“Sub-Saharan Africa is home to barely one-sixth of the world’s children younger than 15, but fully half the world’s uneducated children — the legacy of poverty, colonialism and historically inadequate schools,” according to a recent article by the International Herald Tribune (Education Blossoms in sub-Saharan Africa). The majority of this uneducated children are girls, and this is one of the reasons Winfrey Oprah partly bankrolled the Oprah’s Leadership Academy in South Africa, a $40 million educational institute built for girls in South Africa. The school stated its calender year on January 2, 2007.
According to Oprah: “The school will teach girls to be the best human beings they can ever be; it will train them to become decision-makers and leaders; it will be a model school for the rest of the world.” Eligible candidates must be gifted and from impoverished backgrounds.
This is an impressive gesture by any standard, and a head-scratcher as well: $40 million for a high school? Isn’t this an overkill? Could this cash be better leveraged than just investing on some 450 gifted students the school will produce every year? Hey, 40 million dollars is a ton of money and goodwill; it’s all good! Some are already starting the year on the right note.
Related articles:
Oprah’s Academy to Inspire Needy Girls
There’s something-else weird here. When asked why she wasn’t providing this kind of school for African American children, she said: “because inner-city kids here don’t appreciate the value of a free education…If you ask the kids what they want or need, they will say an iPod or some sneakers. In South Africa, they don’t ask for money or toys. They ask for uniforms so they can go to school.”
To which most right thinking people would respond, “well, just because it’s a tough problem doesn’t mean you don’t have to address it.” If Ms Winfrey gives up on these kids in the US, who else does she think should step up and help them back onto the right track? It has been said before but charity begins at home…
January 3, 2007 at 2:22 am
Definitely that money could have gone a long ways in helping more kids…
..But what else can one say, Oprah loves South Africa and in the end its still her money.
January 3, 2007 at 2:56 am
She definitely knows why she decided to help the South African children.
Sure, a lot of people would argue that she ought to assist the African Americans but her argument makes sense. They’ve got affirmative action going for them, but how many of them actually take advantage of it?
And I don’t think the $40 million is too much. Before she committed that amount, I’m sure she mapped out how it would be spent.
January 3, 2007 at 3:30 am
The issue of Oprah helping African American kids reminds me of the movie- Boys of Baraka (http://www.theboysofbaraka.com/) - where some inner city black boys were sent to an experimental school in Kenya for 2 years. Although they didn’t get to spend the full 2 years in the school, the kids did so well academically and behaviorally too. The movie proves that all the American black inner city kids need is some attention, “putting a body on them”, in the words of Bill Cosby.
Oprah has been quite frank of her “love affairs” with South Africa and Mandela. If the Mandela hadn’t sweet-talked her, I’m sure Oprah wouldn’t have doled out this much.
January 3, 2007 at 8:50 am
I started composing a post yesterday about this wonderful school that Oprah Winfrey has setup for girls in South Africa. I wasn’t aware that people back home in the States had (already) started complaining about “why doesn’t she help inner-city girls back here in the U.S.”. That’s equivalent to the statements from some of my fellow American citizens of color “Why are we sending so much money to Africa when people are homeless and starving right here in the U.S.?” I find this type of thinking disgusting and selfish to say the least.
One thing you can be certain about, this successful African-American businesswoman and top TV personality knows exactly what she is doing and why she is doing it. There will always be criticism of black American businesspeople attempting to do good and right things for Africans from both sides of the Atlantic. I believe that I understand WHY Oprah has chosen to build this academy for young women in South Africa, and I hope it inspires other American businesspeople to do the same all across sub-Saharan Africa.
I didn’t hear anyone complaining too loud about the Aga Khan Foundation building similar institutions for young African students in East Africa a few years back or the private educational institutions that the People’s Republic of China plans to build in Africa in exchange for oil and minerals and land. To the contrary.
If anyone who has had the privelage of watching Steven Spielberg’s 1985 film “The Color Purple” that featured Oprah Winfrey in one of her best performances ever understood anything about that story or have read the Pulitzer Prize winning novel by Alice Walker, then they would easily understand why Oprah Winfrey is building this exclusive school for girls in South Africa.
God Bless Her.
January 3, 2007 at 11:19 am
The news of Oprah’s academy wasn’t well carried in the U.S, despite lineup of stars that witnessed the opening ceremony.
The issue raised in the comment thread speaks to the opinion some might have about Oprah’s love gift to S. Africa and her response to the “problem” faced by African Americans particularly the inner-city kids. A social problem that needs to be addressed.
January 3, 2007 at 1:27 pm
[...] Crazy how the evil spammers use Africa’s issues in a bad way, almost as crazy as some of the comments made at Gradiose Parlor about Oprah’s new $40 million School that opened here in South Africa recently [...]
January 4, 2007 at 9:16 am
Oprah has only shown that there are still some genuine individuals in our generation who really cares about breaking the poverty chain and giving hope to those who takes life by the horn. She had an option to put her money into stocks or money market investment like all other well-to-do people would do but she chose a more honorable course. She invested the money in the lifes of financially-impoverished, though not intellectually-impoverished school girls in South Africa. Whether she invested $1 or $40 million is a question of the value she placed on the soul of these little ones. I live in Nigeria, where I have witnessed promising girls drop out of school into prostitution and other heinous crimes just because the opportunity to take on life had been denied them by poverty.
For those who think Oprah has not done anything, they should search their conscience and ask themselves a honest question, if you were the one with $40m, would you invest it in the lives of those you know may never pay you back? Or in kids who will not appreciate it?
God Bless Oprah and other Oprahs around the world who are continually thinking of how to make the world a better place.
January 4, 2007 at 11:45 am
I don’t think Oprah’s investment will be wasted. It shows a great spirit and is the height of selflessness.
No amount would have been too much for the girls. If they were gifted kids from the U.S.A., we wouln’t think twice about the amount.
January 4, 2007 at 5:46 pm
I think it is wonderful that an African-American doesn’t just TALK about being African and loving Africa, but puts some action into it. It is very easy to give empty talk to the AFRICAN in African-American — and so many african-american people do no more that just talk.
Oprah shows her heart by her actions. Why don’t some of you question all these black celebrities focused on materialism and shallow thinking, and certainly NO concern for black folk around the world, it was OPRAH who stepped up to show the world that African-Americans not only know other black folk in the world exist, but she has a feeling to help them that is REAL!
And some of you folk questioning if these african kids are getting too much, need to look at yourselves in the mirror and wonder why you think these girls don’t deserve it? Is it because they are African and you think that they should just get a warm blanket, a pair of old shoes, a one room with a roof, a bowl of porridge and that’s all they need because they don’t need or deserve what you’d want for yourselves, your children?
The fact is that there is a problem with materialism, anti-intellectualism, etc. in the inner-city (and the suburbs and all over america.) With so many of these girls today just trying to be the next half-naked singer, some video-ho, or spending all their time filling their heads with the trash some folks are calling part of ‘black music’ these days, NO they aren’t as deserving and ready to receive the investment oprah is making. She wants to see these girls grow up and be productive black women who are going to maximize what they’ve been given and then go on to further contribute to OUR communities in this world. We don’t need a school full of beyonce wanna-be’s.
She went to girls who had the least, in a country which has so little for so many people, and actually met with each girl and saw that they had the mindset, but not the environment, to become productive members of OUR society. She is just starting, and there will be more girls in this school, as well as co-ed schools.
Oprah, in the true-definition of an AFRICAN-American, is indeed doing ‘charity at home.’
Leave Oprah alone, and start targeting the huge batch of uneducated, uncivilized,shallow, materialistic, shucking and cooning rappers, singers, actors and athletes that are entertaining white folks and spreading ignorance among our community.
January 4, 2007 at 11:03 pm
I feel the need to clarify:
I don’t think anyone here have the impression that Oprah’s investment is “wasted”. The impression that “these African kids are getting too much” is not one that I share either.
The argument is could Oprah’s $40 million investment - which some have tagged “vanity project” - be used to achieve a more widespread impact in the region?
Is the creation of an elitist corp of well-educated women going to solve South African issues on the long-term? Or should Oprah’s largess be spread to more kids?
Secondly, the problems in American inner city is a reflection of the general society, and deserves to be tackled by all, not just Oprah. Just because there are more impoverished children in Africa doesn’t mean black children in American don’t deserve attention. They do!
Please see the movie: “Boys of Baraka” if you haven’t.
January 5, 2007 at 1:42 pm
Oprah followed her heart! Her gut feeling is that the African children are more susceptible to the vagaries of life that is inflicting hardship on them and generations to come. She has opted to, at least, draw one promising girl in poverty ridden home in South Africa out of the vicious circle of poverty by providing quality education for them at no cost and thereby enriching their minds. She might have concluded in her mind that the families may not be entitled to any social security from the government, which perhaps the black american may enjoy. She might have concluded that the environment these girls live in is devoid of electricity, which the black american perhaps enjoy and above all, she might have concluded in her mind that the import of the goodwill message she is trying to pass to all the other well-to-do in the world (for them to join in the crusade) may not be pervasive enough if she limits the assistance to america, hence the decision to take it to an environment where it will become a major news that the whole world will hear about.
This is not the first time Oprah is showing that she has a kind heart. Year in year out, she has continued to dole out mouth watering gifts to plenty of american children, blacks and whites. She is not the only rich person in the whole world.
Oprah is not the South African government. She does not have any constitutional responsibility to provide social amenities to children in South Africa. She is not the one to ensure that all the children in South Africa get quality education. She is just someone lokking at South Africa from a far distance and feels the need to help those who despite their poverty situation, have faith and confidence in themself to excel and make something out of life. If all the impoverished girls in South Africa were exceptional in their studies, they probably would have qualified to gain admission into the academy. Let’s separate the issue of governance from social responsibility. I repeat, it is the duty of the government to provide social amenity for its citizenry and not that of Oprah.
I think, my personal view, that we should in our closet pray very hard for Oprah that she will live long to see the kindness she is showing to the world blossom into a better world for all of us. She has shown that she has the capacity to take 450 impoverished school girls in South Africa, off crime and this is a very very noble course. Let’s forget about the amount she has spent, let’s forget about where she has chosen to spend it or who she chose to spend it on, let’s just focus our mind on the real issue, the world’s potential crime figure and poverty afflicted individual has been reduced by 450 in year 2007 due to the kindness of one single individual who chose to invest her money in the life of impoverished little kids in South Africa. Let’s just hope her goodwill message will ginger every other well-to-do individuals all around the world to use their elements to reduce the poverty gap in the world so that the world can at least be a better place for all of us to live in.
SEGUN ADAMS
January 6, 2007 at 10:16 am
How many others have said it in the past? Slave traders, slave owners, lynchers, killers, murderers, robbers, whole societies? Police chiefs and govenors? Captions of Industry and scientific minds?
Black children just don’t count and aren’t worth it!
Oprah can sermonize about Black rappers exporting their own brand of Black self-hatred around the community and the world. But they haven’t the mega phone or world platform that she has.
For all the unknown heroic slaves. For all the unknown and known Civil Rights Movement soldiers.
You gave your lives so that a piss-poor Oprah could have a chance and not be left behind.
Oprah is the Black Lester Maddox and Grand Master of the Ku Klux Klan.
She echoed all that they have in the past: Black kids aren’t worth it. They don’t want to learn.
Thanks for broadcasting that to the world, you vastly rich and powerful and popular culteral ICON.
You’ve done us more harm in the new millenium than any rapper or racists of past or present could ever do.
Thank you, Oprah.
January 8, 2007 at 4:42 pm
To all that believe that Ms. Oprah’s generous investment was a waste, you are sadly mistaken. Let us all just think about all the “billionaires and millionaires” in this world! Trust, i have not heard of any other “one” out there other then Denzell Washington who has even tried to make an effort to use “their” money in this magnificent manor! Many of of us self righteous folk, wouldn’t even have thought to be so generous. Be real about it! I can only speak for myself, and if i had money to put out like that i probably wouldn’t! Because i am “AMERICAN” and it’s all about the “AMERICAN DREAM” for “OURSELVES”! The lady Nicole above, hit the nail on the head, our generation today is all about the bling bling first education later! I hope we Americans get it together soon, before it is too late! We’ll have a nation full of dummies and run by Internationalist!
January 9, 2007 at 1:05 pm
[...] Idland: The better critique of the Oprah critique Another excellent post on Oprah’s Academy. The question raised by Financial Times - I have also asked on this site, and it’s one I have yet to find a good answer to, not even from Inland. One thing that I have noticed is why some sensible questions always seem to provoke off-the-point and often negative responses? [...]
January 12, 2007 at 1:16 pm
I do think the question is wrong, but it is not immediately evident, because we have been so well trained to criticize philanthropy in this way.
Why this sudden attachment to the principle of cost effectiveness? We don’t try to apply it to anything else in our lives. When Hollywood spends $200M on a movie, nobody asks, “Wouldn’t it have provided a better consumer experience if instead $20M had been spent on 10 independent films?” Or when somebody buys a luxury car - “They could have bought three cars that were just as good for the same price!”
The question is silly. But when it comes to philanthropy, it’s knives out: how dare a donor betray the God-given principle of cost effectiveness!
$40M says this: South African children are as valuable as rich Western prep school kids. As opposed to the “cost effective” plan, which would say: Sorry kids, all you get is a water filter and a bunch of crayons, because we’re being cost effective.
January 15, 2007 at 1:59 am
Paul: African kids as valuable as American kids, no doubt and deserve all the good things of life. However, the key to Africa growth and success is the available of sound, practical, relevant and affordable education to all. The baseline indices for basic education must increase continentally.
“Why this sudden attachment to the principle of cost effectiveness?”, you asked. I ask you: Is studying on a 250 acres campus that comes with yoga and movie studios, marble floors, and beauty salon a prerequisite to train gifted Children to be leaders? Because I’m African, and understand the relevance of cost effectiveness. And I don’t mean or advocate a cookie-cutter approach to development -the “water filter and a bunch of crayons” model you stated, either.
By using consumer experience as an example, you are mixing oil (capitalism and consumer economy) with water (philanthropy). They don’t mix, particularly in a developing region like Africa.
Oprah has a great heart and have good intention. In the face of limited resources and numerous needs in Africa, it is a basic economic principle to want to achieve more and apply a more productive approach. However, this doesn’t seem to be Oprah’s model…the question is: Why.
January 15, 2007 at 10:07 am
it is her money so she has the right to use it any way she wants. all the same that money would have made a greater impact if it had been put in other more pressing issues such as the plight of AIDS in Africa or in malaria eradication or even providing food relief for refugees in areas like darfur.
January 15, 2007 at 11:58 pm
I notice all the critics comment on the yoga studio and beauty salon, but they are a fraction of the total cost. By far the most of the $40M will go to an endowment for hiring top notch instructors, and then for having good facilities.
Oprah’s school will presumably produce a small number of upper class South Africans, and that is upper class on a global scale, not just a South African scale - these will be people going to top universities, getting top global jobs and so on. “Cost effective” development planning would spread the net more widely and reach more poor people, but it would only turn them into middle class South Africans, earning say $12,000 per year, less than a full-time employee at a U.S. McDonald’s.
20 and 30 years from now, which of these groups will have a more profound positive impact on South Africa? I don’t know - it’s a question that we could debate.
For development agencies, the decision is easy, because International Development has always always been the rich trying to make the poor slightly less poor (not unlike colonialism in that aspect). The rich have never been interested in making the poor as rich as them. We want to take the dirt poor and bring them into the working class, where they will work for multinational corporations and earn just enough to feed their families. That is cost effective development. I’m not being cynical, that is how it works, overseas aid is not meant to target the people who can already feed their families.
The development establishment is quick to criticize Oprah’s decision-making, since it certainly stands apart from the way the establishment thinks and does business. But where has that establishment got us? We have been practicing “cost effective” development work since the 1940s, and frankly it hasn’t been very effective, there are far more failures to report on than successes. The countries that have come out of poverty have certainly not done so because of foreign aid.
January 17, 2007 at 5:42 am
Paul, you’ve introduced another interesting dimension into the discussion, the upper and middle class issue (2nd and 3rd paragraphs of your comment).
You would agree with me that the middle class is the driver of all modern economies and they are the souls of all progressive societies. So I don’t really buy the upper class argument. Several of the current and past African leaders attended top-notch colleges overseas, how many of them came back to turn around their communities? But they came back to lord over the less educated ones and looted the treasury.
Moreover, I have never being a strong advocate for international aid to Africa, it hasn’t worked.
Oprah’ intention is great; however, for Africa to become more progressive, more people need to cross the illiteracy line.
Thanks!
January 17, 2007 at 12:42 pm
I just wanted to respond to Paul’s comment which I found insightful, and your comment about the middle class. I agree that it is the middle class that drives an economy as well as SME’s or small and medium enterprises, which are associated with the middle class. It is unfortunate that international aid doesn’t do more to improve and advance these sectors in Africa. That being said, I think Paul is not arguing that we should use aid to create an upper-class, but that we shouldn’t always focus making the poor a little less poor, and that we should also focus on propelling and advancing the people who are already middle class as well as creating a larger African upper-class, since as we know often the upper-class and large business owners in many African countries are not actually Africans. I’m not advocating trickle down economics, but a way to promote business development in the African context.
From my experience living in Uganda and meeting many 20-40 age range Ugandans who grew up going to elite boarding schools and then Universities abroad, like Oprah’s girls will one day, I know that most do not fall into the typical evil, corrupt image we have of the African elite. Quite the contrary, most are starting their own successful small and medium sized formal businesses, and giving back to their own communities at the same time. I personally see this demographic as a key element to the future of development in Africa.
My hat is off to Oprah.
January 18, 2007 at 5:24 am
This is my concern: Oprah is removing these girls from family members. In many senses, this is an American school. So in that sense she is displacing them from their cultural context.
On one of the first nights at the school the girls had “Christmas dinner”. This reminds me of how Native American children historically were taken from their homes in the US. They were bereft of tribal (spiritual, emaotional, familial, cultural) sustenance.
As someone who went to boarding school from 10th to 12th grade, I can tell you that these are very important years in one’s development as a woman. Without strong older adult women actively involved in my life I found it difficult to navigate maturity. The kind of decision making skills needed are modeled, not learned in school.
Oprah is setting these girls up to be the saviors of Africa. But I wonder if she is also setting them up to fail. All the nice things in the world will not fill one’s self esteem the way a healthy relationship with a loving Auntie can. Young girls are not adequate nurturers of other young girls. And they are at and age when they still need much nurturance, much guidance.
February 27, 2007 at 2:22 am