In the area of development, it is clear that multinational and transnational corporations play a crucial role today in world economic affairs. - Étienne Gnassingbé Eyadéma

Yet despite the progress our continent has made over the past 40 years, Africa continues to be weakened by the ills of underdevelopment. Today, 33 of the world's 48 least developed countries are African countries. In other words, three fifths of the States of our continent belong to that group of countries that are lagging behind in the pursuit of development.

I would like to take this solemn opportunity to once again appeal to the friendly nations of Africa, such as the United States, so that, like the aid granted to the Eastern countries, they set up a real Marshall plan in favor of the African Continent. Just as in the past, I'm quite sure that Togo can rely on your country, to which it is bound by links of friendship and cooperation covering not only agricultural, social, and political sectors but cultural ones as well.

Famous for his lavish gifts to visitors and his obliviousness to calls for human rights, Eyadema helped institutionalise the image of the African despot in dark glasses who named the streets of Togo's capital, Lomé, after red-letter dates in his life.