At its spring 2000 meeting, the African Studies Association Board of Directors voted unanimously to change the name of this journal from Issue: A Journal of Opinion to African Issues, indicating that it is a serious, forward-thinking scholarly journal that is an information source for policy makers and a useful resource for teaching about Africa.

We are pleased to bring you this special double edition of African Issues on study abroad in Africa. The response to our call for papers for this edition was overwhelming. We received more than 50 submissions, the most ever in the history of this publication. In our opinion, this shows the overwhelming desire on the part of Africanists and international educators to read more about the subject.

The National Consortium for Study in Africa (NCSA), established in 1994 by the 15 Title VI National Resource Centers for African Language and Area Studies, with financial support from the Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education, maintains as one of its primary goals the promotion of high-quality study-abroad programs in Africa for American students and faculty. Through its work, the NCSA hopes to enhance opportunities for a larger number of students to benefit from a study-abroad educational experience in an African setting. Special emphasis will be placed on increasing the participation of minority students who tend to be underrepresented in such programs.

The National Consortium for Study in Africa (NCSA) was founded in 1994 by the then 15 National Resource Centers for African Language and Area Studies. The primary agenda of the NCSA is to promote high-quality and accessible study-abroad programs for North American students in Africa. In addressing this agenda the NCSA initial membership had a particular, but not exclusive, interest in programs at African universities for North American students. This particular bias develops out of a long-standing commitment on the part of National Resource Centers to work with peer institutions in Africa. African universities, their faculty, and their students are essential partners in collaborative initiatives in research, teaching, and project work, and in the continuing process of generating knowledge on Africa across the disciplines. Consequently, from its inception the NCSA has viewed its goal of expanding high-quality programming in Africa as a natural outgrowth and expansion of its members’ linkages with African universities.

About three and half months before I left for Zimbabwe, I went to one of those parties where you only know the friend you came with. I ended up talking to a well-traveled guy wearing a striped wool scarf. At some point, I mentioned I was leaving for Zimbabwe in not so very long. This guy looked straight at me, his eyes big with suspicion over the stripes, and asked me exactly what good I thought the trip would do me.

So I told him I was going to study women and literature; I outlined my whole approved proposal. And I told him what a great opportunity it would be. But he was looking more and more disdainful, and I mumbled to a stop.

The University of Dar es Salaam has a long history of links with universities in different parts of the world. Currently it has formal link agreements with 61 universities in Africa, Asia, and Europe, including 12 in North America (11 in the United States and 1 in Canada). Seven out of the 12 include student exchange at undergraduate or graduate levels. These universities include Carleton, Brown, Connecticut, Hampton, Florida, Iowa, North Carolina (Chapel Hill), universities in the consortium of American Lutheran colleges, and a number of others organized under the International Student Exchange Program (ISEP) and the International Reciprocal Student Exchange Program (IRSEP).

The University of Ghana is the oldest of the five universities in Ghana. The others are Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, the University of Cape Coast, the University College of Education in Winneba, and the University of Development Studies in Tamale. The last two are only three years old and do not as yet have student exchange programs with North American universities. Kwame Nkrumah University and the University of Cape Coast do have student exchange programs with a few North American universities.

The National Consortium for Study in Africa (NCSA) grew out of a concern about the paucity of high-quality study-abroad opportunities in Africa for North American undergraduates, graduate students, and faculty. Africa is the second largest continent in geographic size and the ancestral home of 15 percent of the U.S. population, a demographic segment that has lived in the United States longer than most European immigrants. As a result, much of American art, music, language, and culture has derived from Africa and the Afro-Caribbean cultures. Africa also is an important and growing source of U.S. trade, which is larger than that of all the Commonwealth of Independent States of eastern Europe. In spite of the country’s prominence, less than 4 percent of North American students who study abroad enroll for study in Africa.

America’s understanding, or perhaps more appropriately its misunderstanding, of Africa is based on a long history of explorer, traveler, and missionary experience recounted in travelogue and the popular press. For the most part, images of Africa expressed in these accounts portray a world of barbarous, uncivilized peoples living in the unbearable climes of torrid deserts and tropical swelter. Today, there is little evidence to suggest any fundamental change in these earlier perceptions. As Michael McCarthy comments, “[the] ‘dark continent’ image of Africa as a mixture of desert and jungle, savage beasts and beastly savages, has persisted to such an extent that it has become over time the essential way in which most Americans have come to understand African realities.”

Recently the Institute for International Education released statistics for the 1997–1998 academic year showing that larger numbers of American undergraduates are choosing to spend part or all of an academic year abroad. To us in the profession, it is gratifying that the value of an overseas experience has been more widely recognized in recent years.

In August 1989, I boarded a flight destined for Kenya and the St. Lawrence University (SLU) semester program based there. I would be one of several hundred American students to study abroad in Kenya that year, and one of 25 with the SLU fall semester program. Having declared a major in anthropology with a geographic focus on Africa, I was looking for an educational experience in the world and a way to connect with something beyond what I had read in books and heard in classrooms. I was excited and nervous; at the relatively tender age of 19, I had high expectations and my fair share of naïveté.

This paper is both a personal and an academic reflection on my work as a U.S.-trained Kenyan anthropologist directing a study-abroad program for American undergraduate students in Kenya. It is an attempt to address three main issues: First is to understand why students choose to come to Kenya and what they hope to achieve by studying here. Second is to get a sense of what kind of prior images and information these students have of Kenya and Africa and how this influences their interaction with Kenya. Third is to understand how I as a Kenyan anthropologist trained in America balance the tasks of cultural broker and teacher of students in Kenya as is demanded of my position as director of a study-abroad program.

African scholars and activists often suggest that study-abroad programs to Africa be transformed to include an Africa-to-Africa exchange component. Their argument often includes discussion of the possibility that conventional study-abroad programs might perpetuate a colonial relationship between rich nations and those of the African continent rather that developing new relationships among African citizen diplomats. The following is an excellent overview of this debate.

This article discusses the establishment of student-based linkages between U.S. and African universities, especially those based on study abroad. Specifically, it focuses on two dimensions of study-abroad linkages: the terms under which they are established and operate; and how to address, within the current structure of most African universities, the need that American programs have for an on-site support structure for their students. This article is part of a larger, ongoing project evaluating the development of study-abroad opportunities in Africa for U.S. students. A key focus of the study is to expand understanding of the support for such programs within African universities.

The U.S. public holds certain beliefs to be self-evident about language learning: To learn a foreign language, one must study abroad. Since World War I and especially after World War II, students of French, German, or Spanish have enrolled in junior year, semester, or summer language programs in Europe. Educators have suggested that by studying the targeted language in an immersion setting, U.S. students gain a higher proficiency than students might acquire with only stateside instruction.

Since the beginning of Elon College’s study-abroad program 30 years ago, it has been an ever-expanding part of the Elon academic program. Indeed, 46 percent of May 1999 Elon graduates participated in study abroad, ranking Elon second in the country among comprehensive colleges and universities for the percentage of students who study abroad. This short article summarizes some recent activities undertaken at Elon College that support its strong study-abroad program. Cost and time commitment vary by activity.

I feel like every day is a new adventure and I’m just kind of this sponge right now, soaking it all in and hoping that I will be able to bring some of the things I’m learning back home with me ... just everything, sights, sounds, smells, tastes. It’s all so different and it’s just making me so thankful, again and again, that I did have the courage to get up and leave campus to come here ... because I’m living with families and I’m doing instead of reading about it or listening to a lecture.

As Kenya’s inbound tourism takes center stage as the country’s biggest income earner, study-abroad programs have emerged as the fastest growing subsector of the industry, making the country one of Africa’s most popular study-abroad destinations. In 1999 alone, a total of 22 credit-awarding academic study-abroad programs were operating in Kenya, an increase from 15 programs in 1998. Out of these 22 programs, 15 were from the United States, four were from Europe, and one was from Japan. In contrast, there were more than 80 noncredit study-abroad programs in 1999, most of which were short two-week study tours or field observation excursions. Of the noncredit study-abroad programs, 62 were from different African countries while 14 were from Europe and 12 were from the United States. This article describes the credit-awarding study-abroad programs and focuses on the University of Minnesota Studies in International Development (MSID) Kenya program.

Maria had been with her homestay family for 10 days when she found out that her host mother and brother were HIV positive. She asked to be moved, and the program directors complied. Another student, on another program, declared his HIV-positive status on his application form. Under American law, AIDS is not a reportable disease, and confidentiality policy obligated the director to place the student without informing his host family of the risk or educating them about precautions. What messages are we sending? Are the lives and legal principles of international students superior to those of the host nationals?

Education-abroad programs have been available to the adventurous student in U.S. colleges and universities for many decades. Traditionally, European destinations were sought. Over time, opportunities expanded to include less overtly Western countries and cultures. What all of these diverse programs had in common, however, is that they led to so-called developed countries. Opportunities to study in Third World countries were not rigorously exploited, and the African continent was all but ignored.