Philanthropic foundations have been active participants in the development of higher education since the end of the nineteenth century. They played a formative role in the creation of modern colleges and universitiesāa mission that extends beyond US borders in a global effort to develop human capital. Originating from private fortunes, independently managed and subject to few legal restrictions, private foundations are enterprising entities that sit between the public and the private spheres. Their role in society is accepted in part because they are expected to serve the public good and advance a variety of social objectives. Today, philanthropic foundations are builders of āknowledge societies,ā defined by United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) as entities that foster knowledge sharing. For these foundations, the diffusion of information and communication technologies creates new opportunities for economic development. Taking into account the climate of criticism that currently surrounds the manner in which development priorities are set by various governmental and international agencies, US foundations have positioned themselves strategically in the sector by providing innovative solutions, spearheading new possibilities in development work, and promoting the sharing of knowledge and information in developing societies. In doing so, they mitigate the criticism leveled at international aid providers while defining and setting development priorities. This special positioning is not accidental, as foundations pay close attention to their respective roles and the legitimacy of their work. Foundationsā influence is particularly noticeable in areas such as health, human rights, agriculture, and international development. However, it is clear that foundations are particularly active in higher education, as this sector represents a niche largely ignored by governments, international organizations, and development agencies in many parts of the world.
While almost 100 foundations invested in the development of higher education in Africa between 2003 and 2013, this book focuses on seven foundations: the Carnegie Corporation of New York, Ford Foundation, John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, The Rockefeller Foundation, The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and The Kresge Foundation. 1 Together, these foundations make up the Partnership for Higher Education in Africa (PHEA) that invested close to $500 million in the development of African higher education between 2000 and 2010. This research includes a survey of 12,000 grants made to academic institutions, research networks, and other organizations involved in Africaās development between 2000 and 2013, as well as interviews of grantees representing universities and research centers located in nine countries in Africa, including South Africa, Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, Mozambique, Tanzania, Uganda, Egypt, and Madagascar. To put these foundationsā work in perspective, Chapters 2 and 3 explore at length the ecology of US foundations and higher education in Africa.
With more US foundations turning their attention to global issues, partnerships and strategic collaborations between private funders have gained ground. However, partnerships between foundations are not always guaranteed to produce effective results. In a famous essay on collaboration, Paul Brest, former president of the Hewlett Foundation, suggested that foundations could work together to generate better ideas and build broader constituencies while increasing the amount of money available to address common goals. However, he also warned against the relative drawbacks that collaborations may generate:
Numerous factors at the foundationsā institutional, intra-organizational, and environmental levels can explain these drawbacks. Strategic partnerships require an understanding of these factors to avoid derailment or damage to the foundationsā reputation. Chapters 4, 5, and 6 address these issues and explore the commonalities of philanthropic foundations. Collaboration can also be complicated by the unequal relationships between foundations and their grantees. These relationships form intricate mechanisms through which foundations leverage funds and maximize impact. Chapters 7, 8, and 9 focus on these specific matters by closely examining the question of legitimacy related to US foundations.Collaboration has inevitable up-front costs in the time and effort spent in communicating and making decisions together with oneās partners. The process can often be frustrating, and a beneficial outcome is hardly assured. At the end of the day, the extra effort is justified only if it has greater impact in improving peopleās lives. 2
The ensuing empirical chapters examine the multiple relationships that informed US foundationsā engagement with higher education institutions in Africa: the relationship on-the-ground between foundations and universities, the rapport among various foundations in Africa and in the USA, and the relationship between foundations and their dynamics of legitimation. As such these chapters gauge the types of interactions that determine collaboration and generate impact in a wide and complex field that is higher education on the African continent. The chapters trace the contours of educational philanthropy and identify various institutional factors that shape higher education development. In order to positively impact higher education in Africa, US foundations constantly revisit their approaches and pay particular attention to their beneficiaries. Sources of motivation and organizational mechanisms are analyzed to demonstrate that foundations engaged in partnerships use collaboration as a strategy to generate and maximize their impact, which, in turn, help them justify their choices, worldviews, practices, or what Hammack and Heydemann (2009) call their āphilanthropic projection of institutional logic abroad.ā Foundations negotiate between mutual support and their common cause to generate added value through partnerships without sacrificing their independence and mission.
This study is based on data extracted from summaries of the PHEAās meeting minutes, email correspondences, notes, evaluation drafts, reports, and publications. These documents depict the numerous interactions between partnering foundations, and between grantors and grantees, focusing on a set of interrelated and overlapping efforts by seven foundations. The data set is supplemented with an array of interviews, drawing attention to the question of how foundations both establish and make use of their legitimacy, authority, and capability to effect change in the world. Interviewees included seven program officers, six directors, four advisors and associates, and three vice-presidents and presidents. These individuals were the main actors involved in the PHEA. Qualitative data were based on actorsā retrospective accounts of partnership activity. Subjects had previous or current affiliation or involvement with the selected institutions, including those who dealt with grant application and requirements within said institutions. These individuals were interviewed in their official capacities (whether past or present) revealing the depth of engagement that characterized the PHEA. Additionally, over 100 interviews of individuals in Africa were included in the research. The transcripts served as a basis for various foundation-led publication projects. The interviews were conducted in 2010 and included both identified and unidentified interviewees at several African institutions. The interviews included granteesā broad reflections on higher education in their respective countries. Each subject was asked to comment on aspects of higher education that might have changed as a result of the relationships and processes that took place between their institution and the foundations. The respondents included students, professors, researchers, and research assistants, grant administrators, and university administrators in various universities in several countries, such as the University of Jos, University of Ibadan and Obafemi Awolowo University in Nigeria, the University of Cape Town and the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa, University of Dar es Salaam in Tanzania, Makerere University in Uganda, and the University of Cairo in Egypt, among several others. The sample also includes a few administrators from academic and research networks.
This research represents a nuanced analysis of a US-led foundation initiative of uncommon ambition, comprising seven foundations with a shared commitment to strengthen capacity in higher education in Sub-Saharan African universities. From a sociological perspective, this work contextualizes new philanthropic trends and examines the conditions under which philanthropy can be effective, the impasses that foundations often face, and the novel context in which philanthropy operates today. This topic engages two issues around which there is emerging interest among researchers and practitioners alike: The shifting grounds on which higher education is positioned globally and the role of global philanthropy within these changing contexts. These issues are especially important currently in a moment when higher education is once again recognized as a driver of development and economic growth, knowledge economies dependent on a highly educated population are displacing economies predicated on manufacturing and unskilled labor, and higher education is coming under pressure to adapt to new conditions. Foundations play an important role in facilitating this transformation and in responding to these new conditions, albeit in ways that are not well understood or widely accepted.
Moreover, many of the more recent publications on foundations have been tacked between two extremes: at once excessively broad and generic in subject matter in their efforts and analysis or excessively focused on one single philanthropic organization. This depiction of US foundations looks at conditions under which philanthropic efforts were successful in achieving their intent to act in concert. This study examines the constraints and conditions that allow foundations to effect change and influence grantees, governments, and other foundations alike. Exploring these areas of inquiry offers a nuanced theory of how institutions can influence external actors and initiate transformation. While the focus is the PHEA, the discussion is generalized to all US foundations that have invested in or established a relationship with an African higher education institution. With millions of dollars invested in universities and academic networks across the continent, the Partnership is at the forefront of higher education development in Africa. However, many other non-Partnership foundations were heavily engaged in the field during this period such as The Atlantic Philanthropies, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, W. K. Kellogg Foundation,The McKnight Foundation, The Michael and Susan Dell Foundation, Charles Stewart Mott Foundation, and The David and Lucile Packard Foundation to name but a few. Furthermore, broader issues such as institutional transformation, capacity building, and the development of the higher education sector will be addressed as well as the role of outside funders and developers in higher education reforms on the African continent.
Although higher education is being developed in several African countries, a majority of universities on the continent are still plagued by unstable national political contexts that constrain academic freedom and limit potential support from more external donors. Higher education in Africa in the early 2000s was characterized by a small number of universities per country and low enrollment ratios at all levels. The whole sector was hampered by multiple weaknesses, as Akilagpa Sawyerr, former Secretary-General of the Association of African Universities, wrote:
The sector was plagued by challenges such as aging faculty members and a lack of incentives to attract younger staff. The issue of a continued brain drain tendency, that afflicts most African countries, was pervasive. Moreover, scholars such as Benneh et al. (2004) argue that inadequate financial and logistical support from national governments, weak private sector backing, and few private contributions to universities can all be considered insurmountable obstacles to any form of institutional development. Furthermore, recent literature on African higher education confirms that African scholars are calling for more involvement in the inception and implementation of programs (Tiyambe Zeleza and Olukoshi 2004; Afolayan 2007; Moja 2007). In several instances, the question of program ownership is emphasized as an underrated and understudied dimension of the institutional relationship between donors and beneficiaries, particularly within the context of international development. The desire to maintain ownership of a project, concept, or institution can be a manifestation of a beneficiaryās resistance to an undesired transformation, calling into question the legitimacy of the donorās intentions. Moreover, this resistance to change also reflects universitiesā inability to generate an endogenous model of development as opposed to an inherited one. African scholars still ask how universities can transcend the mechanism by which Western institutions are inherited so that universities may serve as an engine for African development, instead of falling victim to Westernization.In most African countries, conditions for research have been severely compromised as manifest by the generally poor remuneration, heavy teaching loads, inability to mentor young faculty, and inadequate infrastructure. 3
Critics of philanthropy point to the arrogance of funders, their poor planning, unresponsiveness, lack of ethical conduct, and compromised work. As these issues are raised locally in the USA with reference to school reforms, similar issues could easily be raised with regard to US foundationsā funding of education initiatives outside of the USA. Nevertheless, these foundationsā accomplishments are particularly remarkable in light of the relatively small sums of monies that are involved, as well as their ability to leverage funds from outside sources. US foundations have demonstrated a certain know-how in maximizing their investments, impact, and influence, particularly on institutions of higher learning. By expanding their scope and expertise to higher education in Africa, foundations asserted their role in the construction of knowledge societies on a global scaleāproviding support to academic institutions, research centers, and scholastic networks. They also extended their own views of knowledge production to the rest of the world through their programs activities. The need for further empirical explorations and comparative examinations of foundation-led social change abroad is clear. This discussion provides a perspective on private foundations and the complexity of philanthropic action. It explores the question of legitimacy with an institutional lens, and offers a birdās eye view on foundation grantmaking over a specific region and time frame. This research offers an analysis of US philanthropies and higher education development, and explores the relationship between foundations and their gra...