Decolonization, the Cold War, and Africans’ routes to higher education overseas, 1957–65

Abstract

From the late 1950s, Africans seeking higher education went to a rapidly increasing number of destinations, both within Africa and overseas. Based on multi-sited archival research and memoirs, this article shows how Africans forged and used new routes to gain access to higher education denied to them in their territories of origin, and in this way also shaped scholarship policies across the globe. Focusing on British-ruled territories in East Africa, the article establishes the importance of African intermediaries and independent countries as hubs of mobility. The agency of students and intermediaries, as well as official responses, are examined in three interconnected cases: the clandestine ‘Nile route’ from East Africa to Egypt and eastern Europe; the ‘airlifts’ from East Africa to North America; and the ‘exodus’ of African students from the Eastern bloc to western Europe. Although all of these routes were short-lived, they transformed official scholarship provisions, and significantly shaped the postcolonial period in the countries of origin.

Youth leadership for development: contradictions of Africa's growing leadership pipeline

“…Though educated Africans assumed leadership within anticolonial struggles after the Second World War, the transfer of administrative power to this ‘new petty bourgeoisie’ in independence settlements ‘consolidated control in the existing state machinery’, largely preserving imperial structures of power (Zeilig 2007: 27–30). The power struggle created by the onset of the Cold War later opened the door for the USA and Soviet Union to join former colonial powers in capturing popular demands for education through aid in the form of scholarship and grant programmes (Pugach 2019; Burton 2020; Tarradellas 2020).…”

The Multiple Waves of the African Academic Diaspora’s Engagement with African Universities

“…During the 1950s, the emergence of the Cold War and the Americans and Soviets' attempts to use higher education to spread their political and socio-economic models opened access to higher education opportunities for African students beyond the metropole countries. African students who gained access to these new destinations and came to constitute the second wave of diaspora academics were caught up in the new western scramble to control African elites that defined the Cold War (Burton, 2020). This was also witnessed in attempts to control curriculum content and development in the nascent universities in the name of "developmentalism" (Burton, 2020).…”

“…African students who gained access to these new destinations and came to constitute the second wave of diaspora academics were caught up in the new western scramble to control African elites that defined the Cold War (Burton, 2020). This was also witnessed in attempts to control curriculum content and development in the nascent universities in the name of "developmentalism" (Burton, 2020). Academic freedom and institutional autonomy were sacrificed at the altar of what the new African states and their western allies saw as the correct paths to development and modernisation, while academics who tended to align with the Soviet bloc were silenced (Mkandawire, 2001).…”

Imperialism, internationalism, and education in Africa: connected histories

“…But in the meantime, African countries also looked for alternatives to post-imperial states' models, drawing on the vast and growing reservoir of development aid policies provided by international organisations (UNESCO and later the World Bank) 31 as well as by the United States and socialist countries, whose educational systems became increasingly appealing to local elites. 32 It is therefore no coincidence that the 1960s -the United Nations' "decade of development" 33 -were a "golden age" 34 for international educational cooperation, thanks to the flourishing of a number of scholarships and teaching programmes specifically designed for students of the Global South (see Tarradellas' and Katsakioris' articles). 35 Using different approaches and connecting different historiographies, the four articles gathered in this issue offer a fresh and new perspective on the way in which the African continent, and the so-called Third World more generally, became a global arena where educational models, visions, and projects emerged, circulated, and competed.…”