Despite renewed academic effort and increased public attention being paid African peoples and cultures, there are far fewer off-campus academic programs in Africa than one would expect, especially as we are speaking of a whole continent. Drew in West Africa is one of the few independent (with no institutional affiliations in Africa) academic programs that offer a regular four-week summer program in West Africa. After introducing the program, I would like to offer some observations on one of the most intriguing aspects of our program: the diversity of participants.

Every projection indicates that minorities will represent a significant portion of the American labor force in the nearest future. Yet minority groups have historically represented segments of the population least capable of competing in the national and international marketplace. This is precisely why historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) need to rise to the challenge through an implicit mandate to internationalize their member institutions and the surrounding communities. This paper takes a critical look at how HBCUs ran the two most predominant components of international education, namely, the overseas and area studies programs. The main focus of the paper is Africa. It is indeed an attempt to assess the status of international education at HBCUs, particularly the problems they encounter as they struggle to internationalize. Although in the last few years, study abroad in Africa has become increasingly popular among HBCUs, the road ahead is still very long and sometimes tortuous. In the area of African studies, most of these institutions have a much bigger challenge to meet. The basic premise of my assumption is that despite all the good intentions of the government and private donor organizations, the fact remains that sustainable and qualitative international education in the area of African studies is in large part unaffordable and thus inaccessible to most HBCUs. Numerous factors are responsible for this phenomenon.

Prior to South Africa’s first democratic elections in 1994, South African tertiary education institutions were relatively isolated from the growing global flow of students around the world. Over the past five years this has changed significantly. For example, between 1996 and 1997 the number of students from the United States spending a semester abroad in South Africa increased by 49 percent to a total of 617 students, making South Africa the most popular destination in Africa. By 1999, the University of Cape Town (UCT) alone, one of 21 universities in South Africa, welcomed 205 semester-study-abroad students, 145 of them from the United States.

In 1998, the American Association of Colleges and Universities raised the question of what higher education could do to prepare graduates to address “the legacies of racism and the opportunities for racial reconciliation in the United States.” One of the most powerful and pedagogically rich approaches to facilitate learning about race, racial identity, and the impact of racism in America today is study abroad in Africa. With a history that includes dynasties and empires; the capture and enslavement of Africans and the transatlantic slave trade; and the structures of colonialism, neocolonialism, and apartheid (which have often been conceptualized as parallel to the institutionalized racism of America), the continent of Africa can be a wonderful classroom for this type of learning. This is particularly the case when the location of study is West Africa, by most accounts where the majority of people of African descent living in the United States have ancestral ties. Visits to and interactions around the monuments to and symbols and physical remnants of the complex historical relationships between Europeans and Africans can be a catalyst for stimulating challenging but ultimately rewarding discussions and growth with regard to issues of race and racism.

In the spring of 1999, I competed for the chance to participate in an African study-abroad program. The program was sponsored by The Africa Program, founded in 1994 with a goal of promoting business relationships between Texas and Africa. Recognizing the crucial role that education plays in fostering such an economic venture, The Africa Program offered to send qualified candidates to study in the Senegambia region of West Africa in the summer of 1999. The selection was open to students and faculty of the University of Texas at Arlington, both undergraduate and graduate, and to the community at large.

The University of Florida (UF) Center for African Studies and International Center jointly sponsor an academic-year program at the University of Dar es Salaam (UDSM) in Tanzania. Begun in 1989, the program offers students from across the United States the opportunity to pursue their studies in a range of fields alongside Tanzanian students. Students pay UDSM tuition and a program development fee. In accordance with the agreement between UDSM and UF, tuition is deposited in an account at the University of Florida to be used for UDSM faculty development: Each year several junior faculty members nominated by their departments spend three months at UF working in consultation with local faculty and using UF library and computer facilities. In my capacity as assistant director of the Center for African Studies, I have had the pleasure of working with both the visiting Tanzanian faculty and the U.S. students going to Tanzania.

For most, it was unthinkable. To others, it was just a dream. Yet for some African American students at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale (SIUC), traveling to Africa is now a reality. It all started in 1997, after I led a group of students to Tanzania. My travels were a part of Operation Crossroads Africa, a 42-year-old program designed to promote an understanding between Africa and the African diaspora through cultural exchanges. As word of my journey to East Africa spread throughout campus, African American students visiting the Black American Studies program asked me some probing questions. Two students who came into my office devoted much time and attention to a picture of some Crossroaders pinned to my bulletin board. “Where’s the Black students?” one said, mumbling under her breath. “Yeah,” the other student said in agreement, “Why don’t you take us? We are the ones that need to learn about Africa!” The students’ observations were indeed true.

In talks on study abroad given over the last 20 years, I have frequently alluded to my own experiences as an undergraduate in Nigeria in 1964–1965. I have drawn on personal example to make the following points, among others, to the students in my audiences:

1. • You do not need to know beforehand all the benefits of studying abroad.

2. • You will make a great many mistakes, and that is both unavoidable and expected.

3. • You will learn and grow in spite of the mistakes you make.

4. • To be a minority is difficult.

5. • You can learn much about yourself and your home country by studying abroad.

Spending time with a Senegalese family is essential to learn about life in Senegal. People in the family are happy to teach about their culture, lives, and language. Most important, they are willing to take their guests to places a foreigner may never be able to find on his or her own! This is what I encountered my first weekend in Dakar, Senegal. My three sisters asked me to go with them to Monaco Beach, and though I wasn’t really up to it, I decided that I should accept their offer. Little did I know how much of a growing experience it would be for me.

I first landed on African soil in August 1999, prepared to begin a yearlong master’s program in the Institute of African Studies at the University of Ghana. During my final year as an undergraduate majoring in international affairs at Kennesaw State University in Georgia, I had applied for and was awarded a scholarship from the Rotary International Foundation. Although I had about nine months to prepare myself for my stay in Ghana, the reality of everything I saw and experienced there defied and often surpassed my expectations. The university is in Legon, a short distance north of the capital city of Accra. Accra is an enormous, sprawling city, and I really didn’t expect it to be quite so big. But with a map in hand, it was fairly simple to get from place to place, and people went out of their way to make sure I got to where I was going, if I asked for help. There is a lot of poverty, a lot of children who are on the streets selling odds and ends rather than going to school, and a lot of pollution (air, water, land, noise—you name it). But there is also an enormously warm feeling there, which is somehow indescribable. Friendliness and helpfulness seem to be characteristic, and despite the healthy dose of precaution I tried to maintain, I had the feeling (and I have been told, as well) that Accra is a very safe city.

On January 8, 1998—my birthday, as it happens—I greeted 24 tired and slightly scared undergraduates from the United States as they got off their British Airways flight from London and stood in line awaiting immigration and customs clearance at the airport in Harare. I had taken a semester off from my job as professor of mathematics at Colorado College to direct the ACM (Associated Colleges of the Midwest) Program in Zimbabwe and had no more idea what our joint experience in Zimbabwe would bring than they did. I too was nervous with anticipation.