allAfrica.com: Africa: Building Human Capacity Key to Africa's Future, Says AAI President (Page 1 of 3)

Since its founding in 1953, the Africa-America Institute (formerly the African-American Institute) has developed and administered programs to educate and train Africans and to promote dialogue and understanding between the United States and Africa. In this first of a two-part discussion, AAI's president, Mora McLean, talked to AllAfrica's Tami Hultman about her organization's purpose, its past and its future.

AAI is now the oldest Africa-oriented private institution in the United States. We both know that perpetuating Africa-related work is a constant struggle. Why have you survived for more than half a century?

I suspect that our longevity is directly connected to what has been for 50 years the focus of our mission - the recognition that human capacity building is at the root of anything you want to achieve on the continent. Whether you are talking about development or increasing trade or peace and security, people have to have the knowledge and the skills and the wherewithal to get the job done. We've never lost our focus on that. One manifestation of our impact has been the thousands and thousands of people, mainly in Africa, but also in the United States, who have benefited directly from our capacity-building programs.

More than 20,000 Africans holding advanced degrees obtained through AAI programs is a pretty large constituency.

One of the ironies, especially for a U.S.-based organization that has to generate the lion's share of its resources from U.S. sources, is that we're better known on the African continent than anywhere else. When you meet someone who is in any kind of significant decision-making capacity, they will either themselves have benefited from an AAI education program or know someone who did. So I suppose that if I had to capture the reason for our endurance in one word, I'd say "relevance."

What we do is concrete. It's not always regarded as sexy, although I happen to think that it is extraordinarily exciting to harness the talents of individuals and to see them flower and to actually achieve things. These are the people that justify our existence. And although we've had to weather storms - and although the interests and concerns of policy makers and donors change - what remains a constant is that if you don't have the people to do whatever you're trying to do, you can't do it. Our emphasis is on people.

Could you just summarize how that emphasis is translated into programs?

Our actual mission statement, I think, is a superb summary - it's to promote enlightened U.S.-Africa engagement through education, training and dialogue. That's our mission and we do that - have always done that - by focusing on higher education and advanced skills. The reality is that it is only people who have advanced education and training - and the exposure and the experience to use it effectively - who are going to be in a position to think creatively and to implement the policies and programs necessary to have a strong basic education system. The emphasis is Africa, but the corollary to that has always been educating Americans, and American decision makers specifically, about Africa and its importance to the United States and our interests. So education is the focal point - education of Africans and of Americans about Africa.

What are your major challenges?

They're probably the same challenges of other organizations that have made Africa the focal point of their mission and work. Although Africa does have geopolitical importance, the interest in Africa on the part of the rest of the world remains peripheral. Therefore, focusing on Africa - especially on something like human capacity building that requires significant and long-term investment - while you don't have any difficulty explaining to people why it's important, getting them to invest is something else all together.

This year's report of the Blair Commission, sponsored by the British Prime Minister, recognizes the central role of higher education and specialized training. Whether that yields greater resources for Africa on a global level remains to be seen. And I would add, from our vantage point, that Africans themselves need to recognize the need to make investing in higher education a priority. There is an appreciation of the need, but when you have to rank priorities, and when there are limited resources, the temptation to focus on more near-term concerns is great. Getting that long-term sustained investment, that's a challenge.

Is your Namibia scholarship program an instance of the commitment you were saying is needed from Africans themselves? Could you talk about that project?

I love to talk about Namibia - a country that on its own decided to take advantage of the resource that AAI is and asked us in 1999 to begin to administer a Namibian training scholarship program. This is a program that is fully underwritten by the Namibian government, and you can see how historical experience makes the connection. The person who made the approach is Nahas Angula, who is the current prime minister but who at that time was the minister of higher education - and who had himself benefited from an AAI education program. He earned two masters - one from Teachers College at Columbia University. He had directly benefited and knew the quality of the program that AAI administers - that it is not just the scholarships, that it is a broader experience. The program connects students to peers in their fields or in related fields; it keeps them connected to institutions both where they study and at home, so that even during the course of their study, on-going relationships for the future are being built.

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