Education

In recent years, a broad swath of African countries has begun to show a remarkable dynamism.  From Mozambique’s impressive growth rate (averaging 8% p.a. for more than a decade) to Kenya’s emergence as a major global supplier of cut flowers, from M-pesa’s mobile phone-based cash transfers to KickStart’s low-cost irrigation technology for small-holder farmers, and from Rwanda’s gorilla tourism to Lagos City’s Bus Rapid Transit system, Africa is seeing a dramatic transformation.  This favorable trend is spurred by, among other things, stronger leadership, better governance, an improving business climate, innovation, market-based solutions, a more involved citizenry, and an increasing reliance on home-grown solutions.  More and more, Africans are driving African development. 

The global economic crisis of 2008-09 threatens to undermine the optimism that Africa can harness this dynamism for long-lasting development.  In light of this, it might be useful to re-visit recent achievements.  The African Successes study aims to do just that.

The study will identify a wide range of development successes (see list), from which around 20 cases will be selected for in-depth study.  The analysis of each successful experience will evaluate the following: (1) the drivers of success—what has worked and why; (2) the sustainability of the successful outcome(s); and (3) the potential for scaling up successful experiences.  African success stories offer valuable insights and practical lessons to other countries in the region. 

I welcome your comments and suggestions for success stories. Click here to see the list of what we have come up with so far.

At a recent conference that brought together African Finance and Education ministers, the keynote speaker, Tharman Shanmugaratnam, finance minister (and former education minister) of Singapore gave a beautiful speech about Singapore's experience that contained some potentially difficult and controversial messages for Africa.

1.  There is a virtuous circle of education and growth, but you need to create it.  This means that finance ministers should be concerned about education, and education ministers about economic growth. [At the conference, one participant, when asked a question about education in his country, said "I'm the finance minister, not the education minister."]

2.  Singapore emphasized technical and vocational education by giving it prestige that was almost equal to academic education.  This involved, among other things, a public relations campaign.  As participants at the conference said, in Africa, we also need to deliver on the quality of vocational and technical education.

3.  Singapore's insistence on education being a meritocracy (students advance purely on merit) has led to equity.  For instance, the top 5 percent of the students come from 95 percent of the schools.  But to make this work, the education system needs to be insulated from politics.  As Tharman said, the role of political leaders is to keep politics out of education.

4.  In Singapore, universities charge full fees, and give scholarships to low-income students.  The government encourages private donations to universities, matching them one-for-one.  How many African universities can overcome the political resistance to charging fees?.

In rich countries, when economic growth declines by three or four percentage points, people lose their jobs and possibly their houses, but they regain them when the economy rebounds. In poor African countries, children get pulled out of school—and miss out on becoming productive adults. In some cases, children die before they have a chance to go to school. If the current growth collapse is typical of the ones Africa has experienced in the past, an additional 700,000 African children may die before their first birthday.

In short, the effects of the global recession on Africa will be permanent. So the idea that aid may be threatened because of the recession in rich countries seems to have the logic backwards. Precisely because the effects in rich countries are temporary, resources should go to places where they may be permanent. Of course, there are political pressures to spend domestically. But do politicians in rich countries really think that a few more votes are worth more than the lives of the infants who will die as a result of the recession? 

Rarely do we come across a video that is visually beautiful, intellectually stimulating and emotionally inspiring.  “One childhood” is a documentary about how schools and schoolteachers in Eritrea are part of the campaign to improve children’s health.  Based on the actual findings of two thorough technical evaluations that showed the wide coverage and effectiveness of the Eritrea programs, the film tells the story of how school health is now being delivered in the mountains of Eritrea, in the arid lands of the Red Sea coast and in urban Asmara.  Available on YouTube, where it has been seen by 14,000 people in a month—probably 13,980 more than read the two technical reports—the film has won the CINE Golden Eagle award.  It can also be viewed here.

Truth in advertising:  The film’s executive producer, Don Bundy, is a colleague and may be a distant cousin of mine [don’t ask!].