In 1979, Patrick Hillery was in his first term in Áras an Uachtaráin when a young Maasai pastoralist named Alias Ole Morindat won a scholarship to study in Dublin, writes Joe Humphreys in Tanzania
Twenty-seven years later, Alias is back in his home district in northern Tanzania, showcasing to President Mary McAleese an influential training centre he helped to establish after his return.
His is a small but important example of how overseas development aid can work.
Today, he helps to broker peace among warring land-users, as well as educate future policymakers from across east Africa in land management and rural development. This is all thanks, he says, to the small study grant he received from his Irish "brothers and sisters". "That investment is in me now," he adds, "and I am using it to train others to help themselves."
Mrs McAleese's visit to the centre near Arusha provided a happy finish to a gruelling day of travel, which included a tour of the notorious 19th-century slave market at Zanzibar.
The Tanzanian island was used as a base for explorations by the Scottish missionary David Livingstone, whose campaigning against slavery contributed to the closure of the market in 1873.
Emerging from one of the cells in which up to 20,000 Africans were starved each year to determine the "fittest" slaves, Mrs McAleese spoke of the importance of keeping the history alive.
Dr Livingstone had adopted "Christianity, commerce and civilisation" as his evangelising motto.
This could equally be applied to Mrs McAleese, whose speech at a state dinner hosted by her Tanzanian counterpart Jakaya Kikwete focused on the three issues of good governance, economic growth and Ireland's religious and spiritual inheritance to Africa of selfless priests, nuns and other volunteers.
The speech on Monday night was broadcast live on national radio, while photographs of the president with Mr Kikwete made the front page of two national newspapers yesterday.
The state-owned organ was quick to report Mrs McAleese's praise of the local government, but the president told Tanzania that a quid pro quo for Ireland's government-to-government funding was "a commitment to human rights and good governance".
Meanwhile, yesterday, at a meeting with the president of Zanzibar, Amani Karume, Mrs McAleese discussed the sensitive issue of last year's elections on the island, claimed by the opposition party - but not by international observers - to have been rigged.
No representative from the opposition party, Civic United Front, was in attendance at the president's lavish reception on the island, but the ruling Chama Cha Mapinduzi party was out in force, its colour-co- ordinated members having been bused into the local airport where they were then drilled in waving the Tricolour.
Mrs McAleese completes her 12-day tour of Africa tomorrow.