A Study Of U.S. Educational Assistance To Africa During The Kennedy Era

After the Second World War,independence movements in Asia,Africa and Latin America were in the ascendant,and by the 1960 s,with the further development of national liberation movements,a large number of newly independent countries emerged.The Third World gradually became the new battleground of the Cold War between the U.S.and the Soviet Union,and Africa became one of the regions where the U.S.and the Soviet Union fought for hegemony from the periphery of the world.In order to confront the Soviet Union and win the support of independent African countries,and thus win the "cultural cold war",the U.S.systematically provided systematic,comprehensive and multi-level educational assistance to Africa,and exported liberal ideology to Africa.At present,studies on U.S.educational aid to Africa in China focus on the vertical history of aid,or focus on a particular institution of educational aid during the Kennedy administration,but have not yet conducted a holistic study of educational aid during the Kennedy period.Guided by the Marxist materialistic view of history,this paper examines U.S.educational aid to African countries during the Kennedy era at multiple levels and in various aspects by referring to foreign primary literature and drawing on existing excellent research results in the academic field,using logical induction and documentary analysis,and using three institutions representing U.S.official agencies,elites and popular organizations,namely the Agency for International Development,private foundations and the Peace Corps,respectively.The study explores the U.S.cultural Cold War policy toward Africa during the Kennedy era.The study finds that the educational aid to Africa under the Kennedy administration exhibited systematic,all-round,and covert characteristics,and that the aid organizations were interconnected,complementary,and mutually reinforcing under the Cold War consensus,jointly promoting U.S.educational aid to Africa,to a certain extent promoting African educational development,and laying the foundation for U.S.educational aid to foreign countries.U.S.educational assistance to Africa was essentially part of the Cultural Cold War,which was an ideological battle,so the Kennedy administration’s educational assistance always had an ideological overtone.The U.S.controlled the curriculum,teacher qualifications,and scholarships in order to infiltrate American values and ideology into Africa,and to counteract Soviet influence on Africa in order to win the “cultural cold war”.