It’s unfathomable that of Africa’s nearly 128 million school-aged children, 17 million will never attend school. Perhaps even more shocking is the fact that another 37 million African children will learn so little while they are in school that they will not be much better off than those kids who never attend school. Consequently, the prognosis for Africa’s future economic growth and social development is poor. The findings are astonishing. There are seven countries in which 40% or more of children do not meet a minimum standard of learning by grades 4 or 5. In countries such as Cameroon, Ethiopia, Nigeria and Zambia, over half of in-school students are not learning basic skills by the end of primary school; In school but not learning. The barometer aggregate shows the total number of children not learning based on out-of-school children at the end of primary school, children who are likely to drop out by the 5th grade, and those in school but not learning. The results are distressing. Under the current model, half of sub-Saharan Africa’s total primary school population; 61 million children, will reach adolescence without the basic skills needed to lead successful and productive lives. The barometer also points out the massive inequalities between the rich and poor. Looking at the rates of extreme education poverty in the region, the percentage of adults with less than two years of education shows the disadvantages that poor, rural students face in accessing education in comparison to their rich and urban counterparts. For instance, in Ethiopia, 68.3% of the poorest quintile of the population lives in education poverty, compared to only 13.8% of the richest.
Schooling is not the same as learning. In other words, going to school, and getting a diploma, does not mean that the student has learned so much. Every day over 10.6 million children and adolescents around Africa go to buildings called schools. Once there they spend long hours in classrooms where some adults try to teach them how to read and write, math, science and more. Annually, this costs 5% of Africa’s GDP. A large part of this money is wasted. An even greater waste is the time lost by those 10.6 million students who learn little or nothing that will be useful to succeed in today’s world. The effort that humanity makes to educate children and young people is as titanic as its results are pathetic. In Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda, 75% of third grade students do not know how to read a phrase as simple as “the name of the dog is Puppy.” In rural Nigeria, 50% of fifth-graders cannot subtract two-digit numbers, such as 46-17. Ghana has managed to improve the skills of fifteen-year-old students, but at the current rate of progress it will still take them 75 years to reach the average mathematics score of students from rich countries; in reading, it will take more than 260 years. These and many other equally disheartening facts are in the new World Development Report, published annually by the World Bank. The central message of the report is that schooling is not the same as learning. In other words, going to school or high school, and getting a diploma, does not mean that the student has learned much.
The good news is that the progress in schooling has been enormous in Africa. Clearly, the problem is no longer the lack of schooling but rather that once they get there, they do not learn.
More than an education crisis, there is a learning crisis. The World Bank report emphasizes that schooling without learning is not only a missed opportunity, but also a great injustice. The poorest people suffer most from the consequences of the low efficiency of the education system.
In Libya, for example, sixth-grade children with lower income levels fail in mathematics five times more than those from wealthier households. The same happens with rich and poor African nations. The average student in one of the poorest nations performs worse in mathematics and language than 95% of students in rich countries. All of this evolves into a kind of diabolical machinery that perpetuates and increases inequality, which, in turn, creates a fertile breeding ground for toxic politics and all kinds of conflicts.
The reasons for this “educational bankruptcy” are multiple, complex, and fully manipulated by Western nations as part of their strategies to keep Africans mentally enslaved through the aid of our corrupt African leaders. They range from the fact that many of the teachers are as ignorant as their students and their absenteeism is inexcusably high, to the fact that their students are malnourished or too hungry to pay attention or that they simply do not have books and notebooks. The educational system in Africa is designed in such a way that students spend decades learning how to manage other people’s businesses and are entrapped with irrelevant courses. Many Africans are so into debt due to the cost of school and 10 years after they finish, they are still paying for the school. They don’t even know how to do their job because they don’t learn what they need to know at school rather they learn after they get a job and work in the real world. Another problem is it prevents our older population from being able to retire and live a healthier life because of the costly obligation to pay for school and the guilt they feel to provide for their children,
The concept and application of education in Africa need to change and be more practical so people are more useful in society. Millions of African graduates right now are unemployed. They couldn’t get a job, even with good grades and after learning everything that’s taught in school. Even after paying huge sums of money for education in the end, they feel like it brought them to a dead end in life. Education could be of the highest quality but it is no use until it’s practical to learn it. Most of them now feel cheated. They lost a lot of money, time and effort in school. Almost 20 years, and they don’t even know how much of money and effort is wasted. The opportunity cost of all three combined is very high. Not just the cost they incurred, for most of them education, is like a scar and will have to keep paying for it, their entire life. All thanks to our obsolete educational system. What a shame! If education is given a number one priority rating, then everything else falls into place.
Africa’s educational system is a broken system that cannot be fixed. It needs to be changed and to change the it means changing the system of leadership in Africa from above. Does this signify the end of Democracy in Africa While there is much reason to celebrate the progress in education that Africa has made over the past decade, there is a deeper learning crisis that needs to be addressed. Change needs to start at the grassroots, and achieving equity must be the objective. The time has come for all Africans to realise that if we don’t do something about the pitiful state of education, it will continue to polarise the wealthy, well-resourced schools from the poorest of the poor. To this end, I cannot stress more urgently that if we continue along the same route that we have been travelling then Africa is doomed Unless Africans act quickly, the potential of tens of millions of African youths will be wasted and Africa’s social and economic progress will stagnate. This is a clarion call to all Africans to brace up to find a lasting solution to the present educational system and I hope we will all work together to change the syst
The African Union has dedicated 2024 to improving education, a task requiring new thinking and rapid technological adoption.
Better education in Africa could mean about 47 million fewer poor people by 2043. It could also add an extra US$368.4 billion (equivalent to 4.3%) to gross domestic product (GDP) and additional gains in GDP per capita of about US$240. This is according to a study by the African Futures and Innovation program at the Institute for Security Studies. Other research shows that each additional year of schooling is associated with an increase of nearly 0.6% in long-term GDP growth rates.
Despite the palpable benefits of education, Africa, especially sub-Saharan Africa, still struggles to improve educational outcomes. The 2022 progress report on implementing the African Union’s (AU) Agenda 2063 reveals that Africa failed to meet all the education targets, with an overall performance score of 44%. Access is still limited at the basic level, and many children of school-going age are not attending classes
According to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO), more than 20% of children between six and 11 years, and over 33% of young people between 12 and 14, are not in school in sub-Saharan Africa. For those aged 15 to 17, that figure is 60%. These figures reveal the leakages and rapid contraction of the education funnel in Africa, where increasing numbers of children drop out along the way. While gross enrolment for a primary school in sub-Saharan Africa stood at 101.7% in 2019, the figure for lower and upper levels of schooling dropped acutely to 58.4% and 36.6% respectively. Tertiary education attendance levels are the worst – with gross tertiary enrolment in sub-Saharan Africa below 10%.
Africa failed to meet all the Agenda 2063 education targets, with an overall performance score of 44%. Besides these challenges for African youth, there is also unequal access to education, with women most affected. UNESCO says an estimated nine million girls in Africa between six and 11 never go to school, as opposed to six million boys in the same age category. The quality of education in Africa is also poor. The State of Global Learning Update says almost 90% of people in Africa cannot read with comprehension by the age of 10. A 2018 World Bank report identifies the four immediate causes of poor quality education in sub-Saharan Africa.
First, many children arrive unprepared to learn because of illness, malnutrition or income deprivation. Second, teachers often lack the necessary skills or motivation. Third, teaching and learning materials fail to reach classrooms at the right time or improve learning. Finally, poor management and governance undermine schooling quality. Another problem is the considerable mismatch between the kind of education offered and that required by employers and the job market. An African Development Bank report found that most people who finish school do not have the skills needed by available work opportunities. And young people generally lack the soft skills, social networks and professional experience to compete with older job applicants.
About nine million girls and six million boys in Africa aged between six and 11 never go to school
The African Center for Economic Transformation notes a lack of emphasis on science, technology, engineering, maths, technical and vocational education, and higher-order cognitive and analytical skills. Indeed, in 2019, only 8.5% of upper secondary school students were enrolled in vocational programs in sub-Saharan Africa, while just 14.2% of tertiary graduates had a science and engineering background – considered vital to the future of work. The scale of these challenges calls for urgent action. The AU has dedicated 2024 to education. The goal is to ‘educate an African fit for the 21st century’ by increasing access to inclusive, lifelong, quality and relevant education. Achieving this is possible but will require concerted effort, new ways of thinking, rapid technological adoption and committed governance.
Africa must improve every level of education to ensure it retains students and increases the progression rate to expand the pool of learners at each successive stage. This can be achieved by implementing policies such as free senior secondary school and targeted school feeding programmes to increase enrolments and survival rates. Good quality education is vital, as is offering vocational and technical training rather than focusing just on academic teaching, as occurs in many African countries. Simply pushing children through school is not a solution if their education doesn’t address the basics of reading, writing and arithmetic, and allow them to build the skills required for the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Quality education is vital, as is vocational and technical training rather than just academic teaching
African countries should dedicate extra hours to numeracy and literacy at pre-primary and primary levels to improve foundational learning for reading and maths. New teaching technologies and methods must be used to meet future challenges, especially after the COVID-19 pandemic. Partnerships with telecommunication firms and internet service providers can reduce the cost of broadband services and mobile data, which impedes virtual learning. More parental involvement, upskilling teachers, and designing teaching and learning methods that are sensitive to local conditions are central to creating functioning education systems throughout Africa. Once the basics are in place, technology such as 5G, artificial intelligence and augmented reality could help drive progress. Careful planning, innovation, investment and leadership are needed to reverse the continent’s education backlog.
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