U.S. takes on this issue can very well decide the success or failure of USIS in Africa—the main subject of this despatch.

If USIS should fail in the coming few years, it will mean Africa has turned its face away from the United States.

Perhaps toward the Communist orbit.

Edward R. Dudley

1. This despatch was prepared by George B. Pettingill, Assistant Public Affairs Officer at the Embassy in Liberia.
2. Not printed.
3. Africa in this despatch means that part south of the Sahara Desert in which skins are black or dark brown and the old pattern of life is tribal. North Africa is more linked to Europe and the Near East. [Footnote in the source text.]