The seeds of development aid.

• Position: Expanded Programme of Technical Assistance - A Look Back ... Forty Years Ago

Under a deceptively bland name -Expanded Programme of Technical Assistance (EPTA)-the United Nations started planting worldwide, in 1949, the seeds for an aggressive development aid-without-strings effort. The first decade of what was then called "technical assistance" to the developing world was difficult, exciting and successful-so successful that by 1959 calls for help from poor countries were racing ahead of available funding.

The General Assembly's answer was to set up the United Nations Special Fund. The new institution took off on I January 1959, with United States Marshall Plan veteran Paul Hoffman at the helm. While the EPTA continued to concentrate on sending experts to developing countries and training local people, the complementary Special Fund tackled large pre-investment projects over a much longer period and costing more money.

"Investment, public or private, will not venture into the unknown", Hoffman said. The task of the Special Fund was to make the unknown more known. It had to take risks that others would not take and execute extensive surveys and feasibility studies that would reassure investors and attract capital to developing countries.

During its first five years, the Special Fund sent more than 1,500 experts to the field, gave advanced training to 56,000 people under 124 projects, carried out 31 national and physical resource surveys, established two applied research institutes and completed two long-term training projects. And its feasibility studies generated some $800 million in follow-up investments.

Technical assistance involves

people, projects.

In Guatemala, it developed a 15year hydroelectric programme while paving the way, in Thailand, for a $22.5 million dam on the Nam Pong River. In Egypt, it financed soil surveys and irrigation and land reclamation studies which helped open to cultivation more than a million acres. In Nigeria, it was instrumental in establishing a national and four regional teachers' colleges.

In 1959, Governments promised the Special Fund $25.8 million. But before the end of that first year, 164 project requests had already been received, estimated to cost nearly $160 million. Strict priorities were set and 44 projects in 26 countries were chosen.

From the very beginning, the Special Fund forged close working relations with its executing agencies, particularly the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the...