On the android developer site (http://developer.android.com/tools/sdk/ndk/index.html#Reqs) there are required development tools.
I got GNU Make 3.81 installed after following this post to install the latest xcode (at the time of this question v 4.6) and then download the "Command line tools". To make sure it was installed and what version it was I executed this command in my terminal:
$ make --version
Q: What is the best way you would recommend to install the latest version of GNU Awk or Nawk on my Mac OSX 10.8.2? Do you recommend Awk or Nawk?
I checked that my Mac has "awk version 20070501" installed after executing this command:
$ awk --version
I also saw this post which seems like a nice solution for both my questions.