[1] The program began in earnest in 1959, when Tom Mboya embarked on a speaking tour of the United States to seek scholarships for students from East Africa.
In Kenya, Mboya liaised with Julius Kiano and Kariuki Njiiri to identify potential students for the airlifts.
One of these women, Wangari Maathai, later won the Nobel Peace Prize, and another, Leah Marangu, later become the first female head of a university in Africa.
Notable recipients include Kenya's Wangari Maathai, the first African female and first environmentalist to win the Nobel Prize; Mahmoud Mamdani, a prominent Ugandan academic listed in the top 100 list of public intellectuals by Prospect Magazine; and George Saitoti, a former vice president of Kenya.
Other notable recipients include[3][4][5][6][7] Contrary to some media reports, Barack Obama Sr., the first husband of Stanley Ann Dunham and father of Barack Obama II, was not a direct beneficiary of the airlifts[8] but, inspired by the airlift program, applied to various American universities and received private funding to attend the University of Hawaii.