A subsidiary of the world’s richest university made a little gift with big ramifications for a fledgling business school in South Africa.

CIDA City Campus, a college in Johannesburg that claims to be the least expensive college in the world (charging just under $600 in tuition for all four years), announced last month that it has received a software gift valued at $7.5 million from Harvard Business School Publishing (HBSP).

The gift gave CIDA the rights to all of HBSP’s online e-learning education software, containing approximately 5,000 courses. Contrary to some media reports, the donated material did not include HBS or University course syllabi.

“These are courses in management and functions of management, soft skills courses, IT—all the Harvard content. We’re integrating all these materials into our CIDA degree,” CIDA co-founder and chief executive Teddy Blecher told South African investment magazine Moneyweb last year.

The new software will bolster a CIDA education that is designed to train disadvantaged young South Africans for the business world.

To achieve this end, CIDA has in the past relied on gifts from benefactors like Harvard. Although its computers are now loaded with contemporary education software that is hosted on servers donated by Dell Computers, its libraries are stocked with slightly dated texts acquired through donations.

The software donation was initiated two years ago by former HBSP eLearning executive Jonathan Levy, who was inspired after meeting with Blecher.

“HBSP’s mission is to improve the practice of management worldwide. I believe Jon saw a good fit between our mission and the opportunity to support CIDA’s mission, and that’s what motivated him to initiate the donation of content,” HBSP Director of Corporate Communications Sarah McConville wrote in an e-mail.

CIDA’s operational goal is to effect tangible improvements in the South African quality of life. To offer what it calls the lowest-cost higher education in the world—tuition is only about $40 for the first year and about $170 for the subsequent three years—the school combines some of the day-to-day logistics of a cooperative with an academic program underpinned by corporate sponsorship. The corporate sponsorship program is touted as a win-win, enabling interested companies to build human resources capital in an under-educated continent.

CIDA, which was started in 1999 by Blecher and three others, emphasizes practical entrepreneurial skills and grants a single degree, an accredited Bachelor of Business Administration. Instruction is conducted by relevant professionals; PriceWaterhouseCoopers representatives teach accounting classes, for instance.

Students take a personal role in their education, keeping costs down by handling administrative and secretarial duties. Once the term is over, all students are required to return home over holidays and practice what they have learned.

CIDA’s students come largely from rural areas, and nearly all live in poverty. The demand for places at CIDA is huge—10,000 to 15,000 applications are submitted annually for 400 to 500 seats, according to Blecher.

—Staff writer Samuel C. Scott can be reached at sscott@fas.harvard.edu.