American Assistance to African Legal Education

For a period going back almost a decade, substantial monetary and personnel assistance has been made available to African legal education from sources in the United States. What has this American assistance accomplished, does it merit continuation, and if continued what form should it take? This article discusses these issues. There has been enough experience with American participation in African legal education to make a fair appraisal of it, and there has been so much growth and change in African law teaching institutions during the last decade that a reassessment of American assistance policies toward African legal education is now in order. To what extent, for instance, are qualified Africans now available to teach law so that expatriates are no longer essential for this purpose? As the need for expatriate law teachers declines in Africa, is a shift to other kinds of foreign assistance related to African legal education justified? Given the present availability of legal education in Africa, should African students be encouraged to attend law schools in the United States? And, if so, what kinds of students and for what purposes? Similar questions are also appropriate for other parts of the developing world where foreign aid to legal education is now being provided or is under consideration and to other donor nations providing or contemplating such aid. What the United States should do for African legal education may be something of a prototype for other peoples and places