Unequal partners: American foundations and higher education development in Africa (review)

BookReview:UnequalPartners · Long75 independent schools (Lisa Salinetti Ross) have capitalized on their uniqueness to set in place sustainable student advancement programs. In Part 5: Student Programs, authors pivot their discussion from managerial aspects of student programming to its purpose. These chapters focus on the importance of creating events and experiences that evoke emotional connections. Authors reflect on creating a sense of pride, belonging, and perceived value among students and alumni. In Chapter 15, Gloria Ko asserts the desired impact of student advancement programs is to “begin crafting a narrative that you want your students to walk away with upon graduation” (p. 139). Paul Metcalf and Rachel Farrell (Chapter 17) complement this discussion by focusing on the importance of preserving traditions that advance the sentiment. They conclude that tradition books add stability to institutional cultures by capturing what connects students to their campus and alumni to their alma mater. Organized as a user-friendly guide, the book is aimed at a diverse range of student engagement practitioners. Its success is attributed to the collection of personal accounts that demonstrates breadth of experience and depth of knowledge. By focusing on the basics, experts have succeeded in proposing a framework for student advancement professionals seeking to create a model or working within an already established structure in any institutional setting. doi: 10.2979/phileduc.1.1.07 Lisa Guzman, Ph.D. is currently the Director of Evaluation & Alumni Initiatives at Arkansas State University. She received her Ph.D. at the University of Michigan in Higher Education with an emphasis on Organizational Behavior and Management. Her research uses qualitative methodological approaches to study institutional and environmental experiences of alumni that influence alumni volunteerism in college-level institutional settings. She currently leads work that focuses on developing opportunities for alumni participation and increasing overall alumni involvement in department-level programmatic retention efforts. Jaumont, Fabrice. Unequal partners: American foundations and higher education development in Africa. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan. 170pp. Soft cover: $25.00 ISBN: 978-1-137-59347-4. Reviewed by Kyle A. Long International & Comparative Education, Teachers College, Columbia University. When donors collaborate for the ostensible purpose of creating more positive and lasting change than their individual approaches would engender, one must 76 Philanthropy&Education · Vol. 1, No. 1 look beyond their rhetoric to understand the actual influence of philanthropic partnership. This suggestion from Ira Silver (2006) guides Fabrice Jaumont’s new study of one such alliance for large-scale social change. A French cultural attaché and foundation program officer, Jaumont leverages “a monumentally large dataset” (p. 67) to provide a rare insider’s perspective of U.S. foundations’ efforts to transform higher education in Africa at the dawn of the 21st century. He draws from a survey of 12,000 grants made between 2000–2013; over 100 interviews with donor and recipient personnel; and the archives of the Partnership for Higher Education in Africa (PHEA), a loose confederacy of seven large American foundations committed to building capacity in the African higher education sector between 2000–2010. PHEA’s stated goals were: 1) to advocate for the “indispensable contribution of higher education to social and economic development in Africa” and 2) to accelerate the “process of comprehensive modernization and strengthening of universities in selected countries” (p. 52). With such lofty ambitions the partnership makes for a rich case and provides Jaumont with ample material for the nuanced analyses at which he excels throughout the text. The slim but dense volume, the title of which evokes Silver’s Unequal Partnerships , is arranged in three parts. In the first, he puts PHEA in context by reviewing the ecology of U.S. foundations in Africa. This involves an efficient review of the historical relationship between American foundations and African universities culminating in the paradox that drives the book: the possibility of developing higher education institutions on African terms with American resources. To critics, foundations’ attempts to modernize African universities throughout the 1960s and 70s succeeded more in Westernizing them, creating dependence on international donors and perpetuating poverty. On the other hand, when the foundations left in the early 1980s after the World Bank’s ‘short education policy menu’ effectively advocated for divestment from higher education , African...