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From: wolda002@umn.edu
Date: Tue Sep 21 2010 - 02:12:21 EDT
To combat poverty, get Africa’s children to school
By Gordon Brown
Published: September 19 2010 20:24 | Last updated: September 19 2010 20:24
As developed countries strive for post-crisis growth, Africa is on the
verge of an economic leap forward. A $1,500bn economy, the continent is
ready to leave the third world. Its resources, both natural and human, are
untapped. Foreign investment is at last beginning to flow. Its leading
nations are even competing to join the fast-developing “Bric”
countries. But as will be clear at today’s millennium development goals
summit in New York, while Africa is close to a breakthrough it has not
happened yet.
Any African advance will depend on three crucial factors. First, a wider
opening to trade, given that 80 per cent of current exports remains in oil
and agriculture. Second, a new African common market is needed. Only
regional integration can overcome the fact that only a 10th of Africa’s
trade is within Africa itself. Finally, better infrastructure: African road
capacity is half that of Latin America and less than a third of Asia’s.
That said, Africa’s future also depends on a fourth factor: developing
the skills the world needs. There are now up to 1m foreign workers in
Africa, as some investors bring with them whole armies of workers to staff
plants, build roads and work farms. Without more investment in education
Africa will struggle to move up the economic value chain and runs the risk
that any new investment will lead to inequitable growth.
Worse, today some countries, driven by a short-sighted orthodoxy, are
considering serious reductions to their education budgets – a reflection
of a broader choice being faced by all countries dealing with the fallout
from the financial crisis. But governments, especially in the developing
world, must think strategically about which investments will help them to
grow out of the crisis. Education budgets should be near the top of this
list, or a year or two of national budget cuts coupled with cutbacks in
developed countries’ aid budgets, could undo a decade of progress.
Such cuts are especially unwelcome at a time when an extra 40m children are
in school worldwide, and when a new push to speed up enrolment could put us
in touching distance of getting all the world’s children into school for
the first time in history. But evidence in a new report by the Global
Campaign for Education suggests that progress is already slowing. If that
continues, by 2015 numbers out of school will go up rather than down.
I have taken a new role with the Global Campaign for Education because I am
angrier than ever about the injustice and waste in denying education. As
well as boosting jobs and gross domestic product, the evidence is clear
that education combats malnutrition, maternal and infant mortality and
HIV/Aids. This month Unesco estimated that if every child could read, 171m
children could be lifted out of poverty. Put simply, going to school is the
best anti-poverty, anti-famine, anti-disease and anti-unemployment
programme.
Yet given the background of education budget cuts throughout Africa, what
can be done to realise this vision? First, developed countries must pick up
some of the slack. This means not just honouring existing aid commitments
but a new drive to allocate at least 15 per cent of these aid budgets to
basic education. In particular, Africa must recruit 1.2m new teachers –
something that will be impossible without support for national training
colleges.
Second, developing countries must make changes too – and commit to spend
at least 15 per cent of their national budget on basic education. Third, we
need to finance anew the Fast Track Initiative, a programme set up in 2002
by the World Bank that could one day become the educational equivalent of
Médecins sans Frontières: providing schools and teachers in the most
conflict-ridden, broken states. While the FTI has not yet lived up to its
potential, recent reforms can give it a chance to do just that.
Finally, there is hope in innovation. Building on the rapid expansion of
mobile phones, and using the pioneering work of Tim Berners-Lee and others,
increasing access to educational material online can open Africa up to a
new world of learning. With these steps we can not only address the fading
momentum of the last decade but lead the most sustained assault on
ignorance in human history – and help to create a new generation of
African Lionesses that can more than match this generation’s Asian
Tigers.
The writer is former UK prime minister and convener of the high-level panel
for the Global Campaign for Education
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2010