France’s Policy on Attracting African Students: Balancing Recipient Needs and Donor Interests in Development Cooperation^*

France has consistently placed higher education at the heart of its Africa policy, framing it as both a tool of development and a vehicle of diplomatic influence. Official strategies emphasize higher education as a “lever for transformation,” combining normative claims with geopolitical interests and labor market concerns (Campus France, 2023a; MEAE, 2018). Especially in Francophone Africa, these policies serve to reinforce France’s linguistic, institutional, and cultural influence across generations of African elites.

The operationalization of these strategies is evident through various programs and agencies. Campus France plays a central role in coordinating student mobility and promoting French universities abroad. One of its flagship tools is the Eiffel Excellence Scholarship, which funds master’s and doctoral-level studies for top international students in priority fields such as engineering, economics, law, and political science. In the 2022–2023 academic year, the program awarded approximately 400 scholarships, with a notable share allocated to students from Sub-Saharan Africa and the Maghreb region (Campus France, 2023b). Complementing this is the AFD (2024), which supports regional and bilateral scholarship schemes as well as academic partnerships focused on institutional reform and technical training.

Beyond scholarships, France’s visa and migration policies also reflect a settlement-oriented model. The Talent Passport scheme, introduced in 2016, allows foreign graduates who secure jobs in designated strategic sectors to apply for long-term residence. This pathway not only streamlines immigration processes for high-potential students but also reinforces France’s domestic workforce through selective integration of foreign-trained professionals (Welcome to France, 2024). In 2022 alone, over 11,000 Talent Passports were granted—many to applicants from African countries (Le Monde, 2024a).

Another pillar of France’s ODA strategy is its investment in joint academic institutions and transnational education programs. The Université Franco-Sénégalaise in Dakar and the Franco-Gabonese academic initiatives illustrate France’s effort to internationalize its higher education model while expanding access to French degrees abroad. These initiatives form part of the broader “Choose France” strategy, which sets an ambitious target of attracting 500,000 international students by 2027 (Campus France, 2023a).

Taken together, these mechanisms—scholarships, labor integration policies, and institutional cooperation—demonstrate a deliberate strategy to attract and retain talented individuals from Africa. In 2022 alone, France issued over 11,000 Talent Passports, many of which were granted to African nationals (Le Monde, 2024b). Additionally, about 24% of all French government scholarship recipients are from Sub-Saharan Africa, while North Africa and the Middle East together receive 29% (Campus France, 2024). While framed in developmental terms, France’s education ODA increasingly serves national interests, blurring the boundary between aid and strategic recruitment. The long-term outcome is a system that encourages settlement and cultivates a transnational elite aligned with French cultural and economic norms.

Sub-Saharan Africa is experiencing one of the fastest growth rates in youth population globally, and this demographic surge has placed immense pressure on national education systems. According to UNESCO (2023), the number of students enrolled in tertiary education in Sub-Saharan Africa increased from 4.5 million in 2000 to over 10 million in 2020, reflecting a gross enrollment ratio that nearly doubled in two decades. Yet despite this growth, the region continues to face substantial challenges in access, equity, and quality of higher education.

Public universities in many African countries suffer from chronic underfunding, overcrowding, and infrastructural deficiencies, all of which hinder institutional capacity to meet growing domestic demand (World Bank, 2022). Moreover, the mismatch between academic curricula and labor market needs has created high rates of graduate unemployment, prompting growing numbers of African students to seek opportunities abroad.

This outward mobility is not only driven by personal aspirations, but also by systemic deficiencies within domestic education systems across the continent. As Woldegiorgis & Doevenspeck (2015) argue, African student mobility is shaped by structural inequalities, such as limited research capacity, outdated infrastructure, and lack of academic freedom, which constrain the ability of local institutions to meet growing demand.

This outward mobility is also driven by perceptions of higher educational quality, global recognition of degrees, and enhanced career prospects in host countries. As a result, France and the United States have become increasingly important destinations for African students. These choices are not made in a vacuum. As Altbach (2004) points out, global knowledge hierarchies, which are dominated by Western institutions, have positioned African universities at a structural disadvantage, encouraging students to seek academic legitimacy, quality, and opportunity abroad. While France draws upon historical, linguistic, and institutional ties—especially within Francophone Africa—the United States is perceived as a global hub for innovation, leadership training, and entrepreneurship (Campus France, 2023a; IIE, 2024).

For donors, supporting African higher education is no longer simply about expanding access, but about building knowledge systems, research capacities, and human capital pipelines that can drive local development. In this context, ODA programs that offer high-quality tertiary training, along with scholarships and academic mobility, are aligned with recipient needs in terms of both individual aspirations and systemic reform (OECD, 2021).

France and the U.S. have responded to these demands in markedly different ways, reflecting distinct policy logics. France has emphasized long-term cooperation and institutional partnerships, while simultaneously offering skilled African students opportunities for long-term settlement. In contrast, the U.S. has focused on short-term leadership training with reintegration incentives aimed at maximizing knowledge transfer to home countries. These contrasting approaches will be explored in greater detail in the subsequent sections.

France’s higher education ODA strategy exhibits both significant alignments and potential tensions with the evolving educational needs of African countries. On one hand, its long-standing commitment to expanding academic mobility, providing scholarships, and building institutional partnerships has directly responded to the increasing demand for high-quality tertiary education across the continent. On the other hand, France’s settlement-oriented policy design raises questions about the developmental impact of its aid—particularly with regard to brain drain and recipient-country capacity building.

Alignment is evident in several dimensions. First, African students benefit from access to prestigious institutions, specialized training, and international exposure. Programs such as the Eiffel Excellence Scholarship target key sectors like engineering, economics, and law, that are critical to the development agendas of many African countries (Campus France, 2023b). France has also promoted partnerships with African universities, such as the Université Franco-Sénégalaise, which foster South-North academic collaboration and curricular reform, thereby supporting capacity building at the institutional level.

Moreover, France’s use of French as the medium of instruction and its support for Francophone institutions resonate strongly with the linguistic and educational ecosystems of many African countries. For students from Francophone Africa, the transition to French higher education is often smoother, reducing cultural barriers and promoting academic success (OECD, 2021).

However, tensions emerge when France’s policy logic is viewed through the lens of long-term migration. While offering employment pathways and residency through the Talent Passportenhances opportunities for individual students, it also increases the likelihood of talent retention in France rather than return to home countries. This raises concerns about brain drain, particularly among highly skilled graduates in sectors already facing shortages in Africa (Le Monde, 2024b). In this sense, France’s education aid may inadvertently contribute to the very inequalities it seeks to reduce.

Additionally, while France frames its policies as “mutually beneficial,” the strong emphasis on attracting top-performing students aligns more with donor interests in labor market supplementation and soft power projection than with equitable educational development. There is limited evidence that France actively supports the return or reintegration of graduates into their countries of origin, nor are there structured alumni programs that link the skills acquired abroad with local employment opportunities (de Wit & Altbach, 2021).

In summary, France’s higher education ODA strategy reflects a complex interplay between development assistance and national interest. While it provides significant benefits to African students and institutions, it does so within a framework that favors donor-side priorities—particularly talent acquisition and geopolitical influence. These tensions call for a more balanced model that enhances reciprocal benefits and supports the long-term educational and economic goals of recipient countries.

The United States was selected as the primary comparator to France not only because of its scale and influence in global education ODA, but also due to the contrast it offers in terms of strategic orientation. Whereas France combines educational aid with labor integration and long-term settlement, the U.S. emphasizes short-term leadership development and return migration. This binary contrast helps highlight the broader spectrum of donor motivations and aid logics in the higher education ODA landscape.

France and the United States adopt fundamentally different approaches to higher education ODA in terms of both policy orientation and institutional architecture. These distinctions reflect broader national philosophies on development assistance, the degree of centralization in governance, and the extent to which education aid is aligned with foreign policy, immigration, and labor agendas.

France operates under a centralized, state-led model in which higher education ODA is strategically embedded in its diplomatic and soft power agenda. The Ministry for Europe and Foreign Affairs (MEAE), in collaboration with Campus France, plays a crucial role in administering scholarship programs, promoting French universities abroad, and negotiating bilateral partnerships. This model ensures policy coherence and allows educational aid to serve broader objectives such as geopolitical influence, labor market supplementation, and the maintenance of Francophone networks (Campus France, 2024; MEAE, 2018).

Importantly, France integrates its education aid with immigration and employment policies. The Talent Passport program, introduced in 2016, facilitates residence for foreign graduates employed in strategic sectors such as science, technology, and innovation. In 2022 alone, over 11,000 Talent Passports were issued, with a considerable share going to applicants from African countries (Le Monde, 2024a). These efforts are closely tied to the Bienvenue en France strategy, launched in 2018, which aims to attract 500,000 international students by 2027 by improving student services and easing visa procedures—thereby strengthening France’s global competitiveness and cultural outreach (Campus France, 2023a).

In contrast, the United States follows a decentralized and pluralistic model, where multiple agencies play a role in shaping education ODA. The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) remains the primary body for managing education assistance, historically focusing on basic education. However, in recent years, it has expanded its engagement with higher education through partnerships with universities, NGOs, and private-sector organizations (USAID, 2023).

Highereducation programs like the Mandela Washington Fellowship, managed by the U.S. Department of State, embody a development-centered orientation. These programs are executed through collaborations with American universities and civil society actors, and emphasize leadership development with a strict expectation of return and reintegration. Unlike France, U.S. education aid is largely disconnected from immigration or labor policy; there are few structured pathways for international students to remain in the United States after their studies unless they independently secure employment under limited visa categories (IIE, 2024; USAID, 2023).

In summary, while both countries provide higher education aid to Africa, their institutional frameworks and strategic objectives diverge sharply. France employs a state-driven, labor-integrated model that links education with long-term settlement and national interest. The U.S., by contrast, relies on a development-oriented, institutionally fragmented model that privileges local capacity building and short-term mobility. These distinctions shape not only the operational logic of education ODA but also its long-term developmental outcomes.

While the United States frequently presents its higher education ODA as a tool for empowering individuals and building local capacity, the structure and logic of many U.S.-funded programs reveal a donor-centered orientation closely aligned with broader geostrategic interests. Rather than addressing structural inequalities in African higher education systems or expanding large-scale access, U.S. initiatives tend to focus on selective leadership development and the dissemination of democratic values to a limited cohort of high-performing individuals (USAID, 2023).

A prominent example is the Mandela Washington Fellowship, part of the YALI, which annually selects around 700 emerging leaders from Sub-Saharan Africa to participate in six weeks of intensive training at U.S. universities (Mandela Washington Fellowship, 2024). Although framed as a development program, the Fellowship explicitly seeks to cultivate ideological alignment with U.S. values, including liberal democracy, entrepreneurship, and civic engagement (U.S. Department of State, 2024). As stated on the YALI website, the goal is to develop a generation of African leaders “connected to the United States and committed to democratic principles” (YALI, 2024).

This alignment is further evident in the targeting of specific countries and individuals. The program consistently prioritizes participants from geo-strategically important nations such as Nigeria, Kenya, Ethiopia, and South Africa—countries where the U.S. has broader security and economic interests (Mandela Washington Fellowship, 2024). While these programs can yield meaningful micro-level impact, they are not designed to catalyze system-wide educational transformation. Moreover, the limited availability of full scholarships for degree-seeking students from Africa suggests that the U.S. strategy emphasizes influence cultivation over equity-driven access expansion (IIE, 2024).

Beyond individual training, the U.S. supports university-to-university partnerships in fields like STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics), agriculture, and public health. However, these collaborations often maintain a hierarchical structure in which U.S. institutions lead research design, funding allocation, and project management—reinforcing asymmetrical power dynamics typical of North-South academic cooperation (Ahlstrom, 2022). These partnerships promote American higher education models as global standards, thereby expanding soft power and normative influence in Africa.

Taken together, U.S. higher education ODA reflects a geopolitically informed, donor-centered model that emphasizes strategic return over systemic development. While it undoubtedly builds capacity in selected individuals, it falls short of addressing broader issues such as institutional reform, mass access, or long-term reintegration. The effectiveness of this model depends less on development outcomes and more on how closely recipients align with U.S. strategic and ideological objectives.

The extent to which donor countries address the actual needs of recipient countries, particularly in strengthening institutional and human capacity, has become a central benchmark in evaluating the developmental effectiveness of ODA. In the African context, where higher education systems face challenges such as underfunding, limited research output, and brain drain, capacity-oriented approaches require more than just individual scholarships. They demand system-level investment in faculty development, institutional reform, and long-term knowledge production (OECD, 2021; World Bank, 2022).

France’s strategy demonstrates a partial alignment with these needs, particularly through its investments in joint campuses and Franco-African academic partnerships. For example, the Université Franco-Sénégalaise in Dakar offers dual degrees and joint faculty appointments, promoting South-North academic mobility and localized access to high-quality education (Campus France, 2024). Such partnerships aim to improve institutional capacity by embedding French standards and resources inAfrican contexts. However, the emphasis remains on Francophone Africa, raising concerns about inclusivity and linguistic hegemony (Knight, 2014).

In terms of human capital development, France supports elite scholarships through the Eiffel Program but lacks robust follow-up mechanisms to reintegrate graduates into their home-country systems. The Talent Passport facilitates their transition into the French labor market, often at the expense of recipient-country knowledge ecosystems (Welcome to France, 2024). As a result, while France contributes to individual capacity, its systemic impact in Africa is uneven and skewed toward retaining high-skill labor within its own borders (de Wit & Altbach, 2021).

By contrast, the U.S. emphasizes individual leadership capacity through return-oriented programs like the Mandela Washington Fellowship. Participants are not only expected to return home but also receive post-program support in the form of small grants, local alumni networks, and mentorship for launching social initiatives (Mandela Washington Fellowship, 2024). This model attempts to link skills development with local impact, although its scalability remains limited due to the small number of beneficiaries and the absence of comprehensive institutional partnerships (USAID, 2023).

Nevertheless, the U.S. has invested in long-term university partnerships, such as the U.S.-Africa Higher Education Partnership Initiative, which supports collaborative research in public health, agriculture, and climate resilience. These efforts, while often U.S.-led, aim to enhance local research capacity and institutional autonomy over time (World Bank, 2022). Still, critics argue that the asymmetric nature of these partnerships often reproduces donor–recipient hierarchies and undermines reciprocal knowledge exchange (Ahlstrom, 2022).

In summary, both countries offer partial responses to recipient needs. France focuses more on bilateral academic integration and student retention, while the U.S. centers on short-term leadership training with home-country reintegration. Neither model offers a fully capacity-oriented approach at scale. Addressing systemic educational needs in Africa will require more inclusive, sustainable, and co-owned initiatives that empower local institutions—not just elite individuals.