Development Training Program for Portuguese-Speaking Africa (DTPSA)
1975 – 1985
Between 1975 and 1985, AAI administered the Development Training Program for Portuguese-Speaking Africa (DTPSA), which provided scholarships to participants from the former Portuguese colonies of Angola, Mozambique, Guinea-Bissau, Cape Verde and São Tomé and Príncipe. Funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), DPTSA provided scholarships to 360 Africans for on-the-job training, short-term certificate training, and long-term training to receive associate's, bachelor's, and master's degrees.
In 1978, AAI began to place participants in Portugal and Brazil in short-term internship programs at counterpart ministries in the Portuguese and Brazilian governments. In the United States, AAI organized, with the assistance of the International Center for Marine Resource Development of the University of Rhode Island, a vocational training program in commercial fisheries for 20 participants from Guinea-Bissau. In addition, AAI offered grants to enable individuals from Cape Verde to attend a teachers training course in Praia. Excluding the 37 Angolans who trained under DTPSA and either went to work in third countries or applied for political asylum in the United States, over 90% of the remaining 323 participants returned to employment in their home countries. Upon completion of the program, approximately half of the participants returned to mid to upper-level positions within the civil service and positions in the educational sector in their country of origin. Another 20% of the participants were employed with parastatal firms and in the agricultural sector in their home countries.
Total number of participants: 360