Africa (Contd.)

As starkly proved by the Congo crisis, Africans need education before independence. What should the U.S. do?

Because colonial powers are highly sensitive on the subject, the U.S. government has walked a policy tightrope. The State Department spends less on African education ($2,000,000 this year) than it does in any other area. U.S. scholarships for Africans have been few and far between.

One result was the recent Nixon-Kennedy flap over who should pay air fares for 250 U.S.-bound East African students. A more useful result was the Government's post-independence offer of scholarships for 150 Guinea students and 300 from the Congo.

Is this enough? Last week a sharp answer came from Manhattan's Phelps-Stokes Fund, one of the oldest (1911) U.S. foundations concerned with African education. While praising the Guinea-Congo offer, the Fund called for "action by the United States Government on a broader--perhaps regional--scale." From both dependent and independent African areas, said the Fund, the U.S. should bring in "some thousands of students per year."

The call was based on a recent Fund-sponsored meeting of 50 U.S. educators, foundation officials, and representatives of the U.S. and British governments. Drawing on their views, the Fund urged "a coordinated but not centralized" plan of U.S. aid from both public and private sources. It would focus on Africans "of highest promise," select students "only on merit and in open competition." The winners would be suitably financed for at least their first year in the U.S., get training specifically geared to their needs back home. As for overall supervision, concluded the Fund, "only the United States Government has the resources to finance promptly and adequately a scholarship program of this magnitude. Without such a program, the United States will have failed to do what it can and should do on behalf of African nations."

Africans may take comfort in the fact that both U.S. presidential candidates have now said as much in their own ways. The Kennedy Foundation is footing the air fares for those East Africans. For his part, Richard Nixon last week called Afro-Asian education "our most critical long-range problem." Said he: "There is no area where the national interest can be served better."

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