Can Private Education Increase Enrolment and Completion Rates Among Africa’s Youth?

Cross-linked with Bertelsmann Stiftung – Future Challenges

Young Zimbabwean girls in a classroom – Credit: Lizzy Biggs (CC BY-NC 2.0)

On July 3, Pearson, a UK textbook company,  announced its launch of a £10 million (approximately 15.4 million USD, 12.7 million Euros) fund directed at affordable education for children from low-income households in Ghana.

However, NGOs (non-governmental organizations)  question whether it will improve school attendance, as many focus on raising enrollment and attendance rates among in government-funded schools. Sir Michael Barber, former education adviser for the former UK prime minister, Tony Blair, currently serves as Pearson’s chief education adviser and chairman of the new fund.

The first investment from the new fund is a stake in Omega schools, a chain of affordable, for-profit schools in Ghana, founded by Ghanaian entrepreneur, Ken Donkoh, and Professor James Toole of Newcastle University in the UK. In less than two years, Omega has expanded to ten schools and 6000 students. Professor James Tooley, a professor of education policy, is also an advocate of low-cost private schools.

Pearson’s investment will enable Omega Schools to expand beyond Ghana’s capital city, Accra. This expansion could mean Omega Schools would provide low-cost private education to tens of thousands of Ghanaian primary and secondary students. Additionally, Pearson has a pre-existing stake in Bridge International Academies, a chain of low-cost private schools in Kenya.

In response, several NGOs have questioned whether Pearson’s investments would help meet the UN Millennium Development Goal (MDG) on universal primary education.

The Fight Against Malaria on the African Continent

Cross-linked with Bertelsmann Stiftung – Future Challenges

Malaria Testing Exercise in Kisumu, Kenya. Credit: US Army Africa – (CC BY 2.0)

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), malaria caused an estimated 655,000 deaths (with an uncertainty range of 537,000 to 907,000), mostly among African children in 2010. WHO’s World Malaria Report 2011, indicates that there were about 216 million cases of malaria (with an uncertainty range of 149 million to 274 million) globally.

The oft-cited stat is that an African child dies of malaria every minute. Other estimates say that about 90 percent of malaria deaths are on the continent of Africa, among whom about 90 percent are children under the age of 5.

Malaria is a febrile illness with prevalence across the Global South (it is largely eradicated in North America as of the mid-twentieth century). Initial symptoms of Malaria include  fever, headache, chills and vomiting. Children with severe malaria frequently develop one or more of the following symptoms: severe anemia, respiratory distress, or cerebral malaria. It is transmitted exclusively through the bites of Anopheles mosquitoes.

There are an estimated 20 Anopheles species globally, and they are distributed mostly near or below the equator. According The Lancet, the cumulative probability of death due to malaria is higher in countries with warmer climates.

On June 18, 2012, journalist Geoffrey York wrote an article entitled, “Congo’s malaria surge stumps scientists” the Canadian paper, the Globe and Mail. The article covered the rising prevalence of malaria in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where about 200,000 die of the disease annually, making it the country’s leading cause of death. Research indicates that Malaria cases in the Democratic Republic of the Congo are up 250 percent since 2009 according to statistics from clinics run by Médecins sans frontières (Doctors Without Borders).

Possible causes of this increase in malarial transmission and infection include climate change and increased resistance to pesticides

Addressing African Youths’ Periods of Inactivity Between Educational Attainment & Employment

Cross-linked with Bertelsmann Stiftung – Future Challenges

Sixty-five percent of Africa’s population is under the age of 24, with over 40 percent of the total population below the age of 16, and about 25 percent between the ages 15 and 24. The issue of education is a recurring theme in conversations about Africa’s youth. World Bank data shows that in Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, and Mozambique more than 75 percent of out-of-school youth have no “education at all.”

In a study of 13 African countries, findings showed that rural youth are less likely to be in school, and urban youth (except in Kenya) tended to have greater educational opportunities. However, rural youth often joined the workforce earlier and were less likely to be unemployed, compared to their urban counterparts (except in Kenya and Ethiopia) who saw longer periods of inactivity as they transitioned from school to work. In a 2008 World Bank executive summary entitled “Youth in Africa’s Labor Market, it was noted that:

“In 8 of the 13 countries reviewed (Cameroon, Ethiopia, The Gambia, Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique, São Tomé and Principe, and Zambia), young people face about five years of inactivity before finding work; youth in Uganda are inactive for more than three years on average.