For example, in another desperate part of Africa, Somaliland, there’s a remarkable school, Abaarso, that Jonathan Starr, an American philanthropist, opened in 2009. It educates children in grades 7 through 12. Its alumni have been admitted to and received financial aid from Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Brown, M.I.T., Swarthmore.

Those institutions’ receptiveness is another reason I’m writing this. Yes, America’s richest colleges stay that way by giving special consideration to families with the means to make big donations. But they simultaneously use some of their wealth, if not quite enough, to educate students who cannot contribute a dime to their tuition.

Zimbabwe’s USAP is also the story of the difference that one person can make. It’s run by and was the brainchild of Rebecca Zeigler Mano, an American who married a Zimbabwean, moved to Zimbabwe and couldn’t just shrug off the country’s misery.

“There’s a big gap — a big chasm — between the talent that we have in Zimbabwe and the opportunities,” she said on the first of two occasions over the last 13 months when I spoke with her in New York. She returns frequently to America, in part to raise funds.

Her program has become so well known and widely respected in Zimbabwe that every year she gets 700 to 800 applications for about 35 spots. “I like to tell Harvard that we are more competitive than they are,” she said. Many of the applicants are from remote rural areas; she tirelessly crisscrosses the country to interview them.

She also builds networks in the United States for the students who come here, so that they have places to go on school breaks — they can’t afford to fly home — and so that there are people to help with things like sheets and blankets. At the start she didn’t factor in their entire array of needs and got reports that USAP students were sleeping on bare dormitory-room beds.