A Foundation Collaboration in Africa Ends With Mixed Results

After 10 years and hundreds of millions of dollars, a major philanthropic effort to develop African universities ended last year, leaving behind a string of accomplishments but also some missteps along the way.

Known as the Partnership for Higher Education in Africa, it included seven of America’s most venerable and wealthy grant makers—the Carnegie Corporation of New York and the Ford, William and Flora Hewlett, John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur, Andrew W. Mellon, Kresge, and Rockefeller foundations. It provided $440-million to institutions and scholars in nine countries, making it one of the largest international efforts to assist universities on the African continent.

Many American and African education leaders say the partnership had a transformative effect on universities and helped spark discussions about the role higher education can play in the development of Africa.

But the partnership had its fair share of problems, too. Culture clashes among the foundations hindered the charitable venture, and it was seen by some as not doing enough to take on the big issues affecting African higher education.

“It was not nimble and coherent enough in its decision making and grant management,” says Babatunde Ahonsi, a former senior program officer at the Ford Foundation. He says the effort overall was a success, but it “had too much territoriality on the part of the individual foundations.”

A Rare Opportunity

In 2000, Carnegie, Ford, MacArthur, and Rockefeller combined forces to revitalize what they saw as a neglected part of African society. For years, African governments and the World Bank focused investments on elementary and secondary education, while higher education was left mostly to languish. But with democratic and economic changes sweeping several countries on the continent in the 1990s, the foundations saw a rare opportunity to improve university work and promote higher education as a way to help shape the future of Africa.

Members of the partnership, which Hewlett and Mellon joined in 2005 and Kresge in 2007, met regularly to discuss strategy and eventually hired a coordinator to oversee their work. Most were already providing grants to African universities. But by banding together, they wanted to identify trends that affected higher education across the continent.

“There were very few foundations working in Africa that worked Africa-wide,” says Omotade Akin Aina, Carnegie’s program director for higher education and libraries in Africa. “The partnership kind of created a multiplier effect in terms of the leverage, in terms of the presence, in terms of the nature of the conversation.”

Spurring Investments

The foundation partnership focused on—and made progress in—increasing the enrollment of women and others who often had trouble getting access to a college education, bolstering online learning, establishing advocacy and research networks, developing university fund-raising capabilities, and building new laboratories and facilities.

In some cases, the philanthropic support helped spur investments by others. For example, the World Bank used a partnership-sponsored case study on higher education in Mozambique to help design a $60-million loan to the country.

In all, the partnership says it directly or indirectly improved conditions for 4.1 million students. The achievement that Africans cited most often is the foundations’ contribution to expanding Internet access for a group of universities and education associations, known as the Bandwidth Consortium. In 2005 the Partnership for Higher Education in Africa started to pay for connectivity expenses for the consortium and helped negotiate a bulk deal with a satellite Internet-service provider to drastically cut costs.

At the time, spotty access to the Web was threatening to cut off African scholars and students from their peers in Asia, Europe, and North America and was stifling their academic contributions, say African educators.

The consortium “has opened doors for us and other institutions to enjoy reasonably good bandwidth at relatively low prices,” says John Ssebuwufu, director of research and programs at the Association of African Universities.

In total, the bandwidth effort helped higher-education institutions save almost $20-million, and the foundations say it was a venture they would not have undertaken without one another.

“It was something that MacArthur certainly could not have done or would have unlikely been able to do on its own,” says Raoul J. Davion, a program officer at the foundation and co-chair of its Higher Education Initiative in Africa.

Not ‘Smooth Sailing’

This type of joint grant making, however, was in short supply. Ten percent of the grants were made together from 2000 to 2004 and 18 percent from 2005 to 2010.

While it increased over time, some participants said the partnership should have done more joint projects as a way to tackle big problems that affect institutions across Africa.

That is one of the conclusions of an unusually candid report that was produced by an independent consultant based on interviews with foundation leaders and staff members. It says the lack of joint grant making “makes it difficult to clearly distinguish between the work that can be attributed to the partnership and the work that individual foundations would have done in any case.”

The report says the partnership also lacked clear goals, adequate ways to measure what it had accomplished, and an efficient process to make decisions.

Planning was hampered by different management styles at the foundations. Some had a decentralized approach, allowing program officers to make substantial grants, while other grant makers required decisions to be approved by their presidents. During the 10 years, the case study notes, trust and the collaborative atmosphere improved, but the differences took their toll.

The Hewlett Foundation eventually became a “silent partner” because of the labored deliberations, continuing to provide grants but removing itself from the decision-making process, says Sara Seims, director of the population program at the California grant maker.

“There were huge cultural incapabilities,” she says. “Our participation wasn’t exactly smooth sailing.”

Changing Priorities

In the end, however, occasional administrative hang-ups did not dissolve the partnership. It was always considered a time-limited venture, and foundation officials are quick to point out that 10 years is a long time for a collaboration in the philanthropy world. Changes in the leadership at three of the original partners—Ford, MacArthur, and Rockefeller—also contributed to the partnership’s demise, as the new chief executives sought to establish new charitable priorities, say some grant makers involved in the effort.

A few foundation staff members privately say they would have liked to have continued the cooperative. In fact, in 2008, presidents at the foundations tried to end the partnership, ordering it to be wrapped up in two months. But “program-officer subversion,” as one official put it, staved off its demise until 2010, which had been set as its end point by the members in 2005.

Looking ahead, the philanthropies will continue to support African academic programs separately and say they will continue to have informal discussions. Foundation staff members involved in the Partnership for Higher Education in Africa are proud of what it achieved and hope other grant makers can learn from its successes and mistakes.

“Do I think the partnership did as much as it might have in a perfect world? No,” says Andrea Johnson, a program officer at the Carnegie Corporation. “Do I think that it did some things that couldn’t have been done without it? Yeah, I do.”

Recommendations for Foundation Partnerships: a Sampling

The Partnership for Higher Education in Africa published a report to discuss what the foundations learned from their collaborative experience. Here are several suggestions from the study:

• Senior leaders should be involved in the joint project, but other staff members need to be given enough authority to make some decisions on behalf of their foundations.
• Establish a clear set of rules that govern participation. For example, how much money must each foundation contribute? How will charitable ventures financed by multiple members be managed? How can grant-making decisions be made in a timely manner?
• Set clear goals and keep members focused on what achieving those goals would look like. While any ambitious collaborative will start off with broad priorities, refining them and developing concrete areas to focus on will keep participants motivated and able to track their progress.
• Find a project to support together early in the partnership. By financing a joint venture near the start of a partnership, foundations will get a feel for each other’s knowledge and strengths.

Ian Wilhelm is an associate editor at The Chronicle of Higher Education.