Edwin Munger was a professor of geography and a renowned expert on Africa. During his ICWA fellowship (1950–1954) and his work with its sister organization, the American Universities Field Staff, he lived in Ghana, Nigeria, Kenya and South Africa. Ned continued his work in Africa in the 1960s, working as a Peace Corps evaluator in Uganda and Botswana. He was appointed to a State Department advisory council on African affairs in 1971. For 14 years, he served as president of the Leakey Foundation. During that time, he began the foundation’s Baldwin Fellowships, which have helped African scholars receive advanced degrees in archaeology and related areas. Ned also started the Cape of Good Hope Foundation, which has supported Black universities in southern Africa with millions of dollars in books.
Ned became a professor at the California Institute of Technology in 1961 and professor emeritus in 1988. He amassed the largest private collection of books on sub-Saharan Africa in the United States, comprising over 60,000 volumes. And he wrote prolifically too, authoring 14 books, including Bechuanaland (1966), Afrikaner and African Nationalism (1967), The Afrikaners (1979), Rwanda (1990) and Cultures, Chess and Art: A Collector’s Odyssey Across Seven Continents: Volume 1, Sub Saharan Africa (1996), Volume 2, The Americas (1998) and Vol. 3 Pacific Islands and the Asian Rim (1999).