User:Neutrality/Operation Airlift Africa

Operation Airlift Africa, sometimes called the Kennedy Airlift, was an initiative that brought hundreds of East African students (mostly Kenyan) to the United States from 1959 to 1963, to study as international students. Many of the initiative's alumni later became prominent.

History
Operation Airlift Africa took place between 1959 and 1963 (when Kenya became independent). The airlift and was overseen by Kenyan political figure Tom Mboya, who persuaded charitable organizations to fund the imitative. A total of 770 young adults participated, from Kenya, Uganda, Tanganyika (later Tanzania), Malawi, Zimbabwe, and several other African countries.

Mboya secured scholarships for participants from American and Canadian institutions, and also garnered funds from the African American Students Foundation (AASF), which gained the support of prominent figures such as William Scheinman, Jackie Robinson, Harry Belafonte, and Sidney Poitier. Students also contributed to the cost of their own education, and raised money from their families and tribal groups.

1959
The first flight of the project took place on September 9, 1959, departing from Nairobi and arriving at New York City's Idlewild Airport. The students were flown to the U.S. abroad chartered British Overseas Airways Corporation (BOAC) flights. Fields of study varied, and included engineering, economists, and agronomy." The students prepared "to become the future leaders of Kenya and fill positions in government and industry the British would soon vacate." The airlift project was controversial in Kenya, occurring amid the backdrop of Cold War politics. While Mboya was aligned with the U.S., Mboya's political nemesis Oginga Odinga was aligned with the Soviet Union. In response to the American airlift program, Odinga organized a Soviet-funded scholarship program for Kenyans to study at Moscow's Patrice Lumumba University or other institutions in the Soviet bloc.

Mboya raised funds in the United States during a tour of the United States in April 1959, during which he met Martin Luther King, Jr., with whom he corresponded. Mboya successfully raised $2 million by persuading a number of American colleges and universities and philanthropists to fund scholarships. Mboya enlisted the aid of African American celebrities such as Jackie Robinson and Harry Belafonte, who contributed funds. He also received the instrumental support of white businessman Bill Scheinman, who belonged to the American Committee on Africa and had experience in the aviation industry. Cora Weiss, an American activist, was also involved in organizing the airlifts.

During the 1959 trip, Mboya met Vice President Richard Nixon, industrialist David Rockefeller, and Senator John F. Kennedy, who was then the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee's Subcommittee on Africa. None of the three men committed to securing funds for the project at the time.

1960-–1963
The success of the 1959 airlifts enabled the project's organizers to secure new scholarships for about 250 additional East African students, but AASF was still short $90,000 for the cost of flights to North America. After the State Department turned down requests for financial assistance, the Kennedy Foundation contributed $100,000 to cover flight costs and up to $100,000 more to cover students' living expenses. The foundation asked the AASF not to publicize this, but the contribution became public anyway, prompting a Nixon campaign staffer to urge the State Department to reverse its earlier denial of aid and offer $100,000. The board accepted the Kennedy Foundation's grant, and asked the State Department to use its funding for other African students.

Impact and alumni
The African students who participated in the airlift enrolled in colleges and high schools in 41 U.S. states and a number of Canadian provinces.

A University of Nairobi study showed that more than half of the MPs, civil service leaders, and business leaders in post-independence Kenya were alumni of Operator Airlift Africa. Airlift student Owino Okong'o, who become a physiology professor after studying in the United States, said that the airlift had "transformed the elite culture of Kenyans from the British model to the American model in which performance is more important than where you went to school."

Notable alumni include
 * Wangari Maathai, Nobel Peace Prize laureate (studied at Mount St. Scholastica College in Kansas)
 * Philip Ochieng, Kenyan columnist (earned B.A. from Roosevelt University in Chicago)
 * Perez Olindo, first African head of the Kenyan national parks system (studied at Central Missouri State University)"
 * Mahmood Mamdani, Ugandan academic

Barack Obama, Sr., father of future U.S. President Barack Obama, had his travel to the University of Hawaii funded privately and was not part of the airlift, "but he and other African students who went to the United States at that time were regarded as members of the 'airlift generation.'"