The loudest critic of the documentary series was Lynne Cheney, who was at the time the chairperson of the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH). The endowment had put $600,000 toward the funding of "The Africans" and Lynne Cheney felt that Mazrui had not held to the conditions on which the endowment had granted the funding. Cheney said that she was promised a variety of interviews presenting different sides of the story, and was outraged when there were no such interviews in the show. Lynne Cheney demanded that the NEH name and logo be removed from the credits. She also had the words "A Commentary" added to the American version of the series, alongside Ali Mazrui's credits.