The story of AUW began well before its inaugural class entered in 2008. The idea for the university grew out of the World Bank/UN Task Force on Higher Education and Society. In 2000, the Task Force, which included Kamal Ahmad, Harvard University's Dean Henry Rosovsky and the World Bank's former managing director Mamphela Ramphele, published its findings in a report titled "Higher Education in Developing Countries: Peril and Promise", which concluded that developing countries must improve the quality of their institutions of higher learning, in governance and pedagogy, to compete in today's increasingly globalised, knowledge-based economy.