Our History


Bridging Africa and its global disaspora since 1953.

  • 1950’s : AAI’s Origins

    The Africa-America Institute, originally named the Institute of African American Relations (IAAR), was founded in Washington, D.C. in 1953 by a small, yet committed group of American educators who sought to form an organization to support African students in pursuing higher education in the United States.

    Co-founders Horace Mann Bond and William Leo Hansberry were part of a generation of African Americans who took part in in 20th century transnational movements to secure full U.S. citizenship rights for African Americans and decolonization and self-determination for Africans on the continent. Their commitment and outreach won the early endorsement of members of AAI’s all African, International Advisory Council including Nnamdi Azikiwe, Obafemi Awolowo, and Ahmadu Bello of Nigeria, Kwame Nkrumah of the Gold Coast (now Ghana), and William V.S. Tubman of Liberia.

    In its first year, AAI facilitated a three-day conference at Howard University in Washington DC that was attended by hundreds of African students already enrolled at colleges and universities across the United States and in Canada. And early on, AAI launched programs to support African students in the US with emergency, loan, and scholarship funds and to assist US educators and researchers interested in teaching and studying in Africa. At a time when African nations were decolonizing, AAI’s assistance responded to Africans’ felt need for advanced academic and professional training designed to prepare a new generation of African leadership.

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William Steen (back left) and E. Jefferson Murphy (center) with AAI co-founders, William Leo Hansberry (back right) and Henrietta VanNoy (front left)

OUR FOUNDERS

AAI was founded by educators dedicated to supporting African and African diasporan students and building the next generation of leaders in the U.S. and Africa.

HORACE MANN BOND

  • An alumnus and the first African American president of Lincoln University in Pennsylvania who served as chair of AAI’s inaugural governing board.

     

WILLIAM LEO HANSBERRY

  • An African-American scholar of African antiquity and beloved professor at Howard University from 1922 to circa 1962.

HENRIETTA VAN NOY

  • An assistant registrar with responsibility for foreign students at American University in Washington D.C.

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