International Higher Education, Winter 2005

Establishing Endowments for African Universities—Strategies for Implementation

Damtew Teferra
Damtew Teferra is assistant research professor and founding editor-in-chief of the Journal of Higher Education in Africa at the Center for International Higher Education, Campion Hall, Boston College, 02467, USA. E-mail: teferra@bc.edu.

Not long ago, Brown University, an American Ivy League institution, received $100 million from a philanthropist as an endowment to build a scholarship fund for needy students. Such philanthropic donations in U.S. higher education are a unique part of the institutional culture in the United States, aided both by tradition and by enabling tax policies. Leading universities enjoy massive endowments, and even many less prestigious colleges and universities have such funds available to assist them. Endowments constitute funds that are invested by the universities; the interest earned is available to spend on academic and other institutional programs.

Endowments outside the United States
A few countries, such as Israel, generate massive resources in endowments. Israel generates endowments mainly from the Jewish diaspora community from across the world. Operating under the umbrella of overseas-registered nonprofit organizations such as the American Friends of the Hebrew University, the American Friends of Tel Aviv University, and the Canadian Friends of the Hebrew University—supporters actively generate resources and build endowments for the advancement of higher education in Israel. For instance, American Friends of the Hebrew University raised more than U.S.$600 million in 2000 and is now gearing up to raise U.S.$1 billion.

Chinese universities also are undertaking similar, though less organized and less robust, initiatives. For instance, the Peking University Education Foundation operates several branches across the world. The North American chapter is committed to strengthening ties between Peking University and all areas of North America and to raising funds to promote cultural, technological, and educational communication and cooperation.

Endowments in Africa
Overall, the culture of endowments is not as extensive in other countries as it is in the United States. This is certainly the case in Africa. On the continent, South Africa leads in endowment drives for building scholarly institutions and programs. For example, in 2000, the Development Office of the University of Cape Town (UCT) reported generating 107 million rand (about U.S.$10 million) from donors—a 14 percent increase from the previous year. The overseas partners—the UCT Fund (U.S.) and the UCT Trust (U.K.)—were central to achieving this goal, although 60 percent of the campaign funds were raised in South Africa. Through the significant endowment funds that were raised, the university was able to start or continue building endowments for four chairs: the Nelson Mandela Chair of the Humanities, the Lesley Hill Chair of Plant Biology, the Pasvolsky Chair of Conservation Biology, and the Discovery Chair of Exercise and Sports Science.

The collaborative initiative between the Nippon and Tokyo Foundations—Japanese philanthropic institutions—may be singled out as the first major endowment initiative involving African higher education institutions. The foundations committed U.S. $1 million in endowment grants for each of the three African higher education institutions in Egypt, Kenya, and South Africa. American university in Cairo, the University of Nairobi, and the University of Western Cape are beneficiaries of this initiative. Ellen Mashiko, the executive director of the scholarship division of the Tokyo Foundation, indicated (IHE, fall 2000) that the activity involving the three universities demonstrates that endowments can be well managed, contribute to institutional viability, and lead to collaboration with students, faculty, and administrators throughout the world.

Mobilizing Major Players
In 2000, the four major U.S.-based foundations—Ford, MacArthur, and Rockefeller Foundations and the Carnegie Corporation of New York—announced a U.S.$100 million initiative for revitalizing higher education in Africa. Under the banner of the “Partnership for Higher Education in Africa,” the initiative has supported selected African institutions by strengthening teaching and research capacities, building infrastructure, undertaking strategic planning, and holding major conferences. The partnership also made possible the launching of the Journal of Higher Education in Africa and of a book series to foster research and publication on the continent’s higher education system. The first phase of the partnership, laid out as a five-year plan, will come to an end in 2005. It is fair to assume that—given its achievements and the increasing significance of higher education for national progress—the initiative will be renewed, most likely with more institutions in its fold and more resources at its disposal.

In the hope of sustaining what has been achieved and will be accomplished over time, this article calls upon both partner and nonpartner foundations to consider a major initiative to endow African universities. Such efforts will ensure that the institutions and the many programs that they have supported and nurtured remain on stable ground.

One major approach that virtually none of the major foundations involved in Africa has yet undertaken but need to consider is to help establish endowments for select national flagship universities and put in place the operational procedures to sustain it. Endowing African universities would for sure have an enduring impact on the continent’s higher education development.

Some foundations and philanthropic institutions may be restricted by the basic policy guidelines of their organizations from committing their resources for endowments. And this may be a tough agenda to push forward—at least for now. However, the fact that the partnership is a new venture of a coalition of organizations with disparate missions and guidelines may make it possible to deflect some of the restrictive policies inherent in individual foundations.

It is important to point out the need for foundations and other philanthropic institutions not only to commit funds to establish endowments but also to help mobilize the resources of other entities—institutions, foundations, businesses, the diaspora/immigrant community, and others—toward the endowment drive. These will help to generate more resources from other sources, for example, through matching funds.

In order to popularize and create an awareness of the concept, organizing a major international conference on endowing African universities would be an important step. Such a conference would need to bring together major development partners, such as agencies, foundations, NGOs, major Africa-based multinational corporations, private businesses, and representatives of diaspora communities. The new venture needs to start with a big bang to attract attention nationally, regionally, and internationally.

As Alison Bernstein, the vice president of the Ford Foundation’s Education, Media, Arts, and Culture Program put it, “Foundations respond to needs as they are felt by people operating on the ground: but they are also proactive in the ways they try to address issues that may be just over the horizon … [as they] have bifocal vision.” Establishing endowments for African universities stands as one of the issues that fall “over the horizon.”

Conclusion
Endowing African universities through both external and internal funding sources may appear to be an audacious initiative. It may look futile to contemplate such long-term strategies for institutions that struggle just to make it through each day. Nevertheless, the strategy to mobilize development partners to invest in sustainable initiatives of institution building through this endeavor needs to be championed and endorsed promptly while the agenda of higher education development in Africa remains in the limelight.