Dean of Admissions shows the Courage to Act

Nyagatare, Rwanda: In the end, while I decided on the African ghost stories option taking place post-dinner by the bonfire, Dean of Admissions Rebekah Westphal (ASL 2023-present) went for African games. As I sat poolside, the smoke forcing the group to continually move seats, our small group, including participants from Cameroon, Uganda, Rwanda and South Africa, swapped spooky stories from across the continent. There was a lot of laughter and a few shrieks, and we decided that those who had chosen the other social options of the evening—a quiz event or African games as Rebekah had chosen—certainly were not having as much fun as we were. 

All of us around the bonfire, and the rest of the 70 or so participants doing evening festivities, were in Rwanda to attend the 9th Indaba, an annual conference of members and friends of the HALI Access Network—now a 501(c)(3)—is a coalition of non-profit organizations, secondary schools, tertiary institutions and other access organizations from across Africa that work together to help high-achieving and low-income (HALI) students access international higher education opportunities. Everyone had spent the last two days intensively running between meetings, seminars and small group discussions focused on finding workable solutions to a plethora of educational issues and priorities. So, a night of convivial social group activities helped to bring much-needed levity to the Indaba.  

Having spent much of the last decade researching and writing about girls’ education across Africa, I was invited to attend the Indaba by Rebekah, who also is the co-founder of the HALI Access Network. HALI students are young people from sub-Saharan Africa who come from impoverished backgrounds—many of whom have also had to deal with the traumas of war, famine and displacement—and have achieved success in their secondary studies and are hoping to continue their educational journey at the university level. But for many of them, gaining entry to overseas universities—from SAT tests to application fees and help with essays—is next to impossible. 

I learned at the Indaba that HALI Access, a one-of-its-kind organization that has partnered on projects with organizations including the Mastercard Foundation and Duolingo, is helping fill that void. I met a number of members of the organization, which has supported more than 13,000 students achieve their higher education goals, and works in several ways. It connects African education organization members—there are currently 49—with HALI university partners that include Yale, Smith, Northwestern, Columbia, Johns Hopkins, University of Edinburgh, Brown and Dartmouth. HALI Access also helps advocate for students through the admissions process as well as supporting students once they have gone to university. 

With the African continent having the largest population of young people in the world—and the only continent where birth rates are up along with having the fastest growing economy—access to higher education is a growing need. However, data from UNESCO shows that only about 10% of men and just 8% of women in sub-Saharan Africa are enrolled in tertiary education and very few organizations are out there helping driven students access higher education opportunities abroad. 

During the Indaba, there were large group meetings held in the conference hall that delved into everything from how to help students be better prepared for SATs to how alums have been able to leverage their education and expertise back home on the continent. While these were interesting, I was particularly inspired when we broke into smaller groups to talk on a number of issues. One of the most interesting to me was looking at how best to support students during their first year of university, many of whom were far away from home and dealing with intense culture shock. Some of the things we came up with were ensuring students had counseling sessions booked within the first month of school, and creating a “buddy” system run by students and encouraging students to be advocates for themselves when it came to administrative issues like scholarships. 

The idea for HALI came from a conversation between two women with the same name. Rebekah Westphal, who at the time was head of international admissions at Yale University, and Rebecca Zeigler Mano, a Zimbabwe-based American founder of Education Matters, an organization helping high-achieving, low-income students gain access to schooling, were at a conference in Zimbabwe. “She and I got talking about, ‘There are all these organizations that do exactly what you do, and I see them sending applicants to Yale all the time, and some of them do it really well, and some of them need some support,’” Rebekah told me a few months after the Indaba. “And the thought was why don’t we try and get as many of the leaders of these organizations together so that we can meet each other, so that we can share best practices, so the organizations that really are doing it well can share what they do with these other organizations.”

The two raised some initial money to hold their first Indaba 10 years ago in Zimbabwe. There were 21 at the initial gathering—including Rebekah representing Yale and a colleague from Harvard University—and 17 organizations from across the continent. From those initial two Ivy League schools in the US, now there are 50+ institutions of higher learning from around the globe that have students who have come through institutions that are members of HALI Access Network. The criteria for universities to become a part of the network is they must offer at least one 100% scholarship to African students. 

And in order for secondary schools and organizations to become a member of the network, they have to, in turn, be working with high-achieving, low-income students. This includes institutions like Kenya’s Daraja Academy, a school for girls in the Rift Valley (ASL parent Amy Liaw P '29 '32 '36 is on their Daraja Education Fund board), Uganda’s Zawadi Education Fund, a university scholarship and leadership development fund for young women, Burundi’s Tujenge Africa Foundation, working with the poorest and most marginalized in the African Great Lakes region, and South Africa’s Imagine Scholar, a rigorous after-school program for secondary students. “That’s something we’ve found to be a really powerful aspect of the network as a whole,” Rebekah told me. “We can have a powerful sort of advocacy and connections with different educational foundations, but I think the fact that people feel like they have somebody who is hearing them and supporting them, particularly for the smaller member organizations, is the reason these Indabas have been incredibly important.”

—Written by ASL parent Ginanne Brownell P '36 '36, a journalist who writes on arts, culture, education and international development. Her second book Elusive Mommyhood: An Investigative Reporter’s Personal Journey Into IVF and Surrogacy came out in February 2025