The Kennedy Airlift was started in 1959 by a 28-year-old Kenyan, Tom Mboya, who sought support for promising Kenyan students to get college and university educations in the United States and Canada. It brought hundreds of students from East Africa from 1959 to 1963 and was supported by many North American educational institutions, foundations, and individuals such as the African American Students Foundation (AASF) and African Americans including Harry Belafonte, Jackie Robinson, Sidney Poitier, and Martin Luther King Jr. It got its popular nickname in September 1960 when Senator John F. Kennedy in a close presidential campaign arranged a $100,000 donation from the Joseph P. Kennedy Jr Foundation to cover airfare for the autumn 1960 group of East African students just as the program was running out of funds.[1]
The program began in earnest in 1959, when Tom Mboya embarked on a speaking tour of the United States to seek scholarships for students from East Africa. The first batch of 81 students touched down in New York City on September 11, 1959. They would be settled in various universities in the United States and Canada. In Kenya, Mboya liaised with Julius Kiano and Kariuki Njiiri to identify potential students for the airlifts. Both Kiano and Njiiri were alumni of US universities.[2] [3]
The airlifts were opposed by Britain, which did not want American meddling with any of its colonies, one of which was Kenya. British officials spread propaganda among top Kenyan students that American education was inferior to British education.
The airlifts officially ended in 1963. Most of the graduates from American and Canadian colleges and universities went back to help build the newly-independent Kenya. Some were employed even before they had graduated, mainly in the public administration sector as district and provincial officers. Men found it easy to get jobs for which they qualified, but women faced a tougher challenge since they were offered secretarial duties despite being better qualified than most male officers in the same departments. However, the inclusion of women demonstrated foresight on the part of the airlift organizers. One of these women, Wangari Maathai, later won the Nobel Peace Prize, and another, Leah Marangu, later become the first female head of a university in Africa.[4]
Over 800 students, mainly from Kenya, benefited from the Kennedy Airlift. Notable recipients include Kenya's Wangari Maathai, the first African female and first environmentalist to win the Nobel Prize; Mahmoud Mamdani, a prominent Ugandan academic listed in the top 100 list of public intellectuals by Prospect Magazine; and George Saitoti, a former vice president of Kenya. Other notable recipients include[3] [5] [6] [7]
Contrary to some media reports, Barack Obama Sr., the first husband of Stanley Ann Dunham and father of Barack Obama II, was not a direct beneficiary of the airlifts[8] but, inspired by the airlift program, applied to various American universities and received private funding to attend the University of Hawaii. He also received funding from the African American Students Foundation (AASF) with the help of Mboya and so was part of the airlift generation.