March 30, 2026

It is my self-assigned responsibility to be brutally honest in discussing policies to create real physical wealth in Africa. I am aware of only one other individual, a former minister from a West African nation, who understands the importance of addressing Africa’s enormous infrastructure deficit. To be clear: without a massive expansion of infrastructure, especially electricity and rail lines in Africa, there will be no significant improvement in the material standard of living of the majority of the continent’s growing population. This is an existential imperative with Africa’s population projected to reach 2.5 billion people in twenty-five years, Without the capability to generate accessible and abundant megawatts of electricity, African nations will never become industrial nations, and extreme poverty will remain pervasive. This is reality. Expanding real-physical economic growth must become the primary focus of all those deeply concerned with the future of the African people.

This requires a facility, whose obligation will be to issue long-term low interest productive credit for the creation of physical, tangible wealth. Understanding the difference between productive credit as opposed to money, monetary stock market and real estate values is crucial. Personal accumulation of money, and financial holdings do not represent wealth, because they do not create. What one can buy or own is dependent on the existent productive process of society. Directed productive credit transfers a nation’s economy from the here and now to a time and place that does not yet exist, except in the mind’s eye. Productive credit properly invested takes a nation’s economy from the present into the future. Infrastructure, funded by long term low-cost credit, transmits new, additional physical value to an upgraded productive economic process. Infrastructure is the conveyor belt that transmits value from technologies derived from new scientific discoveries. Infrastructure augments the entire economic process, adding additional wealth to all sectors of society. This generates advancements in the productive process of the economy resulting in an increase in the production of physical wealth.

In summary, let me be unequivocally clear.

1. The lack of electricity is literally killing Africans every day.
2. Without abundant and accessible electricity for consumers and producers, African nations will not industrialize and will not eliminate poverty.
3. The scale of investments necessary to add a minimum of one thousand gigawatts of electrical power to the grid of African nations requires hundreds of billions of dollars in long-term low-interest credit.
4. Only government supported credit will suffice. Private sector credit alone will not be sufficient. Private sector investment schemes to electrify the African continent have thus far failed.

These are essential tenets of physical economy that African nation must address. The reality is indisputable. The nations and people of Africa are dying from the lack of electricity. Over decades I have argued with many so called experts on Africa, both African and non-African alike, who have proposed one or other schemes to avoid facing this reality. The fact that almost six hundred million Africans in 2025 still do not have access to on-grid electricity is proof of the glaring inadequacies of existing  policies.

Every industrialized nation has successfully provided electricity to its consumers and producers. President Franklin Roosevelt transformed the United States with his New Deal, which included The Rural Electrification Act of 1936. In doing so, President Roosevelt was fulfilling his constitutional responsibility to promote the general welfare as stipulated in the U.S. Constitution.

Roosevelt’s Bank for Development

The Bretton Woods System we know today is disliked by those of us committed to the physical economic development of nations. Unknown to many, the key feature of Bretton Woods was the International Bank for Reconstruction and  Development (IBRD), known today as the World Bank, which was created to provide development credits for economic growth. Bretton Woods today, is not what President Franklin Roosevelt intended. Following his untimely death in 1945, it increasingly became a failed institution manipulated by the political-financial elites for economic control not development.

Prior to the entry of the United States into World War II, and years before the end of the war in 1945, President Roosevelt had already formulated in his mind the creation of a Grand Design of new political-economic relations for the world. His post-World War II design included not only crushing the British imperialist colonial system, but most importantly creating a new financial system to expand trade, promote economic growth, and increase the development of each nation’s productive economic capacity. His thinking was in part informed by his successful domestic New Deal that transformed the United States from a country wrecked by the 1932-1933 depression into the arsenal of democracy.

Could methods of public sector financing and state-led development, successful in President Rosevelt’s New Deal be used to promote international development? One of the forerunners to the Bretton Woods IBRD was his earlier attempt to create an Inter-American Bank (IAB) to promote economic development in Latin American nations. Under Secretary of State, Summer Wells, describe the purpose of the IAB: Its principal importance will lie in investigating and facilitating rather long-term development projects in other American republics…

An advisor to President Roosevelt working on the IAB, wrote: Without these projects, private investment, industrialization, and agricultural diversification would be impossible…there could not be an increase in productivity, and in the standard of living, which these basic development projects make possible. (emphasis added)

This view was coherent with the third of President Roosevelt’s Four Freedoms, which he outlined in his January 6, 1941, message to the U.S. Congress:

Certainly, this is no time for any of us to stop thinking about the social and economic problems which are the root cause of the social revolution which is today a supreme factor in the world.

The third is freedom from want–which translated into world terms, means economic understandings which will secure to every nation a healthy peacetime life for its inhabitants-everywhere in the world.

Far different from the regime-change policy of President Trump today.

President Roosevelt‘s likeminded thinkers included Secretary of State, Cordell Hull, Secretary of the Treasury, Henry Morgenthau Jr., and Department of the Treasury, Harry Dexter White. The task of outmaneuvering John Maynard Keynes, who was intent on maintaining the British colonial system, and opposed President Roosevelt’s post war strategy, was often given to White. Keynes who led the British delegation at Bretton Woods wanted to create an Anglo-American controlled global central bank, which would deny nations sovereign control over their own currencies.

Make no mistake, it was President Roosevelt’s conception of economic development that guided American involvement at the Bretton Woods Conference, which began on July 1, 1944.

Hamilton Present at Bretton Woods

Alexander Hamilton’s American System of Political Economy was present at the conference. President Roosevelt was a student of Hamilton’s American System and his great-great grandfather, Issac Roosevelt, was a close collaborator and friend of Hamilton in post-Revolutionary New York.

President Roosevelt’s ideas of economics were shaped entirely from his schooling in Alexander Hamilton’s economic principles, which he studied during his rehabilitation after contracting polio in 1921.

An excerpt from his short essay written in 1924 promoted Hamilton:

“Washington, the first President under the Constitution, made Hamilton Secretary of the Treasury- the greatest of the Cabinet offices. As he [Hamilton] had stabilized the problems of State, so now he ordered the finances of the country, and it was his impetus that removed for all time the risk of disintegration of the States.

None appreciated this solidarity more than Aaron Burr, who, defeated for the Presidency in his race against Jefferson [in 1800], largely through the efforts of Hamilton, saw in this greater financial security the banishment of his dream of establishing a Northern Confederacy                                                                                                                                                                           Nancy Spannaus, author of Hamilton vs Wall Street, succinctly wrote of President Roosevelt’s application of Hamilton’s economic principles’

The economic policies and style of governance which FDR needed in order to get out of the Depression, required adopting Hamiltonian principles. These included re-establishing sovereign control of the U.S. currency, banking regulation (against speculation), government credit for building infrastructure and raising productivity (through the Reconstruction Finance Corporation), and support for advancing the general welfare in myriad ways. FDR pursued all these objectives, asserting he was fulfilling the mandate of the Constitution—the very Constitution which Hamilton played a major role in bringing into being, and gave his life to defend.

President Roosevelt was informed by crucial Hamiltonian principles, which he believed would create a better world following the end of World War II. These were: 1) providing capital i.e., inexpensive long term credit to enable less developed nations to industrialize their economies; 2) recognizing that an essential responsibility of the nation-state is to intervene in promoting their economies, known as state-led development.

Historian,  Eric Helleiner, chronicles this process leading up to, and throughout the conference, in his book, Forgotten Foundations of Brenton Wood: International Development and the Making of the Postwar order. Much of the historical material on theBretton Woods Conference in this article is from Helleiner’s book.

FDR’s Goal Was Development

Helleiner correctly argues that the poorer countries seeking to catch up economically had national economic strategies, often inspired by Frederick List’s advocacy of state-industrialization. It is important to know that Frederick List was an adherent of the Hamiltonian American System, contrary to the British free-trade system, whose goal was solely to maximize monetary gains. Roosevelt’s clear intention was to establish a new financial system, led by the United States, which would become a partner to the less developed nations.

Helleiner emphasizes that the commitment to promote development in poorer countries remained central to the US goals for the post war international financial system.

Harry Dexter White, in a January 1942 draft, wrote that a central purpose of “The Bank” was the provision of long term capital for desirable productive projects that served directly or indirectly to permanently raise the standard of living of the borrowing country. (emphasis added)

In a May memorandum, White stressed to President Roosevelt that his plan was to supply the huge volume of capital that will be needed abroad for relief, for reconstruction, and economic development essential for the attainment of world prosperity and higher standards of living. (emphasis added)

President Roosevelt and his team at Bretton Woods understood that to guarantee world security in the post-war era, required economic growth for every nation. They knew that for poorer nations to realize their full economic potential, to raise the productive power of their economies, they needed access to capital for long term investment in industry and infrastructure. Peace and security were inextricably bonded to prosperity.

Henry Morgenthau emphasized this conception in November 1943, observing that:

one great contribution that the United Nations can make to sustain peace and worldwide prosperity is to make certain that adequate capital is available on reasonable terms for productive uses in capital poor countries…It is imperative that we recognize that the investment of productive capital in the under developed and capital needed countries means not only will these countries will be able to supply at lower costs more of the goods the world needs but they will at the same time become better markets for the world’s goods

President Roosevelt had his team collaborate with China throughout the conference. He instructed military advisors traveled to the headquarters of the Communist Party of China in Yenan, during the Bretton Woods Conference. In November 1944, a U.S. Treasury official surreptitiously met with top Chinese Communist official, Chou En-Lai. Chou noted that with regard to China’s post war position, her greatest economic need would be for foreign capital. Exactly what President Roosevelt intended to provide

A New Financial System is Born

President Roosevelt’s Grand Design proceeded, despite opposition from international banking interests, who were intentionally kept out of these deliberations, and Keynes, who represented the British Empire,

The conference ended on July 22, 1944. Morgenthau gave the concluding remarks, in which they accentuated the guiding principles for the establishment of this new system. He asked;

What are the fundamental conditions in which commerce among nations can flourish?

First there must be reasonable stable standard of international exchange…

Second, long term financial aid must be made available at reasonable rates to those countries whose industry and agriculture have been destroyed…

The institutions proposed by the Bretton Woods Conference would indeed limit the control which certain private bankers have in the past exercised over international finance.

The effect would be to provide capital for those who need it at lower interest rates than in the past and to drive only the usurious moneylenders out of the temple of international finance.(emphasis added)

The U.S. Congress voted up the Bretton Woods Agreement Act in July 1945, and President Harry Truman signed it into law on July 31, 1945. President Roosevelt did not live to see the enactment of his Brenton Woods. He died on April 12th, 1945, only a few months into the first year of his unprecedented fourth term as president of the United States. However, on February 12, 1945, two months before he died, President Roosevelt urged the Congress to adopt the Bretton Woods agreements. There was no ambiguity in his remarks in outlining how to achieve peace and security in the post-war world. President Roosevelt told the Congress:

These proposals for an international Fund and international bank are concrete evidence that the economic objectives of the United States agree with those of the United Nations. They illustrate our unity of purpose and interest in the economic field. What we need and what they need corresponds–expanded the production, employment, exchange, and consumption–in other words more goods produced, more jobs, more trade, and a higher standard of living for us all.

Roosevelt Supported Ethiopia vs British

In contradistinction to Roosevelt’s intent of addressing the question of poverty for nations of the developing sector, Keynes was more concerned to uphold the dominance of the British Empire. The British wanted to keep their empire intact and continue through colonial policies, to deprive developing sector nations of the means to develop their own industrial capability. British imperialist interests compelled underdeveloped nations to remain agrarian based, subject to raw material and cheap labor exploitation by colonial structures. Thus, depriving them of the opportunity to free themselves from poverty by denying their economies productive infrastructure and industry to generate their own economic wealth.

At the conclusion of the Bretton Woods Conference, Ethiopia expressed, over American CBS radio its aspiration to raise our standard of living. To achieve that goal Ethiopia would require the sovereign right to control its own currency in order to manage its own money supply and credit. The British had other ideas.

Helleiner, in his book reports the little publicized history of U.S. support to free Ethiopia from British colonialism. Keep in mind, Ethiopia attended the Bretton Woods Conference as a fully independent sovereign nation; the only such nation in sub-Saharan Africa at the time.

After Ethiopia was liberated in 1941, from five years of Italian occupation, their banking system needed reorganization. They desired to have a new national currency controlled by the Ethiopian nation-state. The British, in April 1942 proposed the creation of the “Ethiopian pound” for their national currency, whose management would be modeled on the currencies of British colonies in East and West Africa. This currency would be pegged to the British sterling and was to be managed by a London-based currency board run by two British officials and one Ethiopian representative. Foreign exchange from Ethiopia’s  exports would continue to be surrendered to the British exchange control board.

Refusing to accept this, Ethiopian officials reached out to the United States to support a plan independent of the British. After meeting with White, and without notifying the British, they developed a strategy for a strong Ethiopian currency pegged to the US dollar, which was introduced on Emperor Haley Selassie’s birthday in July 1945. The United States had already printed up bills and coins denominated in dollars behind the backs of the British.

A memo written by a member of White’s staff made clear Roosevelt’s intent was to help Ethiopian develop their nation. The United States viewed the financial reorganization of Ethiopian currency as central to Ethiopia’s future: if the Ethiopian government intends to engage directly in the financing of internal industrial development of the country.

The British were forced to accept this new currency despite their earlier intent to control the Ethiopian economy. United States officials welcomed this new currency stating that the new Ethiopian monetary legislation was well adapted to step towards economic emancipation of Ethiopia. In Ethiopia, local British officials were very resentful of the Americans, who they accused of pandering to the worst Ethiopian instincts rather than advise in accordance with the British full masterly tradition. The British maligned the Ethiopians who were in charge of their economic affairs as nothing more than unqualified incompetent and greedy amateurs. U.S. officials responded and complained that the British advisors in Ethiopia were dominated by crude concepts of Empire, and no effort is made to help the country develop.

Read below my earlier posts on this topic.

For the Development of Africa: Know and Apply Franklin Roosevelt’s Credit Policy

Lawrence Freeman is a Political-Economic Analyst for Africa, who has been involved in economic development policies for Africa for over 35 years. He is a teacher, writer, public speaker, consultant on Africa, and an analyst of global strategic relations. Mr. Freeman strongly believes that economic development is an essential human right. He is the creator of the blog: lawrencefreemanafricaandtheworld.com, also publishes on: lawrencefreeman.substack.com, “Freeman’s Africa and the World, and on X @lkfreemansafrica