Since the first Africa grants were made in 1958 ($ 300,000 distributed amongst Nigeria, Uganda, and what was then Tanganyika), The Ford Foundation has invested more than $ 56 million in African development, including nearly $ 34 million in African education. In recent years, educational support grants have been made in seventeen African countries, although major commitments have been concentrated in a half dozen of these: the Federation of Nigeria, the Republic of the Congo, Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, and Ethiopia. In each of these, the Foundation has been concerned in an important way with university development and frequently with the educational system as a whole.

Of the total Ford Foundation investment in African education, approximately $ 14 million has gone into West Africa, $ 3 million into Central Africa, and $ 8 million into East Africa. An additional $ 9 million has supported educational projects of a Pan-African or regional nature. In a majority of instances, these grants have been accompanied by technical assistance projects and the provision of advisory personnel.

All of this represents a very considerable private effort, but it is small when measured against needs. Indeed, to face the massive educational problems of the new African states, even from the outside, is a somewhat harrowing experience. For all practical purposes, requirements in terms of both money and manpower are infinite. Nowhere in the world is the gap between aspirations and the means to realize them so great; and where so much has been left undone for so long there is a credible impatience with delay. This situation--and the political pressures to which it gives rise--confronts Ministries of Education with a whole series of Hobsonesque choices. It also raises problems of priorities in a particularly acute form for external assistance agencies, including foundations.