Basic education needs $25 billion in annual funding at the current status quo. This is just to fund education. Tis excludes the lack of electricity and access thereto, it does not include the need for additional schools in untapped rural areas, neither does it include the public funding that will be required to assist the extremely poor families with the cost for uniforms and more importantly the extended costs associated with funding school teachers and school text books and equipment for additional schools.
This is the real problem facing Africa’s ideal education system at primary and secondary levels. Over the last ten years there has exponential. But has it taken education down the right path to rectifying the deficits.
It goes without saying that since 2011 not much has changed the real world for African children who need access to education as the means and pathway out of poverty.
With all the emphasis by the powers that be, on the resources growth, extraction and exponential economic growth rates, education very seldom makes the headlines and neither does it make the top of the agenda. Education of Africa’s children are a mere meme by political and business executives alike. It’s merely saying the right thing at the right time – even at the wrong time.
Out of 127 million children on the continent, at least 61% will leave school with nothing more than the most basic levels of literacy. I remember growing up in Swaziland seeing many of the kids going to school without school shoes. Much of my work is within impoverished areas, nothing much has changed. It is fairly normal to see school children in the heart of winter with only a shirt and short-grey shorts. Most likely, these children left home with nothing to eat.
Africa also suffers still and greatly so from what could be termed a “valueless-add” education throughout their wntire primary and secondary education “experience”. In a survey by the Africa Learning Barometer – a total of 23 million respondents, no less than one third fell below the minimum learning threshold.
This after numerous bragging rights by mobile operators claiming that mobile technology is the answer to solving the education deficits in Africa. Depending on what you had while listening to such statement or what the person had who made the statement – obviously technology can be nothing more than a mere aid to enhancing speed and accessibility within the education arena. What it does not solve is that technology cannot replace teachers, neither can technology operate without electricity, which in 11 countries in Africa – more than 90 percent have no access to electricity.
By the end of 2014, it is forecast that there will be more than 635 million mobile subscriptions in sub-Saharan Africa – so probably most can at least read. This still leaves almost a billion people with limited to no access. “Researchers predicting internet use on mobile phones will increase 20-fold in the next five years – double the rate of growth in the rest of the world” – an interesting argument because it assumes that everything else in Africa is the way it should be. Such statements are not made based on the progressive nature of development needed in Africa- but rather it is attached to a profit forecast.
The next argument is the access to employment. Africa does not have sufficient trade structure to feed itself even though the Africa has 60 percent of the world’s arable land, as such exports most of her produce.
This argument ties in with the lack of employment in areas where jobs can be derived through production of the soil for communities. This then needs to lead to the development of schools in these areas and then the education of teachers willing to relocate to rural areas to teach in these schools. Considering that many corporates around the world are investing in creating “smart-cities”, the problem of urbanisation specifically for jobs in Africa is more deep-seated than on the surface. This is counter-productive to the bi-annual meme of education importance of Africa’s future.
Then let us present the penultimate argument that is why mobile technology is only a component of educational development. Farming globally, does not create a middle-class and schools in pharming areas, quality schooling systems are rare. The rate of top students from such areas and schooling systems cannot be regarded as contributors to advancing Africa’s educational deficit.
Finally, Africa has the largest border-locked regions in the world. Infrastructure development is set to take place over the next 10 – 20 years in Africa and currently Africa has a development funding gap of at least $40 billion annually. This I compounded by fact that countries like Nigeria do not have their own functional refineries and thus downstream industries, previously the heart of the SME sector in the oil and petroleum industries are nominal back-burner importers. This was the downfall of the Nigerian banking sector as of 2008. Where Nigeria had the opportunity to supply Africa at a lower cost, the infrastructure across Africa in the form of secure pipelines inflates the transports costs carried by the consumer. Africa has to export most of its resources in order to make budget targets through trade. This deflects the cheaper opportunity for the African market. Finally in this argument is the pressing issue of tax and corruption related to revenue outflows from the resources sector. Billions of dollars’ worth of tradable resources for Africa is being lost through tax havens and illegal trade by governments and overseas corporates.
We still do not have a curable funding model to leverage the upscaling status of education. A question we should ask; ‘Do government really care or is slow progress a political tool?
