 When it opened, the university received heavy subsidies from the colonial government and funding from the Ford Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation and the United States Agency for International Development and was lauded as the best university in Africa.In August 1971, the university was merged with the "Protestant Autonomous University of Congo" ("Université Libre du Congo") and "The University of Congo at Lubumbashi" (founded in 1956) into the "National University of Zaire" (Université Nationale du Zaïre, UNAZA).Ties were cut with the Catholic University of Leuven, and funding for the university began to drop precipitously.