“A glorious future” for Africa: development, higher education and the making of African elites in the United States (1961–1971)

ABSTRACT

At the time of African independence, the concept of higher education for development took hold in the programmes of the new African governments and in the aid projects of the former colonial powers, the United States, the USSR, and international organisations. All agreed on the need to place higher education at the service of Africa’s development and, to that end, to train the elites capable of carrying out the continent’s modernisation. It was for this purpose that the African Scholarship Program of American Universities (ASPAU) was created, which enabled nearly 1,600 Africans to study in the United States between 1961 and 1971. The objective of this article is to show, through the example of ASPAU, that beyond the almost unanimous support for the developmentalist project at the time of decolonisation, its conceptualisation and implementation have actually been shaped by differing expectations and relationships of domination. Governments, university officials, philanthropic foundations, and African students were all acting according to particular agendas that they tried to impose through different strategies. The training of African elites thus proved to be a much more tortuous process than was theoretically expected, fashioned as much by ideological concepts as by political interests, personal strategies and transnational flows of people and knowledge. In this sense, the history of ASPAU also highlights the deeply experimental dimension of decolonisation.

KEYWORDS:

• Education
• development
• decolonisation
• Africa
• United States
• students

Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the Doc.Mobility programme of the Swiss National Science Foundation. I would like to thank Professor Frederick Cooper for his valuable advice during this research and his constructive comments in the writing of this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

¹ Kenneth J. King, “James E.K. Aggrey: Collaborator, Nationalist, Pan-African,” Canadian Journal of African Studies 3, no. 3 (1970): 511–30.

² Nnamdi Azikiwe, My Odyssey. An Autobiography (New York: Praeger, 1970), 37.

³ Ibid., 275.

⁴ N’dri T. Assié-Lumumba, Higher Education in Africa. Crises, Reforms and Transformation (Dakar: CODESRIA, 2006), 42–5.

⁵ J.F. Ade Ajayi, K. Lameck, H. Goma, and G. Ampah Johnson, The African Experience with Higher Education (Accra: Association of African Universities in association with James Currey and Ohio University Press, 1996), 75–8; and Constantin Katsakioris, “Creating a Socialist Intelligentsia,” Cahiers d’Études africaines 57(2), no. 226 (2017): 259–87.

⁶ The African American Institute (AAI), Final Report, African Scholarship Program of American Universities (ASPAU) (New York, 1976), 1 (hereafter AAI, Final Report ASPAU).

⁷ For an overview of this historiographical revival, see Joseph M. Hodge, “Writing the History of Development. Part 1: The First Wave,” Humanity: An International Journal of Human Rights 6, no. 3 (2015), 429–63; “Part 2: Longer, Deeper, Wider,” Humanity: An International Journal of Human Rights 7, no. 1 (2016), 125–74.

⁸ Colette Chabbott, Constructing Education for Development: International Organisations and Education for All (New York: Routledge, 2003); Céline Labrune-Badiane, Marie-Albane de Suremain, and Pascal Bianchini, eds., L’école en situation postcoloniale (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2012); Damiano Matasci, Miguel Bandeira Jerónimo, and Hugo Gonçalves Dores, Education and Development in Colonial and Postcolonial Africa: Policies, Paradigms, and Entanglements, 1890s–1980s (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020); Carol Summers, Colonial Lessons: Africans’ Education in Southern Rhodesia, 1918–1940 (Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 2002); and Elisa Prosperetti, “‘Between Education and Catastrophe’: Côte d’Ivoire’s Program d’Éducation Télévisuelle and the Urgency of Development (1968–1983),” Journal of African History 60, no. 1 (2019): 3–23.

⁹ Ajayi, Goma and Johnson, The African Experience; Assié-Lumumba, Higher Education in Africa; and Katya Leney, Decolonisation, Independence and the Politics of Higher Education in West Africa (Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 2003).

¹⁰ Françoise Blum and others, eds., Etudiants africains en mouvement: contribution à une histoire des années 1968 (Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 2016); Eric Burton, “Decolonization, the Cold War, and Africans’ Routes to Higher Education Overseas, 1957–65,” Journal of Global History 15, no. 1 (2020): 169–91; and Monique de Saint-Martin and others, eds., Étudier à l’Est: expériences de diplômés africains (Paris: Karthala, 2015).

¹¹ See, however, Eric Burton, “African Manpower Development During the Global Cold War: The Case of Tanzanian Students in the Two German States,” in Africa Research in Austria: Approaches and Perspectives, ed. Andreas Exenberger and Ulrich Pallua (Innsbruck: Innsbruck University Press, 2016), 101–34; and Tim Livsey, Nigeria’s University Age. Reframing Decolonisation and Development (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017).

¹² Lynn M. Thomas, “Modernity’s Failings, Political Claims, and Intermediate Concepts,” The American Historical Review 116, no. 3 (June 2011): 734.

¹³ Frederick Cooper, “Modernizing Bureaucrats, Backward Africans, and the Development Concept,” in International Development and the Social Sciences: Essays on the History and Politics of Knowledge, ed. Frederick Cooper and Randall Packard (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997): 64–75; and Michael Ashley Havinden and David George Meredith, Colonialism and Development: Britain and its Tropical Colonies, 1850–1960 (London: Routledge, 1996), 216–27.

¹⁴ Frederick Cooper and Randall Packard, “Introduction” in Cooper and Packard (1997), 9; Frederick Cooper, “Writing the History of Development;” Andreas Eckert, Stephan Malinowski, and Corinna R. Unger, “Modernizing Missions: Approaches to ‘Developing’ the Non-Western World after 1945,” Journal of Modern European History 8, no. 1 (2010): 14–15.

¹⁵ Assié-Lumumba, Higher Education in Africa, 43–4.

¹⁶ Larry Grubbs, “Bringing ‘the Gospel of Modernization’ to Nigeria: American Nation Builders and Development Planning in the 1969s,” Peace & Change 31, no. 3 (2006): 279–308.

¹⁷ United Nations, General Assembly, Resolution 200 (III), 4 December 1948, “Technical assistance for economic development.”

¹⁸ Harry S. Truman, “Inaugural Address”, 20 January 1949, https://www.trumanlibrary.org/whistlestop/50yr_archive/inagural20jan1949.htm

¹⁹ David Ekbladh, The Great American Mission: Modernisation and the Construction of an American World Order (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010), 77–98.

²⁰ Walt W. Rostow, The Stages of Economic Growth: A Non-Communist Manifesto (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1960).

²¹ See also Max F. Millikan and Walt W. Rostow, A Proposal: Key to an Effective Foreign Policy (New York: Harper & Bros, 1957); and James S. Coleman and Gabriel A. Almond, The Politics of the Developing Areas (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1960).

²² Nigeria, Commission on Post-School Certificate and Higher Education in Nigeria, Investment in Education: The Report of the Commission on Post-School Certificate and Higher Education in Nigeria (Lagos: Federal Ministry of Education, 1960); Patricia Rosenfield, A World of Giving: Carnegie Corporation of New York – A Century of International Philanthropy (New York: Public Affairs, 2014), 235–46.

²³ Investment in Education, Appendix 4, “Commission’s program of activities 1959–1960.”

²⁴ Ibid., 41; and Frederick Harbison, “High-Level Manpower for Nigeria’s Future,” in Nigeria, Commission on Post-School Certificate and Higher Education in Nigeria(1960),50–72.

²⁵ The work of Theodore W. Schulz (“Investment in Human Capital”, The American Economic Review 51, no. 1 (March 1961): 1–17) and especially W. Arthur Lewis (“Education and Economic Development”, Social and Economic Studies 10, no. 2 (June 1961): 113–27) was also decisive in spreading the education for development model in Africa.

²⁶ Federation of Nigeria, National Development Plan 1962–1968 (Lagos: The Federal Ministry of Economic Development, 1962), 87.

²⁷ See in particular the reports written in collaboration with the Ford Foundation: Government of Ghana with the Co-Operation of the Ford Foundation, “Survey of High-level Manpower in Ghana, 1960 ”(Accra: Ministry of Information, 1961); Republic of Kenya, Ministry of Economic Planning and Development, “High-Level Manpower Requirements and Resources in Kenya 1964–1970, Prepared under the Direction of Calvin F. Davis, Consultant of the Ford Foundation to the Government of Kenya” (May 1965); George Tobias, Consultant to the Government of Tanganyika for the Ford Foundation, “Survey of High-Level Manpower Requirements and Resources in Tanganyika 1962–1967” (Dar-es-Salaam, August 1962). See also République du Sénégal, “Plan Quadriennal de Développement, 1961–1964” (Dakar, 1961), 138–9 and 196–7, and for a more general overview: Michel Gaud, Les premières expériences de planification en Afrique noire (Paris: Editions Cujas, 1967), 247–65, 342–57; Joel Samoff and Carrol Bidemi, “The Promise of Partnership and Continuities of Dependence: External Support to Higher Education in Africa,” African Studies Review 47, no 1 (April 2004): 79.

²⁸ UNESCO, Conference of African States on the Development of Education in Africa (Addis Ababa, 15–25 May 1961), Final Report, 10.

²⁹ Ajayi, Goma, and Johnson, The African Experience, 55–9. It should be noted that the Rockefeller, Ford, and Carnegie Foundations have also invested in higher education in Africa itself by developing or creating research and teaching centres.

³⁰ Tom Shachtman, Airlift to America: How Barack Obama, Sr., John F. Kennedy, Tom Mboya, and 800 East African Students Changed Their World and Ours (New York: St Martin’s Press, 2009).

³¹ Melvin Fox to Philip H. Coombs, 7 April 1961, Rockefeller Archive Centre (RAC), Ford Foundation Records (FFR), Grants A-B (FA732A), Africa-America Institute (06300189), 20 March 1963–19 March 1966, Reel 0673; David D. Henry to James N. Hyde, 24 February 1961, RAC, Rockefeller Brothers Fund records (FA005) (RBFR), Record Group 3: Projects (Grants); Series 1: Projects (Grants), Box 400, Folder 2451, Harvard University-African Scholarship Program of American Universities, 1961–1962.

³² Memorandum From Secretary of State Rusk to President Kennedy-Washington, 15 February 1961, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961–1963, Volume XXI, Africa; Department of State, “Report on United States Government Assistance to Sub-Sahara African Students Seeking Higher Education in the United States,” January–September 1961, RBF, Record Group 3: Projects (Grants); Series 1: Projects (Grants), Box 400, Folder 2451, Harvard University–African Scholarship Program of American Universities, 1961–1962.

³³ Report of John W. Davis to the Trustees of the African-American Institute on Travel to Five West African Countries in October, 1960, AAIR, Horace Mann Bond Papers, Series 3. Subject Files, Africa-America Institute, 5 December 1960–23 December 1960. Besides ASPAU, other governmental or semi-private programmes were created, such as the African Graduate Fellowship Program (AFGRAD), the Inter-African Universities Program (INTERAF), the Southern African Scholarship Program (SASP), and the Participant Training Program. Philanthropic foundations (Ford and Rockefeller), the United Nations, and missionary churches also continued to provide scholarships for African students.

³⁴ The number and percentage of ASPAU students per country are as follows: Botswana: 11 (0.7%); Cameroun: 121 (7.6%); Chad: 6 (0.4%); Congo (Brazzaville): 2 (0.1%); Dahomey: 12 (0.8%); Ethiopia: 91 (5.7%); Gabon: 1 (0.1%); Gambia: 11 (0.7%); Ghana: 72 (4.5%); Ivory Coast: 35 (2.2%); Kenya: 129 (8.1%); Lesotho: 7 (0.4%); Liberia: 13 (0.8%); Malagasy Republic: 19 (1.2%); Malawi: 66 (4.1%); Mali: 5 (0.3%); Morocco: 25 (1.6%); Niger: 5 (0.3%); Nigeria: 378 (23.7%); Rhodesia: 95 (6.0%); Senegal: 22 (1.4%); Seychelles: 16 (1%); Sierra Leone: 19 (1.2%); Somalia Republic: 15 (0.9%); Swaziland: 12 (0.8%); Tanzania: 109 (6.8%); Togo: 13 (0.8%); Tunisia: 10 (0.6%); Uganda: 112 (7.0%); Upper Volta: 4 (0.3%); Zaïre: 66 (4.1%); Zambia: 92 (5.8%): AAI, Final Report ASPAU, Appendix IV.

³⁵ Ibid., 20.

³⁶ W. Bradford Craig (Chairman of the ASPAU Board of Trustees), “A Report on the African Scholarship Program of American Universities, 1960–1970” (undated), 7, AAIR, Series 2. Programs 1961–2010, AFRICAN GRADUATE FELLOWSHIP PROGRAM (AFGRAD), African Scholarship Program 1976, Box 389: AAI 194912.

³⁷ Study Committee on Manpower Needs and Educational Capabilities in Africa, Summary Report: Study of Manpower Needs, Educational Capabilities and Overseas Study. Ethiopia, Guinea, Kenya, Liberia, Nigeria, Sudan, Tanzania, Tunisia and Uganda. Report Number 1 (New York: Education and World Affairs, 31 August 1965).

³⁸ The Masland reports very often referred to the book written by Frederick Harbison with Charles A. Myers, Education, Manpower, and Economic Growth: Strategies of Human Resource Development (New York: Mcgraw-Hill, 1964), which in fact constitutes their methodological reference.

³⁹ Study Committee on Manpower Needs, Summary Report, 1.

⁴⁰ Ibid., 8.

⁴¹ Ibid., 8 and 19.

⁴² Study Committee on Manpower Needs, East Africa: Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda: Study of Manpower Needs, Educational Capabilities and Overseas Study (New York: Education and World Affairs, 10 August 1965), 142.

⁴³ See in particular for Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda: ibid., 147, 151, 154–5.

⁴⁴ Robert W. Scrivner to RBF Files, Memorandum, 2 November 1964: “ASPAU – Fourth Annual Conference, Fordham University, 29 October 1964” and Wyatt Donald W., “ASPAU and Africa’s Manpower Needs, Address delivered to: Annual ASPAU Meeting, Fordham University, 29 October 1964”, 4, RBFR, Group 3: Projects (Grants); Series 1: Projects (Grants), Box 22, Folder 175, African-American Institute, African Scholarship Program of American Universities (ASPAU), 1964.

⁴⁵ Study Committee on Manpower Needs, Summary Report, 37.

⁴⁶ Ibid., 5.

⁴⁷ Study Committee on Manpower Needs, Preliminary Report for Tanganyika, Ghana, Kenya and Nigeria (New York: Education and World Affairs, 2 June 1964), 2–3.

⁴⁸ AAI, Final Report ASPAU, Appendix XI – Operation Search, Country: Nigeria, 113–71.

⁴⁹ Nigeria National Manpower Board, Nigeria’s High-Level Manpower 1963–1970 (Apapa: The Nigerians National Press, 1965).

⁵⁰ Robert W. Scrivner to RBF Files, Memorandum, 17 September 1965: “ASPAU – Conversation with Ronald Springwater”, RBFR, Record Group 3: Projects (Grants); Series 1: Projects (Grants), Box 22, Folder 176, African-American Institute, African Scholarship Program of American Universities (ASPAU), 1965.

⁵¹ R.L. Predmore, Vice Provost and Dean of the Graduate School, Duke University, Summary “Report of Visit to West and North Africa on behalf of the African-American Institute, January 1968,” 5, AAIR, Series 1. Administration Files, Travel Reports (1967–1988), Box 328: AAI 764735436.

⁵² Kenya Education Commission, Kenya Education Commission Report Part I (Nairobi: Government Printer, December 1964).

⁵³ S.D.S. Spraag, Dean of Graduate Studies, University of Rochester, Summary Report on Visit to East African countries on behalf of the AFGRAD Program of the African-American Institute, January–February 1967, 18, AAIR, Series 1. Administration Files, Travel Reports (1967–1988), Box 328: AAI 764735436.

⁵⁴ AAI, Final Report ASPAU, 30 and Appendix XI – Operation Search, Country: Kenya, 71–89.

⁵⁵ Study Committee on Manpower Needs, Summary Report, 39.

⁵⁶ Robert W. Scrivner to RBF Files, Memorandum, 17 September 1965: “ASPAU – Conversation with Ronald Springwater.”

⁵⁷ D.W. Wyatt (Director of Field Operations),Memorandum No. 9, 17 March 1963, Subject: Report on Second Visit to Somali for ASPAU Selections, AAIR, Horace Mann Bond Papers, Series 3. Subject Files, Africa-America Institute, 12 February 1963–25 March 1963.

⁵⁸ ASPAU Forum, October 1963, Cambridge, MA: African Scholarship Program of American Universities, 1963, 5, RBFR, Record Group 3: Projects (Grants); Series 1: Projects (Grants), Box 23, Folder 180, African-American Institute, African Scholarship Program of American Universities (ASPAU), 1966.

⁵⁹ Edward C. White, “Manpower, Education and Economic Growth. Address delivered at the ASPAU students’ annual Christmas Reunion, Ohio State University, 30 December 1964” in ASPAU: The Utilisation of Training, African Scholarship Program of American Universities (Cambridge, Massachusetts, undated), RBFR, Record Group 3: Projects (Grants); Series 1: Projects (Grants), Box 22, Folder 176, African-American Institute, African Scholarship Program of American Universities (ASPAU), 1965.

⁶⁰ Interview with Samuel Mbele-Mbong, Geneva, 28 January 2020.

⁶¹ “African elite” in ASPAU Forum (undated), 4, RBFR, Record Group 3: Projects (Grants); Series 1: Projects (Grants), AAI, Box 22, Folder 174, African-American Institute, African Scholarship Program of American Universities (ASPAU), 1963. It should be noted, however, that ASPAU Forum was an official publication in which students did not venture to express too critical an opinion.

⁶² Thomas Echewa, “The Real Challenge” in Fifth ASPAU Conference, Princeton University, 28 October 1965, African Scholarship Program of American Universities, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1965, RBFR, Record Group 3: Projects (Grants); Series 1: Projects (Grants), AAI, Box 22, Folder 175, African-American Institute, African Scholarship Program of American Universities (ASPAU), 1964.

⁶³ Inno Chukuma Onwueme, Like a Lily among Thorns: Colonial African Village Child Transitions To Post-Colonial Modernity, and America (Bloomington: AuthorHouse, 2014), 180.

⁶⁴ AAI, Final Report ASPAU; Practical Concepts Incorporated, “Evaluation of ASPAU, AFGRAD, and INTERAF: Impact of Regional Scholarship Programs on Manpower Needs in Africa” (Washington DC, 23 November 1973); and US Agency for International Development and Aguirre International, Generations of Quiet Progress. The Development Impact of US Long-Term University Training on Africa from 1963 to 2003 (September 2004).

⁶⁵ Craig, “A Report,” 22.

⁶⁶ ASPAU: The Utilisation of Training, 8.

⁶⁷ Ibid., 3–7; and Robert W. Scrivner to RBF Files, Memorandum, 2 November 1964, 6.

⁶⁸ Telephone interview with Samuel W., New York, 22 February 2020.

⁶⁹ AAI, Final Report ASPAU, 45.

⁷⁰ Ibid., 46.

⁷¹ Telephone interview with Samuel W., New York, 22 February 2020.

⁷² Ibid.; AAI, Final Report ASPAU, 47.

⁷³ Craig, “A Report,” 26.

⁷⁴ These figures should be taken with caution, as the activities of more than 20% of Cameroonian graduates are unknown. AAI, Final Report ASPAU, Appendix XI – Operation Search, Country: Cameroon, 9–30.

⁷⁵ AAI, Final Report ASPAU, Appendix XI – Operation Search.

⁷⁶ Onwueme, Like a Lily among Thorns, 233–4.

⁷⁷ White, “Manpower, Education and Economic Growth.”

⁷⁸ Interview with Samuel Mbele-Mbong, Geneva, 4 February 2020.

⁷⁹ AAI, Final Report ASPAU, Appendix XI – Operation Search.

⁸⁰ Craig, “A Report,” 20.

⁸¹ Robert W. Scrivner to RBF Files, Memorandum, 17 September 1965: “ASPAU – Conversation with Ronald Springwater.”

⁸² AAI, Final Report ASPAU, 48–51; and University of Minnesota Office of International Programs, Proceedings of the National Conference: Higher Education and the International Flow of Manpower: Implications for the Developing World, April 13–14, 1967, FFR, International Division, Francis X. Sutton, Series V, Speeches, FA 568, Box 57, Folder 13.

⁸³ AAI Board of Trustees, Quarterly Reports on AAI Programs and Operations, July 1–30 September 1970, RBFR, (FA005), Record Group 3: Projects (Grants); Series 1: Projects (Grants), Box 21, Folder 166, African-American Institute, Publications, Quarterly Reports, 1968–1970.

⁸⁴ Julia Tischler, “Negotiating Modernization. The Kariba Dam Project in the Central African Federation, ca. 1954–1960” in Modernization as Spectacle in Africa, ed. Peter J. Bloom, Stephan F. Miescher, and Takyiwaa Manuh (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2014), 166.

⁸⁵ Abou B. Bamba, African Miracle, African Mirage. Transnational Politics and the Paradox of Modernization in Ivory Coast (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2016), 187.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Schweizerischer Nationalfonds zur Förderung der Wissenschaftlichen Forschung [Doc.Mobility P1GEP_191341].

Notes on contributors

Anton Tarradellas

Anton Tarradellas, PhD student, is Teaching Assistant in Modern African History at the University of Geneva. His research focuses on transnational migration, education and history of Africa from decolonization to the present.