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The article focuses on the convalescence of the U.S. foreign aid program, which is recovering gradually from multiple sclerosis. Previously, support for European recovery, for investment and technical assistance in Asia and Africa, for economic co-operation with Latin-American neighbors, even for the exchange of students and artists, had to be justified by reference to a new all embracing criterion, expressed in the word "security." Now it is "mutual security" rather than "economic co-operation." The foreign aid agency in its successive reincarnations was progressively weakened by internal disorders. The U.S. foreign aid effort is still too timid, too spasmodic in its financing, too rigid and centralized in its administration. However, the last year or so have seen evidence of real progress in controlling the symptoms. The most acute symptoms are disappearing now, and convalescence has begun. The program's leadership is no longer totally preoccupied with presidential ambitions or even with Ohio politics. The people and their Congress are impressed with the Soviet Union and seem to have decided that there must be something good about the U.S. foreign aid after all.

The article focuses on investment in tropical Africa while emphasizing economic, social and political aspects of opportunities for development and obstacles to change. Although by Western standards tropical Africa is poverty-stricken, per capita incomes averaging $50-150 per year, it has progressed rapidly, especially since World War II, and it gives every promise of continued and even accelerated growth rates. No one who has visited these lands, even if only for a short visit, can fail to detect the atmosphere of hope and progress, of peoples on the move emerging into the twentieth century, although still wrapped in the cocoon of a tribal world. The years since the end of the second World War have seen a marked quickening in the tempo of political evolution in the area. The first great change, however, did not come until 1957 when Ghana (then the Gold Coast) became a self-governing Dominion within the British Commonwealth. Africa needs the capital, the skills, and the know-how that only Western firms can offer. It realizes that the goals of rapid development, which usually includes industrialization, cannot be achieved in any other way. In return, the foreigner should show his sympathy, especially by employing and upgrading his African staff as quickly as is feasible.