QUIZ: Where did these African leaders study abroad at?
Study International Staff
01 Jan 2020
With a fast-growing middle class and a population boom, African students are increasingly going abroad to key study abroad destinations around the world for higher education.
Some would argue this is a trend started by the national leaders in the region, many of which have foreign qualifications from top institutions in the US, UK and Europe.
How well do you know the educational background of some of the continent’s most powerful people? Take our quiz below to find out!
Ellen Johnson Sirleaf. She was the President of Liberia from 2006 to 2018, the first elected female head of state in Africa.
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Issouf Sanogo/AFP
Sirleaf earned an associate degree in accounting from the Madison Business College, a Bachelor of Arts in economics from the Economics Institute of the University of Colorado Boulder and a Master of Public Administration at Harvard University's John F Kennedy School of Government.
Jomo Kenyatta. He was Kenya's first President and first indigenous head of government.
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Kenyatta enrolled at University College London to work on Arthur Ruffell Barlow’s English-Kikuyu Dictionary in 1934. Later, he studied social anthropology under Bronisław Malinowski at the London School of Economics.
Julius Nyerere. He led Tanganyika as Prime Minister and later as President of its successor state, Tanzania.
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After completing secondary school, Nyerere went to the Makerere College in the Ugandan city of Kampala for a teacher training course. A few years later, he took a short course in chemistry and physics and also passed Higher English in the Scottish Universities Preliminary Examination while at Scotland's University of Edinburgh, before pursuing an Ordinary Degree of Master of Arts (equivalent to a Bachelor of Arts) there.
Alpha Oumar Konaré. He was the President of Mali for two five-year terms from 1992 to 2002.
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Konaré pursued his advanced studies in history at the École Normale Supérieure in Bamako and at the University of Warsaw.
Kwame Nkrumah. He was the first Prime Minister and President of Ghana. He led the Gold Coast to independence from Britain in 1957.
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Nkrumah earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in economics and sociology and later a Bachelor of Theology, both from Lincoln College, US. He also completed a Master of Arts degree in philosophy and a Master of Science in education at the University of Pennsylvania. Later, he enrolled at the London School of Economics as a PhD candidate in anthropology but withdrew after one term. Similarly, he enrolled in, but did not complete, a study in law at Gray's Inn.
Yoweri Museveni. He has been President of Uganda since 1986.
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Museveni studied economics and political science at the University of Dar es Salaam in Tanzania.
Joyce Banda. She took over as President of Malawi, following the sudden death of President Bingu wa Mutharika.
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Banda holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in early childhood education from Columbus University, a Bachelor of Social Studies in gender studies from Atlantic International University and a diploma in management of NGOs from the International Labour Organization (ILO) Centre in Turin, Italy. She is currently studying for a Master of Arts degree in leadership at Royal Roads University in Canada.
Ameenah Gurib. She was the sixth President of Mauritius, the first woman elected to hold the post in the country.
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Gurib graduated from the University of Surrey with a BSc degree in chemistry and from Exeter University with a PhD degree in organic chemistry.
Sahle-Work Zewde. Currently, she is the President of Ethiopia and the first woman to hold the office.
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Sahle-Work studied natural science at the University of Montpellier, France.
Catherine Samba-Panza. She was the interim President of the Central African Republic from 2014 to 2016, the first woman in the country to hold that office.
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Samba-Panza trained in law at France's Panthéon-Assas University.
Mame Madior Boye was the first female Prime Minister of Senegal.
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Seyllou Diallo/AFP
Mame Madior Boye began her legal studies at the Faculty of Legal and Economic Sciences at the University of Dakar before continuing her training at the National Centre for Judicial Studies (CNEJ) in Paris.
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