The lack of students being educated at tertiary level to meet African demand for skilled workers means that economic growth will be slowed as leading sectors struggle to find local talent
South Africa has an unemployment rate, conservatively estimated, of 25.7%. Yet recruitment firm Adcorp suggests that that there are some 800,000 engineering, management and accounting jobs unfilled, and the government is struggling to raise the university graduation rate to 20%. Problems in higher education across the continent are hampering economic growth, and are reflected in companies' bottom lines as they are left to train up employees themselves or bring in workers from other countries.
"
Companies are finding that graduates are increasingly 'not fit for purpose'," says Doyin Salami of Lagos Business School. "Even basic skills of articulation, understanding and reasoning are frequently found to be missing. Many of the larger organisations have established in-house training programmes – lasting between a few weeks and a year – in order to improve the quality of new recruits."
If African economic growth is to take on the pace set by China and India, countries need a ready supply of skilled workers. Morocco needs civil engineers and bankers, Nigeria needs bank managers and project supervisors, while Kenya needs telecoms engineers and accountants. Business leaders, governments and educational institutions all play a critical role in ensuring that growth sectors have the human resources needed to improve economic prospects.
The focus on test scores is an obstacle to forming students able to think on their own
Faced with the lack of trained bank managers, Gabon's BGFI Bank launched its own business school in 2008. But the bank soon reached its own capacity to employ its business school's graduates and the second cohort of 24 students is now suing the school because the bank is unable to respect its contract to give them jobs after graduation. School officials now have to decide whether to de-link the school's operations from its parent company and instead train workers for the wider economy. As the bank already operates in Congo-Brazzaville, Equatorial Guinea and Cameroon, it also recruits students there for its combination of theoretical learning and practical experience.
In South Africa, the number of graduates in civil engineering and technology programmes rose by more than 70% from 2000 to 2006, from 721 to 1,228, but is still much lower than needed for the construction sector, one of the keys to unlocking economic growth. Adcorp reports that there are about four applications for every engineering job in the country, while the economic crisis in the US has led to thousands of applicants per job in some industries. When companies turn to expatriate workers it does not help to create a virtuous cycle of interconnectedness between local companies and educational establishments.
Yet, a number of initiatives seek to shape Africa's innovators of the future. After the success of the Muizenberg-based African Institute for Mathematical Sciences in South Africa, the government of Senegal launched the Institut Africain des Sciences Mathématiques in Dakar in September. With an inaugural class of 36 students, the tertiary institution seeks to bring more attention and funding to the teaching of maths and science in West African curricula. This was followed by an announcement in October that US technology giant IBM would start its Skills Development and Research Institutes programme to target the doubling of computer science, engineering and information technology graduates across the continent through a 'shared value' approach to education and technology.
Getting the right talent is the most pressing priority for growing multinationals
Business schools are experiencing continued growth and an increasing number of schools are competing to attract new students. The University of South Africa's School of Business Leadership plans to launch a master's in business administration (MBA) programme in 2012, while Free State University Business School will inaugurate its new campus early next year. Meanwhile, foreign universities are also getting involved: in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Frankfurt School of Finance and Management opened an institution with the Université Protestante au Congo offering a two-year degree in microfinance in 2009. It awarded diplomas to nine students in August, and is contemplating a full MBA programme.
The problem of a lack of skilled workers cannot be blamed on any single link in the educational value chain and is often daunting in scale. Governments, civil society groups and companies complain about the quality of education in many schools across the continent. A report by Uwezo Tanzania and Twaweza East Africa published in September shows that the majority of Standard 7 primary school students cannot do the maths and reading exercises required of Standard 2 students. South Africa's Centre for Development and Enterprise reported in late September that the country needs to produce 15,000 more secondary school teachers per year in order to meet demand, especially in maths and sciences. The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation reports that sub-Saharan African countries will need 1 million new teachers by 2015 to meet rising demand.
Professor Diane Grayson of the University of Pretoria's engineering department points to the government's changing priorities and focus on test scores as an obstacle to forming students able to think on their own. "We keep changing curricula, but even good curricula can be undermined by a focus on marks, which can lead to spoon-feeding and teaching recipes rather than reasoning."
Developmental needs call for a developmental approach to education. In 2010, the University of Pretoria launched the Engineering Augmented Degree programme (ENGAGE), which seeks to ease the transition from high school to university. In the five-year engineering programme, support is initially high but is reduced over time, while the workload follows an inverse pattern and students learn in discussion groups of 50 rather than lecture halls of 500. Grayson says that with the ENGAGE programme, pass rates increased from 46% to 58% in 2010.
Another missing link in the chain is educational financing. While many African countries have free public universities, governments struggle to maintain spending levels, and the quality of teaching is often low and the infrastructure poor. The cost of a four-year degree prices many students out of the competition. South Africa and Ghana are the only sub-Saharan African countries with a countrywide programme that provides finance to tertiary-level students. Previous attempts at diversifying the sources of finance for education have failed due to collection problems and unsustainable subsidisation.
Politicisation and mismanagement also contribute to the problems of education finance. The World Bank's Africa economist Shanta Devarajan has argued that African governments need new financing strategies as they lack resources to develop tertiary education and use the resources that they have poorly. Raising more funds is almost always on the political agenda, but few countries have been moved to act for about a decade. However, as economic growth continues apace, investment in skills development today should pay off in even higher growth tomorrow.
