Nigena Hamim knew exactly why he wanted to leave the African nation of Burundi and come to the United States to attend Morehouse College. “I have a dream of fighting ethnic divisions in my country and I am encouraged to realize my vision…After all, I believe that I was born at a time like this to serve and develop my community.”
Zimbabwean-born businessman and philanthropist Strive Masiyiwa is helping to make Hamim’s dream a reality. Hamim is one of 10 students – two from Burundi and eight from Zimbabwe – who will be attending Morehouse on full, four-year scholarships, beginning this fall.
They are the first class of the new Ambassador Andrew Young International Scholars program. Masiyiwa, founder and chairman of Econet Wireless, wants African students to earn a world-class education that they can take home with them after graduation. Forty African students in all – representing an investment of $6.4 million – will go through the program.
Masiyiwa believes Morehouse and Atlanta, the center of the civil rights movement with leaders such as Ambassador Andrew Young, will be the perfect place for the students to develop.
“For us, the civil rights movement and our fight against colonialism was almost synonymous,” he said. “We knew people like Ambassador Young and Martin Luther King Jr. I remember reading about King and his life, and of course I got to know about Morehouse and the fact that he had been here and (HBCUs) were very proud institutions. So I got to know about Morehouse fairly early and it really resonated in the struggle that we were involved in.
“What I want to see coming from the student who comes out of the Morehouse system is a much more confident, self-assured, more complete young man who is not struggling to find out who he is in the world,” he said.
The 10 students, some of the top students in their countries, were chosen from a larger pool of 20 young men…
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