International Philanthropic Support for African Education: The Complex Interplay of Ideologies and Western Foreign Policy Agenda

Beginning in the nineteenth century, a plethora of western Christian and secular philanthropies introduced "top-down" philanthropic initiatives in Sub-Saharan Africa to promote education and "development". There seems to be a complex link between the agendas of international philanthropies and their home governments' broader foreign policy frameworks. This paper discusses American philanthropies' educational initiatives in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) from the 1920s to the end of the twentieth century. The paper focuses on four American philanthropies namely, Phelps-Stokes Fund, Carnegie Corporation, Ford Foundation and Rockefeller Foundation. It argues that American philanthropies' education initiatives helped to push the United States foreign policy agenda of transplanting adapted education in SSA, extending the social stratification of Black Africans in the global geopolitical processes, and promoting race relations. The agenda was promoted within the framework of White racial superiority and American "idealism" which the philanthropies presented as "development" after nations in SSA attained independence. [For the complete Volume 17 proceedings, see ED596826.]