The Africa Report Blog

Better paid teachers will be better teachers

Alex Twinomugisha and Esther Wachira — Tue, 05 Oct 2010 12:15:00 +0100

How many ministers and doctors work for $50-$100 a month? Teachers shouldn’t have to either, argue guest bloggers Alex Twinomugisha and Esther Wachira

There is no professional in developing countries under greater pressure than the African teacher. Increasing demands placed on African teachers by a modern society have not been met with a corresponding reexamination of teaching methodologies for the 21st century.

Those who have the opportunity to upgrade their skills often find the teaching profession too routine, as traditional modes of teaching have not left a lot of room for creativity on the part of the teacher or the learner. Qualified teachers slowly leave the profession for more challenging environments, for career progression or for greener pastures. School administrators hire untrained teachers to make up for the shortfall, and consequently the learner suffers from a lower quality of education.

Poor remuneration is another contributing factor to the malaise in the teaching profession in Africa. High rates of inflation have forced many teachers to take on second jobs in order to meet their economic needs. After all, how many ministers, doctors and lawyers would work for $50-$100 a month, the typical pay for teachers in the least developed countries?

Things were not always like this. Ask anybody over 50 years old in Africa and other developing regions of the world about who their mentors were or who they admired the most in their community, and it is likely to be a teacher.

Over time, salaries have been hit by biting inflation, and bad governance and corruption set in. Structural adjustment measures introduced by multilateral institutions like the World Bank and IMF made matters worse. Civil servant recruitment and pay rises were frozen.

Teachers in many African countries are public servants and hence were directly affected. Many left Africa, especially in the 1990s. Others remained, while HIV/AIDS decimated the ranks of teachers in Eastern and Southern Africa. There was no corresponding replacement of teachers due to the public-servant employment freeze.

While there are many issues that concern teachers, including skills development, career progression and the changing role of the teacher in African society, pay remains a significant issue.

There are several reasons why increasing teacher pay creates dividends for society:

1. Teachers are inspirational figures. Well-paid and motivated teachers inspire students to go to school, to work hard and to aspire to a better life.

2. Paying teachers well will attract the best people to the job. Whereas there are those who join the teaching profession as a matter of choice, it is a widely known that the teaching profession in Africa is not attracting the most gifted students due to poor career prospects and low pay.

3. Well-paid teachers are more likely to stay in school. Reduced teacher absenteeism will have a direct effect on the quality of education that students receive. Of course, good pay must be accompanied by the creation of systems of accountability.

4. Teachers are located everywhere in a country, from the poorest to the richest regions. Paying teachers well is therefore a good way of redistributing income in a country. Imagine a school in a poor rural area that has well-paid teachers. Teachers with disposable income would require all manner of services: decent housing, cars, restaurants, etc. With a ready market, local entrepreneurs would seek to provide these services, thus jump-starting the local economy.

Alex Twinomugisha and Esther Wachira work for GeSCI, an NGO with offices in Ireland and Kenya focusing on using ICT to improve education.

More civility for the civil service

Emilie Filou — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 15:55:00 +0100

International business schools have found a niche market in creating courses to improve customer services and management skills for West African public servants

Good governance in Africa is a bête noire: from individuals having to queue for hours to companies needing to jump through bureaucratic hoops, the civil service does not have a good reputation. This is something Charles Koffi Diby, Côte d’Ivoire’s minister of economy and finance, was determined to change when he took office in 2007. Diby’s ambition was to turn the civil service into an efficient organisation. “Diby knew he had some excellent technicians, people who were very good at their jobs but lacked managerial skills,” says Annick Ulla Kone, one of the minister’s technical advisors.

The solution came in the form of a tailor-made executive education course, co-designed and delivered by French business school HEC to address the administration’s needs. Five themes had emerged during consultations: how to define a strategy and implement it; thinking about tax-payers as customers; people management; ethics; and managing change.

The three-year programme, called MIRI, offers a 10-day course for the ministry’s 1,200 senior managers and one-day seminars for the remaining 7,200 employees. All sessions are taught by HEC faculty members. Senior executives work in groups of 20 and have five two-day sessions staggered over eight months. To obtain a certificate at the end of the course, they must present a group project, the theme of which is determined by the ministry. As for the seminars, they gather 200 people and work on themes such as quality of service and business performance.

HEC is not the first institution to offer training to public servants: organisations such as the Harare-based African Capacity Building Foundation, the UN Public Administration Network and the Commonwealth Secretariat have long worked on public-service development, providing training and support on anything from policy making to resource management. There are also a number of well-established African business schools delivering management courses to private-sector executives, among them Nigeria’s Lagos Business School, Wits Business School in South Africa and ISM in Senegal.

Where HEC differs is in its application of business principles to public service management. Roger Dault, director of programmes at HEC Executive Club, says that the ethics and customer service elements are highly relevant. “If an administration is credible and respected, that is the best advertising a country can have for potential investors,” he explains.

MIRI has been popular with staff. Kone, one of the programme’s main architects, says there were teething problems at the beginning when HEC faculty needed to adjust to the African civil service environment. She attended the course and says it was a great experience. “It refreshed things I’d already learnt but it also gave me the opportunity to see my weaknesses as a manager and to improve them,” she says. The government does not expect radical change, more a subtle shift in management style.

Côte d’Ivoire has become an ambassador for the programme. The Togolese government has just signed-up for a similar course, and the feedback from Diby’s ministry played an important part. Ignace Clomegah, president of the HEC Executive Club of Lomé, says that President Faure Gnassingbé immediately bought into the concept. “He was keen to change the paradigm in the administration and thought the country should be run as 'Togo Ltd'.”

Neither HEC nor those in involved in Togo and Côte d’Ivoire will say how much the courses cost. “Expensive” is as much as they will say, but Côte d’Ivoire has signed for a fourth year and HEC's Dault says that the school is negotiating with other West African countries. Perhaps it will inspire the many business schools on the continent to use their own expertise for that underserved market.

Gone are the architect's pens and pencils

The Africa Report — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 10:51:00 +0100

Adama University in Ethiopia has been transformed from a teacher-education college to a university, but students and staff still need up-to-date equipment, says Dr Tilahun Erduno.

There have been so many positive changes. We now have 24-hour wireless access to the internet, which students and instructors can use in order to improve the teaching and learning processes. Instructors are getting training so that they can include e-learning methods in the teaching process. In architecture classes, the students are now using AutoCAD and other software. The traditional method of drawing, using pencil and pens, is now more or less outdated, so we are using information technology to meet our education needs.

 Even though there have been many positive changes at the university – student intake is increasing year on year – the number of laboratories is not increasing in proportion to the number of students. There are some students who have their own computers – those who come from well-to-do families. It is not just the students who do not have the necessary technology; more than 90% of instructors do not have their own computers. They can use some of the university’s resources. There are computers in the libraries, and each department has laboratories where people can get access to computers. Some instructors, depending on the nature of their assignment, can borrow laptops from the university. But there are not enough. In my department there are about 90 members of staff for whom there only 15 laptops available.

Dr Tilahun Erduno is head of the department of civil engineering and architecture at Adama University.

For more on education in Ethiopia, read our piece on why plans to build 13 universities are presenting challenges of quality and resources.

Zimbabwe's schools: No need to start from scratch

Gemma Ware — Fri, 28 May 2010 17:33:00 +0100

Student Bongani Ncube-Zikhali says that Zimbabwe has schools and teachers. It just needs the resources to pay them.

Zimbabwe’s education system used to be the envy of Africa. Crippling hyper-inflation and economic mismanagement left teachers unpaid and children twiddling their pencils at the peak of political uncertainty. Still well above the sub-Saharan average, the youth literacy rate for 15-24 age group – at 95% from 1985-1994 – fell to 91% in 2000-2007.

The year-old government of national unity has, for the most part, gotten teachers back into the classroom. But they are still demanding more pay.

Young Zimbabweans are desperate to learn. At the World Economic Forum on Africa earlier this month, Bongani Ncube-Zikhali, a Zimbabwean activist and member of the British Council’s Global Changemaker programme, spoke his mind about the problems:

"The government is really trying its best. The resources are limited and teachers are being paid a basic salary, which is way below what they need. But they are really trying to keep schools open. The government is engaging with them and communicating with them, which is far more than before. They’re trying to hold off strikes. Before, they were grandstanding and there was chaos; now, it’s far from perfect but they are really trying.

"I really think it’s a lack of resources. Other countries in Africa need money to build schools and train teachers. Zimbabwe has schools, we have teachers. South Africa is full of Zimbabwean teachers, London is full of Zimbabwean teachers. My mother is in South Africa because she gets paid four or five times more than she’s paid in Zimbabwe and she’s a teacher – qualified with a degree. She’d really love to go back. It’s really a matter of resources – we have the infrastructure – we need resources to sustain and kick-start that infrastructure.”

More young people like Bongani need to be given a platform in Zimbabwe to become involved in the process of change that is, however hesitantly, already underway. “Zimbabwe is doomed to succeed,” he concluded, “because we are the solution”.

French Africa: the last open-air jail?

Mahdi M'rabet — Mon, 03 May 2010 16:37:00 +0100

Tunisian campaigner Mahdi M'rabet speaks out about why he thinks Francophone Africa should start learning English

As English became the global language, several countries in Africa found themselves cut off from the rest of the world. Today, the vast majority of the countries in the world teach English from the early levels of public education and use it extensively in all the important fields of life: business, technology, science, higher education, diplomacy, international trade, international cooperation and international communication.

Speaking English has become a basic skill for individuals and a necessary ability for any country. It is so widespread that not speaking English has become a handicap and a major cause of isolation and underdevelopment.

There are only about 40 countries in the world, out of a total of 203, that still do not use English as a first foreign language. With the exception of Luxembourg, all these countries are developing countries, mainly located in Northern, Western and Central Africa, also known as 'French Africa'. Western and Central Africa, in particular, are among the poorest regions in the world. Joining the rest of the international community has become a vital issue for these countries today.

Speaking English would help bring more development and international connections to those countries. To begin with, it would help improve the level of education because of the number of educational resources available in English and the additional possibilities of international cooperation in education that would be made possible, both on state and institutional levels. In particular, the universities would profit from joining the global network of research and higher education, which would improve the training of teachers and therefore improve the whole educational system. Besides, the teaching of English alone would give students an essential skill for their professional careers.

A second important point is that speaking English would help those countries access technology, which is the motor of any development. Being dependent on another country’s translations on the matter excludes them from a number of very important resources and innovations that may prove crucial for their development, besides the negative consequences of dependency itself. Among these resources are the experiences of other developing countries like India or Brazil.

Another important point is that speaking English would help make better businesses by helping them access management and technical resources, therefore helping train a more skilled workforce. Furthermore, it would dramatically increase the number of business opportunities and markets for exports worldwide. Another important consideration is that speaking English would help attract much more foreign investment to these countries which would constitute an immediate improvement in their economic situation and help bring an important additional economical resource in the long term. This is besides the fact that foreign investment is a major economic instrument that enables the transfer and dissemination of knowledge, technology and skills.

On a cultural level, English would help countries access other cultures in the world and, more importantly, promote their own culture to the rest of the world, in addition to the number of cultural exchanges made possible by using English. Another important point is that it would help them access media from all over the world, enabling them to consult news and opinions from many diverse sources. This would empower them to form their own opinions and contribute to the global debate.

Last, but not least, speaking English would help those countries be a more integral part of the international community and be more independent as they diversify their international cooperation and build new relationships with more countries around the world.

To sum it up, speaking English in these countries would help create more jobs and reduce poverty. If present economic activity was done in English instead of in any another language, it would create important leverage and boost the local economy just by the networking effect of the English language, besides the gains acquired from the volume of resources available.

Politically, it would help those countries exit a monolithic and monopolistic relationship which keeps them in the backyard of France. This constitutes their only horizon, keeping them looking at the world from a very limited perspective – without counting the isolating effect of the language barrier which acts like a open-air jail!

Mahdi M'rabet is a campaigner in Tunisia for the English as First Foreign Language Initiative

http://www.englishffl.org/index_fichiers/Campaigns.htm

Ministers must face-up to education’s systemic breakdown

Leonard Lawal — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 14:40:00 +0100

Nigeria’s legislators are debating a law banning public servants from sending their children overseas to study. Leonard Lawal remembers when a Nigerian school certificate wasn’t something to be ashamed of.

About a fortnight back, Nigerians took time off discussing the whereabouts of their president, Umaru Yar’Adua, who had not been seen by anyone save his wife, Turai, and a few clerics.
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They took time off talking about the screening of ministers by the acting-president, Goodluck Jonathan (who had not seen the president either).

Nigerians suddenly realised the future might be gloomier than they had envisaged. That is, if the future is hinged on educational development and not on 15-year-olds making a living ferrying passengers on okadas, or moped tricycles.

Only 1.8% of Nigerian students passed the senior school certificate examination last year. Call it the equivalent of a high school diploma, it’s the exam that determines whether you will become a responsible citizen in most countries on earth.

If you are going to be a rock star, or a Nollywood great, or even rule the country someday, you need that certification as proof of a minimum level of educational achievement.

In 1985, the year when a certain general (who may be the next president in 2011) took power, 3% of those who took the exam passed.

What’s the difference between 3% and 1.8%? There is no difference.

The few members of the elite and newly-monied who can afford it, send their children and wards abroad – to Ghana or to Togo – for any kind of education at all. Ministers openly say on TV that their kids are schooling in expensive institutions abroad.

Umar Abdulmutallab, the Nigerian who failed to bomb a US plane in December, went to the British School at Lomé. His father, a top banker, knew that no schools in Nigeria were good enough for his kid.

There is a bill currently being bandied about proposing a prohibition on serving politicians from sending their kids outside the country for formal education.

It sounds like a brilliant idea, but Nigeria has never lacked brilliant ideas. The elite will always find ways to get around it anyway.

But what is wrong with improving the state of the schools? It is not exactly rocket science.

I think it’s just a mindset: the politicians, the ministers and the general populace feel no sense of empathy with the Nigerian project.

Most in the elite have homes outside Nigeria, just in case. Some top government functionaries are alleged to have EU and Ghanaian passports to make it easier for them to gallivant round the world looking for investors in Mongolia without the accompanying hassles of being a Nigerian.

It looks like Nigeria is a place to make funny money and then repatriate it for the family to enjoy in saner societies where there are rules of law.

It has not always been like this with the educational system in Nigeria. We used to have quality schools run both by missionaries and even the government.

These schools could compete with anything Miss Porter’s and Eton had to offer. Take Olusegun Aganga, our new finance minister, poached from ‘Government Sachs’… oops,sorry... I mean Goldman Sachs. He went to a school in the interior of Ekiti.

Ekiti is neither Oxford nor Boston. It’s not on your radar, but it has produced students who have worked at the best institutions in every facet of human endeavour on earth.

Once, there were so many schools with success stories like that all over Nigeria, before the descent from the mid-1980s into our current, failing system.

Even the National Party of Nigeria regime of those days had a certain code of conduct, and kids of the politicians mostly schooled in Nigeria where the standards were then the same as in Western countries.

The issue now is that these other countries have improved their educational systems in leaps and bounds, while we have systematically been going south in all our major institutions, especially in the vital sector of education.

I ask my readers: name one invention that has come out of Nigerian educational institutions in the last quarter of a century that has benefited the whole world?

We know, for example, that Google and Yahoo were grad-school projects.

I am waiting for answers.

Too many PhDs and not enough scientists

Gemma Ware — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 17:39:00 +0100

Research for research’s sake benefits nobody. African farmers should be telling their scientists what problems need solving.  

 
 “What will you do your PhD in?” a Nigerian lecturer in food science asked me over dinner one night this week. “I’ve got no plans to do one,” I said a little sheepishly. He was astounded. “But why?” he said. “Everybody should have a PhD.” 

 

I asked the Nigerian food scientist – who had been chosen as one of 40 young scientists to attend the Global Conference on Agricultural Research for Development (GCARD) this week in Montpellier – how many PhD students he was supervising. None at the moment, he said. There are two students who want to study under him, but he doesn’t have the funding to support them. He needs to apply to a grant scheme (he says there are hundreds listed on the internet), before he is prepared to take them on.

 But the food scientist says he doesn’t have time at the moment to put in a proposal. He’s too busy trying to finish off a couple of research papers: publishing gets you recognised, gets you invited to conferences, and gets you promoted.    

I asked him what it was these young scientists wanted to study for their PhDs. He said it would depend on what funding stream he was applying to. He would tailor his proposal to their criteria.    

Africa needs more scientists. But it is this focus on research for research’s sake that is crippling the standard of teaching at African universities and stalling real advances that can tackle some of the most urgent development challenges.    

My food scientist was doing some excellent work – researching better and more nutritious ways for women to ground cassava into flour for gari for example. But it sounds like his priorities are being set not by the farmers he’s trying to help, but by the cycle of research he’s tied into.    

Yes, there is innovative, development-focused and far-sighted funding out there. The name of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is never far from researchers lips when you ask them what they’re working on.  

 And of course, Africa needs its academics and teachers more than ever. The number of academics who have gone abroad to teach has left big holes, particularly in southern Africa, where PhD and MSc schemes are likely to be run by Kenyans and Ugandans who have moved down to find jobs, leaving gaps in their own countries.

  In southern Africa, where the private sector is more developed, students are moving straight into work rather than carrying on into research. In East Africa, the problems are different – the private sector is not developed enough and courses lag behind in providing the right skills to help develop it.    

But the recurring theme at this first ever GCARD conference – which is aiming to create a framework for agricultural research for development – is that farmers’ needs are not being heard by researchers. The links between the research going on in African laboratories and the farmers who need the disease-tolerant crops they are breeding, are far too sporadic. There is still a real lack of trust and a culture gap that needs urgently addressing.

Surely the aim of agricultural research is to help scientists become better farmers and help farmers become better scientists. More African researchers need to grab hold of that mantra.

Parents: your kids are being cheated by the system

Gemma Ware — Sun, 21 Mar 2010 16:46:00 +0000

The promise of free primary education has been one of the most sweeping changes to Africa’s education policy in the last fifty years. But is it really free? Corruption, mismanagement and teacher absenteeism are rife, and parents continue to pay registration fees. They should be far more incensed.

Few parents can look forward with much glee to an evening spent poring over the accounts of their child’s school at the monthly Parent Teacher Association meeting. Even fewer have the financial expertise to know what fiddled figures look for, or the courage to challenge the headteacher’s excuses for why there are no textbooks. But maybe it’s time Africa’s parents stood up and challenged the endemic corruption across their children’s education system.

An eye-opening study from Transparency International’s Africa Education Watch (AEW) programme has found that 44% of parents still reported paying some kind of school registration fees for their children, despite laws making primary education free. The average fee was $4.16 per child per year in the seven countries surveyed (Ghana, Madagascar, Morocco, Niger, Senegal, Sierra Leone and Uganda) – all of which promise free primary education. Parents are also forking out extra money for textbooks, private tutors and exams.

Laws making primary schooling free have brought some of the most sweeping changes to Africa’s education systems. In 1999, the net primary enrolment ratio in Sub-Saharan Africa was 56% school according to UNESCO. By 2007 the ratio was 73% and there were 12.8m fewer children out of school.

But why are some parents still paying when education should be free?

It’s difficult to tell the difference between extortion and voluntary contributions, says Stephen Stassen, AEW’s senior programme coordinator. In some places, particularly in rural areas, schools receive such sporadic and minimal funding from the local and district authorities, that parents have clubbed together and reinstated registration fees – as a way of simply providing some resources for their children’s classrooms and money to pay teachers.

In other countries such as Morocco, parents are unsure what they should be paying for (particularly in cases where parents are asked to pay for extra-curricula activities at the beginning of the school term).

Governance of school finances is woeful. Bookkeeping was non-existent or deficient in 85% of the schools surveyed by AEW, and financial records unavailable. Inspectors are ludicrously overstretched, sometimes with up to 200 schools on their watch, no budget and no transportation.

But perhaps the AEW’s most worrying finding is that there is just neither enough awareness nor interest among parents to find out more about the governance of their children’s schools.

This is despite an ongoing policy shift in Africa to decentralise education, handing over power to local and district authorities and to communities. But the new crop of School Management Committees (SMC) and Parent Teacher Associations are often seen as opaque, rather than transparent institutions.

Sometimes the most literate members of the community run these committees – perhaps former parents whose children are not at school anymore but who have remained good friends with the teachers. They don’t always have the best interests of the current students at heart.

Doubts also linger on the ability of even the more efficient SMCs to oversee the complex budgetary requirements of a school and help get more money into the classrooms. “Even those SMCs that seem to be meeting more often and being more active, they still are as likely as other schools to face demand for registration fees,”admits Stassen.

Quiet corruption

The findings chime with new research from the World Bank, whose 2010 Africa Development Indicators highlight the ‘quiet corruption’ seeping through daily life on the continent. Research in 2004 found 20% of primary school teachers in rural western Kenya could not be found during school hours. Such teacher absenteeism, low levels of teacher effort and the leakage of resources coalesce to leave a system where children leave school (often earlier than they should), without the skills they need to work as adults.

This corruption is as “equally insidious” as the multi-million-dollar frontpage scandals, says the World Bank. Short term it affects school results: a 2007 study in Zambia found that if a teacher is absent for one day a month, it reduces tests scores in maths and English by 4-8%.

Long term, it destroys parents’ expectations of what school can offer their children. They then decide to keep their children at home to work, rather than spend time in a classroom with no teacher.

In a rebuke to the self-interest of trade unions, the World Bank’s report suggests that ‘teacher power’ – the significant leverage wielded by former teachers and teachers unions in local and national politics – is damaging the chances of improving the quality of education and its governance. The authors point to a policy that proposed the introduction of performance-related contracts for head teachers in Uganda in 2007 that was shot down by the teacher unions.

Parents please stand up

So what’s the answer? The leaks in the system must be plugged, and local authorities made to deliver the money they promise schools on time so that teachers get paid. More training is needed for teachers and SMCs. Better, and more frequent inspections too. And information must be made available for parents on school notice-boards.

Speaking at an event in Paris in March, Shanta Devarajan, chief economist for the World Bank’s Africa region, suggested two different tacks to fight quiet corruption. One would be to pay health workers or teachers only for the services they deliver (per number of children immunised or pass marks achieved). The other is to spend money on campaigns to diffuse information about the ongoing silent corruption.

National-level campaigns to get parents, civil society and local communities motivated and involved in the running of their schools could be politically explosive, but very powerful.

Parents need to be made to realise how they, and their children’s futures, are being cheated by the system.

Disabled children can and should go to school

The Africa Report — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 16:14:00 +0000

With often over 100 children in their classrooms already, teachers in Tanzania can be unwiling to take in students with disabilities or special needs. But they have every right to an education, blogs Tanzanian education coordinator Edward Masangwa

In the developing world, only 2% of children with disabilities ever go to school. Many of these children can and should be in class and are capable of learning and contributing to their communities and the economy. Being fully-integrated into the school environment is very important for the rehabilitation process and for ending discrimination in our society.

I work for one of Tanzania’s largest disability organisations, the Comprehensive Community-Based Rehabilitation programme in Tanzania (CCBRT), which runs a disability hospital and a community programme aiming to provide a better quality of life for adults and children with disabilities. We have few official statistics on disability in Tanzania but the World Health Organisation estimates that 10% of any population has a disability so we’re looking at around four million people with impairments in Tanzania.

There are many factors which prevent children with disabilities from achieving an education in Tanzania. A major barrier is the inaccessibility of the school compounds to children with disabilities. Most schools here in Dar es Salaam are based on sand. Have you ever tried pushing a wheelchair through sand? Schools are often built on plinths to prevent the rain entering the classrooms during the rainy season, but there are no ramps so physically disabled children cannot enter the classrooms.

The doorways are rarely wide enough to accommodate a wheelchair, plus there are barely any toilet facilities in schools accessible to children in wheelchairs. The children with the wheelchairs are the lucky ones; many do not have any kind of mobility device and must rely on their parents to carry them to school and on friends to assist them. There is also a serious shortage of teaching aids and books available for children with disabilities.

Know your child's rights

Attitudes of teachers and parents used to be a major barrier. As part of my job I talk to head teachers around Dar es Salaam to explain that children with disabilities should also be integrated into classes at regular primary schools and that they too have a basic right to an education. In the past, I found that teachers, already overburdened with up to a hundred children in a classroom, were unwilling to accept a child with special needs. Most parents did not even know that their child was entitled to an education and so weren't even seeking schooling for their child.

But over the last few years I have noticed attitudes change for the better and parents become increasingly informed about their child’s right to an education. CCBRT, along with other NGOs, has been raising awareness amongst parents through radio announcements, community meetings and home visits that they must enroll their child in school. Head teachers are becoming increasingly more accepting. Our education programme is now working with 78 primary schools in Dar es Salaam and another 88 in Moshi, supporting 800 children with disabilities in schools.

Poverty is another major obstacle. In Tanzania, households that include a person with a disability consume 60% below average. Approximately half of the families I deal with are also single parent families: it’s mostly mothers bringing up their disabled child alone. The uncomfortable truth is many fathers abandon their wives when they see that their baby has a physical impairment. So while primary education is free, just finding the money for school materials and uniform is difficult for these mothers.

Primary school in Tanzania starts at age seven and finishes at 14, but children with disabilities tend to start later meaning many are aged 18-20 by the time they have finished their primary. And because of the need to learn sign language, children with hearing impairments spend 10 years in primary school compared to seven for able-bodied children.

More vocational training should be offered to disabled students, with the government encouraging their integration into vocational training centres. This would also help friendships to develop and to end discrimination. Many people with disabilities can lead independent lives and should be given the opportunity to contribute to their communities and the economy. CCBRT has recently linked up with an education and recruitment firm in Dar es Salaam called Radar to provide recruitment services specifically for people living with disabilities and HIV and AIDS – it’s the first service of its kind in the country.

Pushing up standards

Teachers' first concern is the lack of funds if they are to include children with special needs. There is much work to be done here but recently there has been encouraging progress.

Last year, CCBRT lobbied the Ministry of Education and Vocational Training over the accessibility of school buildings to adults and children with disabilities. We were then asked to help provide recommendations on updated construction guidelines so that all newly built schools can be made accessible in line with international standards. We are hopeful that all new schools built in Tanzania will now be accessible to people with disabilities.

We have also been liaising with the School WASH (Water, Sanitation and Hygiene) programme so that plans to improve water, sanitation and hygiene in schools also take account of the needs of children with disabilities. These may seem like small advances, but they signal a major step forward in encouraging an enabling learning environment for future generations of Tanzanian children with disabilities.

Edward Masangwa is education coordinator for the Comprehensive Community-Based Rehabilitation programme in Tanzania

A lexicon of abuse

The Africa Report — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 14:06:00 +0000

This disturbing glossary of expressions used by children and teachers to describe abuse and violence has been collated by the NGO Plan International. Read more on sexual exploitation in African schools in an article for the Education Campaign in our December-January issue, out now.

PHRASES TO DESCRIBE SEX BETWEEN TEACHERS AND STUDENTS

My chalk allowance

Guinean teachers use this expression to describe students who they are having sexual relations with.

Bush stipend/bush allowance

In Ghana, a rural teachers’ term for sexual relationships with their students

BF or bordel fatigue

Girls who have had too much sex with their teachers and are too tired in the classroom.

Africell or A Free Cell (named after a mobile phone company)

Girls who go to school without underwear to provoke teachers to have sex with them in exchange for good marks.

Common File

Girls who are having sex with multiple partners at the same time.

Man without zip

A teacher who easily falls in love with school-girls

Play gala

Many boys lining up to have sex with one girl

PHRASES TO DESCRIBE VIOLENCE AND ABUSE AGAINST STUDENTS

Pick pin

Forcing a child to bend down and lean on their fingertips for a long time as a form of punishment

Fire stone

Beating on the fingers as a punishment. Fingers are held together face upwards to receive the stick of the teacher

Kneeling/crawling

When teachers ask children to kneel and crawl in the sand.

Adanko (rabbit)

When children are asked by teachers to hold their ears and jump up and down as a form of punishment

Stomach empty

Children go to school with empty stomach as a form of punishment by their parents/guardians

Prepare teachers for change

The Africa Report — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 10:41:00 +0000

Uganda’s education ministry has reduced the number of subjects being taught, but teachers find it hard to adapt to new courses says Sister Mary Theopista Tinkamnayire, National Trainer in Mathematics in Kampala, Uganda

In Uganda, children start their O-levels in Senior 1, when they are around 13 or 14. There are three types of secondary schools in Uganda, ordinary, private and since 2007, a new set of Universal Secondary Education (USE) double-shift schools, where some children study in the morning and others in the afternoon. We are in an experimental stage and the first of these USE students are now in Senior 3, the year before they sit their Uganda National Examination Board. 

Uganda’s system is based on Britain’s. There used to be 42 subjects, then 28, then 20, and then 18. Now, they have revised it down to 14 for ordinary schools and 10 for USE schools. There were many subjects aimed at each part of the syllabus, such as commerce and computing, but now they are focused on subjects that are useful for students and the needs of the country.

The education ministry said that we had too many subjects and that we needed to narrow them. The idea is to push them together so that we do not have multiples. A revised curriculum came out this year and some subjects were merged into others, such as history and political education. Sometimes, these curriculum changes come in and some teachers are not prepared for them. They need some kind of sensitisation and information to get ready. 

I think the most important thing is to do a baseline survey, to send questionnaires and interview teachers on what they think about the changes. They did this at a few schools for the new curriculum, but we want to see a draft of the curriculum to take to the teachers. We also want teachers to be trained on practical skills so that the theoretical part of the lessons harmonise with the practical.

Testing at the top

The Africa Report — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 10:15:00 +0000

16-year-old Ghanaian student 16-year-old Ghanaian student Kwaw Amihere describes how he got into a prestigious international school in Tema and the exams that now await him

In 2009, the Ghanaian government reversed a decision to extend the period of senior secondary school from four years to three. I was lucky. I left Christ the King International School aged 15, took extra classes and was selected to enter SOS Hermann Gmeiner International College (SOSHGIC) in Tema after a competitive exam and interview process.

It is my first experience of boarding, but the college exudes breathtaking beauty. Every Friday morning, when the sun is just about peeking over the horizon, students gather to have their morning assembly in the magnificent Margaret Nkrumah Hall, built to honour the school’s first headmistress.

SOSHGIC is a college that believes in high standards, and only the best students are selected. The college organises a yearly entrance examination and candidates write papers in three different subject: mathematics, science and English language. Most candidates attend special classes for the exam, as did I. These classes help to acquaint candidates with the technique required to answer SOSHGIC-standard questions, which are a far cry above those asked in Ghanaian public schools.

The extra lessons I took were a huge challenge for me. Not only were they tiring because I had to do them immediately after school hours, but they also stretched until 8.30PM. After a few weeks of extra lessons, the pace took its toll on me. I suffered from fatigue and frequent headaches, but I was never fazed. I knew I would have to dig deep to enter this school. Passing the exam is only the first step and a week later candidates who make the list are notified of the date of their interviews. It is only after this that the final list of students is confirmed.

The interview is what you make it. I felt nervous and tense, and I was at a loss as to what to expect. I just tried to keep my cool. Tradition has it that interviewees should dress formally and most conform to that rule. The senior management team comprised of the headmaster and the two vice headmasters, the senior house tutor and the international baccalaureate (IB) coordinator conducted my interview. After a hearty chat, covering issues from earthquakes to my friendship ties, my interview was over.

SOSHGIC is one of the few schools in Ghana to offer students the opportunity to write the International General Certificate of Secondary Education (IGCSE) exam. This is an internationally recognised examination organised by the University of Cambridge to test students aged between 14 and 16 on a variety of subjects, ranging from mathematics to the arts. As such, students who obtain exceptional grades on the IGCSE exam have an edge in gaining admission to top-flight universities in Ghana and elsewhere. This course lasts two years, in which students are taught using the University of Cambridge’s syllabus. This is unlike the Ghanaian public secondary school system, which lasts four years.

Students study five core subjects: English language, English literature, mathematics, French language and either information technology or computer studies. In addition, the students must choose extra subjects from a list of history, geography, additional mathematics, economics, business studies, biology, chemistry, physics and art and design courses.

The school also offers the IB, which lasts for two years. At the end of this course, students receive diplomas for their work. The IB programme is a very intensive course where students choose a total of six subjects: three higher level subjects and three standard level subjects. In their choice of subjects, students must study science, English, mathematics and a foreign language. Students also receive laptops to help with their work.

Another great thing about IB is that students have the chance to sit for the Scholastic Aptitude Tests (SATs). These tests offer the students the prospect of gaining better credentials, as excellent SAT results interest prestigious universities in the United States and other countries.

The IB is not that tiresome, and it can be whole lot fun as well. Students have the opportunity to visit other schools on exchange programmes, as well as entertain guests from other schools. Sharing cultures and experiences is important here. Above all, it is the school spirit that is really second to none. Our school is one filled with people from different African countries and the rest of the world. These students of different races engage in hearty conversations and get along with each other.

The government should provide 'universal pay-something' education

The Africa Report — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 17:05:00 +0100

In response to our recent article on secondary education in Ghana, Omayma Halabi Ahma, a current student at Ashesi University College in Ghana, says that universal free education is not the best solution.

In Ghana, most private schools provide a much better education than most public schools, and many people would not hesitate to enrol in a private institution. Though the government has good intentions in creating policies concerning public school education, as a former senior secondary school student, I believe those policies are the reason why a public school education is not up to standard.

Although education in the public sector is mentioned as a priority of the government, the funds allocated are inadequate. Teachers are not paid enough for their services and are not provided the educational resources (computers, lab equipment, textbooks, and sometimes even chalk) to do their job effectively. Many teachers do not attend class regularly, as their commitment to work decreases. Just like other individuals in society, teachers have responsibilities in their lives, such as families to support. When they are not well compensated for their work, they will find other means of acquiring income. The time our teachers are spending trying to earn a living is eating into the time they should be in class teaching.

The government says it wants to help society by providing a good education to everyone; they should therefore be willing to spend in order to achieve such a goal. Nothing comes cheap or easy. However, understanding that the government does not have unlimited resources, it is fair to suggest that instead of providing universal free education to the students, the government should provide universal 'pay-something' education.

Currently, students in public primary schools do not pay school fees but rather incur costs for the books used. Many would see this as an advantage, believing that education must be free so as to allow easier access to knowledge, especially in a developing country such as Ghana. I, on the other hand, beg to differ.

Our current public education system is not providing us the skills and knowledge we need to drive our country forward. We need more resources to improve the quality of our education system. Our current system of educational subsidies does not discriminate between rich and poor people. In fact, Ghana’s elite public secondary schools are filled with children from privileged households at the expense of the ordinary Ghanaian. This means that wealthy people, who are able to afford private schools, take advantage of the universal free education, thereby depriving the government of more funds.

One feasible solution would be to ask students to pay fees that correspond to their family’s annual income. People from wealthy families will pay more than people who earn very little. This would provide more resources to schools and allow people to pay for education based on their means. This in turn results in everyone in society having access to better quality education, while providing the government with funds for needed educational facilities.

Concerning the duration of a secondary school education, I believe that the past governments made a huge error in changing from the British 'O-Level' and 'A-Level' seven-year system to that of the six-year system, in which a student does three years of junior secondary school and then three years of senior secondary school.

Having been a student in an institution with a British curriculum till form three and then enrolling in an institution which uses the new six-year system started in 1987, I had a first-hand experience regarding the short-comings of a three-year senior high school education.

A major short-coming is the fact that the three-year duration is too short to allow the syllabus to be completed comfortably. Most often, many of the subjects taken are not completed and as the time to write the Senior Secondary School Certificate Examination - now the West African Senior School Certificate Examination (WASSCE) - draws closer, many topics are skipped and/or rushed through and students are not fully prepared to write the examination. I therefore support the four-year duration of a senior secondary education and believe that the current government's decision to bring back the three-year system will be detrimental to students’ education.

Kenyan higher education is a luxury for the poor, a commodity for the rich

The Africa Report — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 16:47:00 +0100

A system known as 'Module II' aimed at making those students who can, pay for their higher education, is bringing down the integrity of the degrees on offer, writes Moses Karanja, a graduate from the University of Nairobi, Kenya

In an increasingly competitive world in terms of jobs, public appointments and leadership positions, education has continued to gain currency over other factors like family relations, next-of-kin or inheritance. Businesses are going for highly-qualified candidates. A bachelor’s degree is considered a must for managerial positions. In job adverts, a master's degree is always desirable and an added advantage.

Public universities in Kenya can only admit roughly 10,000 students out of over 100,000 successful school-leavers. The Joint Admissions Board, made up of university registrars, has cited limited bed capacity to accommodate students. The huge numbers locked out of public universities are left with the options of joining colleges for diplomas, attending expensive private universities, privately sponsoring their tuition in the public universities or flying out of the country to overseas universities. Still, due to experience and traditions, a public university degree is highly-valued by a wide spectrum of employers.

A new system was introduced in the late 1990s to tackle some of these problems. This was a direct influence of the Structural Adjustment Programs through which the International Monetary Fund pressured the Kenyan government to cut public spending as a pre-condition for aid. Public universities were allowed to admit students who could not otherwise be admitted, on the condition that they sponsor their own studies.

The programme, known as Module II, is widely known as parallel program. For a degree like a bachelor's in economics at the University of Nairobi, a government-sponsored student parts with Ksh120,000 ($1,580) while a parallel student has to cough up Ksh600, 000. Crucially, the grades needed by each group are markedly different. The entry-point for a bachelor's degree in nursing in 2004 was an A- for a government-sponsored student, while a Module II student just needed a C+ and a cheque of Ksh250, 000 for the first year tuition fee.

Such huge costs can only be met by the upper middle class. Even though they did not fair well in the entry exams, they have the money to pay for their studies. On the other hand, the bright students who did not hit the cut-off points but cannot raise the money are locked out. That is why it is very common in Kenya to find a student who scored an impressive B grade but never made it to campus and another who had a C+ graduating with honours! Essentially, the government has taken a back-seat role; it is a question of who can pay for their education.

Government-sponsored students do their classes during the day, but paying students have tutorial hours in the evening and weekends. It is seen as a part-time activity compared to regular students who have classes between 8AM and 5PM. In private, professors criticise the evening classes, claiming there is a lack of seriousness in studies and research, but they are paid more if they have more students in these Module II classes. The reason lecturers continue to teach them without any changes could be a function of their poor pay and a wish to retain these classes for a better deal, going by the principle that the bigger the class, the higher the pay.

At graduation ceremonies, there are several first class honours from Module II, but very few from regular students. Why is it that a regular student, who scored an A- when joining university and attended classes as the main event of his day, scores a 2:2 while a paying Module II student, who scored a C+ and has studied at university on a part-time basis, scores a first? In the end, this does not mean that Module II students do not make good students. Actually some have conducted quality research and deserve their every grade.

University of Nairobi law students went on strike in 2002 protesting over the continued erosion of the integrity of the degrees and claimed there was favouritism of the Module II students. Now, various changes have been made to improve the programme. An effort has been made to mix the student classes to avoid perceptions of double standards. In another twist, the government has begun providing loans to all students, regardless of their module. Regular students repay at a 4% interest while Module II participants repay at 8%. The big question is why does the government not use academic meritocracy to sponsor those poor students who cannot raise the entrance fee?

Higher education in Kenya is for the super bright and the rich. It is clear that the universities can accommodate more students in their classes, going by the huge sizes of Module II classes. The question of student accommodation could be answered with the introduction of private hostels.

Poor Kenyan students are the losers in the whole scenario. The future of higher education seems to rest on the private sector, through private colleges and universities, although their high costs locks out the poor. If the government does not move in fast to intervene and control the strong wave of ‘market-driven grades’, the quality will not only be compromised but more gravely, the gap between the rich and poor will continue to widen. The government should come in and spend more on higher education for the sake of a knowledgeable and peaceful Kenya.

To a virtual degree

The Africa Report — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 15:00:00 +0100

The poor state of facilities at Nigerian universities means many students prefer to take degrees abroad, writes Ossai Okwudilii from Abuja, Nigeria who is studying for an online master's degree in information security and the University of Liverpool in the UK

I work in the information technology unit of a bank in Abuja and chose a 100% online programme because of the flexibility it allows to combine work and study. I have 24/7 access to my class, and there are no visa issues to go abroad to study. The most important advantage is that the University of Liverpool will not write ‘online certificate’ on my degree: the certificate is the same as if I were physically at the university. I am learning alongside students with industry experience based all over the world.

My course gives me the upper hand in job opportunities locally and internationally. It has more advanced teaching methodologies and materials, and zero tolerance for bribery and corruption, such as collecting money for marks. There are no riots, cult activities, strikes or civil unrest. It is a much more conducive learning environment. However, I do face some difficulties accessing my course materials online, mainly due to slow internet access. eLearning courses provide access to education for older and working professionals, but there are difficulties to overcome if online education is to spread further in Africa. Universities need to have a physical office and representative in each African country that will act as online ambassadors – otherwise potential students can see it as a fraudulent racket.

The cost of eLearning courses is also an issue, as students pay either in dollars, pounds or euros, and local currencies are getting weaker on a daily basis due to the global economic meltdown. Some companies do not accept online degrees.

To join join the discussion on eLearning, go to our Education Forum.

Trying to balance access and quality in Ghana

The Africa Report — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 16:59:00 +0100

In Ghana the massive expansion of access to public primary and secondary education has decreased quality and is causing more families to send their children to private schools.

Read the full article, published in our June-July edition, here.

It's fun to teach geniuses

The Africa Report — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 18:25:00 +0100

"It’s incredibly hard to access reading materials at the University of Nairobi", writes Devon Knudsen, a part-time African politics lecturer at the University, "but one of my students came up with a way around the obstacles: one person with a decent internet connection downloads hundreds of relevant electronic journal articles and burns them onto a CD, and then makes copies for all the students in the class at only 15Ksh per CD.

It’s incredibly hard to access reading materials at the University of Nairobi, but one of my students came up with a way around the obstacles: one person with a decent internet connection (me, a part-time African politics lecturer from the US) downloads hundreds of relevant electronic journal articles and burns them onto a CD, and then makes copies for all the students in the class at only 15Ksh per CD.

The university computers can’t handle the internet, but most can manage to open PDF files, and this saves us the cut-throat competition over the one copy of the assigned book in the library. When I was teaching a course in Politics and Government of South Africa, and Mandela’s Long Walk to Freedom was the obvious core text. The University only had one copy and it was in the law library which is a trek to get to. I convinced the librarians to transfer the book over to the main library just for the duration of my course, but in the process of moving it, it was lost. But I digress. The point is, once the students had access to these journal articles, they somehow memorised the content of all of them.

I’m serious. I just finished grading their exams, and their scripts are full of “Kandeh argues this but Mazrui says that” and “Decalo’s argument works better than Huntington’s”, and on and on. Impressive for undergraduates. And the sad or encouraging part, depending on how you look at it, is that I had nothing to do with their meteoric improvements. Just by having access to these journals, my students, without ever complaining, mostly taught themselves.

The other sad or encouraging part lies in what University of Nairobi should be capable of. Originally affiliated with the University of London back in the 1960s, we’ve enjoyed half a century of relative stability to learn from trial and error and fine-tune our procedures.

Compare us now to the National University of Rwanda. An especially bright student of mine squeezed her way onto a student trip to Rwanda two weeks ago and came back raving about the place. A decade and a half after the 1994 genocide, and only ten years past the country’s taxing involvement in the DRC regional war, the state has taken an active role in building an apparently well-equipped, well-run public university.

Jealous critics will say it’s because of the large amounts of donor funding, which obviously can help, but in earlier eras, Kenya, and University of Nairobi specifically, also received substantial aid. I would hazard a guess that it’s not the aid that makes the difference and that University of Nairobi has the potential to build upon its current strengths while reforming its weaker areas to become like our airline ‘the Pride of Africa’.

Collective and individual embracing of responsibility, especially the willingness to say no to potential additional sources of income from activities or policies that are detrimental to our primary duties of teaching, is one of the critical prerequisites. Of course, coming from a relatively comfortable upbringing in the US, I’m not the right person to be making these recommendations. Students are making similar demands, but 18-22-year-old Kenyans are rarely given a voice.

One thing we discovered from reading all those journal articles was that the level of analysis my fourth years threw around in their class discussions (and Kenyan students are experts when it comes to extremely critical thinking) often surpassed what the established academics were writing in Western universities and think-tanks.

By the time they got to their second papers, many of them were writing such impressive stuff that it needed to be published. Despite having a university press, publishing doesn’t happen much at the University of Nairobi, so we came up with Afrika Nipashe, our own electronic academic journal focused on African politics, development and international relations. The title loosely translates to “Let us (Africa) enlighten you” and will consist mostly of articles from African researchers.

Several of my students are preparing to submit for our first issue coming out in July, balancing their research with exams, jobs, coursework, dissertations, and general Nairobi-navigating. It will start off as a modest platform, but hopefully will give these resilient voices a step towards grander projects in the future as well as rewarding encouragement for their determination. The first year’s issues are free. I welcome you to hear what they have to say.

You can read their entries at Afrika Nipashe: www.afrika-nipashe.webs.com

I wish I could make four copies of myself

The Africa Report — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 13:28:00 +0100

In Togo, teachers have been on strike, saying that they support the return of universal free education but that the state’s resources are inadequate.

NARCISSE N’KADJAOU, EARTH AND LIFE SCIENCES TEACHER, LYCÉE DE HÉDRANAZOÉ IN LOMÉ, TOGO

I teach Biology and Earth Science, but there is no laboratory. We have zero, nothing, be it a library or teaching materials. I only have the things that were given to me during my training. I am an auxiliary teacher and we are paid much less than someone who has an official state teaching contract and the title of teacher.

Last week the teachers decided to go on strike, demanding improvements to the quality of life for teachers. They sent a warning to the authorities with a strike of two days, but afterwards, there will be activities organised at the level of the teachers’ unions.

They demand the re-establishment of universal free education, but the state does not have the resources to support such a measure.

Another demand of the strikers is payment arrears, which date back to 1999. It is a question of money, but then it must also be about questions of organisation and working conditions, which need to be improved.

There is no continuous training for teaching staff. The school administrations do nothing to get more training for their teachers.

All that it boils down to is the individual willingness of teachers to undertake their own research on how to improve. I wish I could make four copies of myself to communicate better with the students.

Why investing in girls education makes sound economic sense

The Africa Report — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 13:16:00 +0100

Countries that do not invest enough in educating and empowering girls are undermining their economies’ resilience, productivity and competitive potential says Saadia Zahidi

Throughout history, some of Africa’s most prominent and influential icons have been women – from legendary queens to modern day leaders such as Nobel Laureate Wangari Maathai, Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, President of Liberia and Luisa Dias Diogo, Prime Minister of Mozambique. Across the continent, health and literacy gaps between women and men have been vastly reduced over the past decades. In most African countries, legislation relating to equal pay, inheritance, property rights and violence has dramatically improved. Perhaps most evident is the influx of women into the workforce, resulting in significant gains for the regional economy.

Despite these strides, there remain great disparities between women and men in terms of access to resources, opportunities and dignity. Women are still well below parity with men on labour force participation and on literacy. Girls still lag behind boys in terms of primary, secondary and tertiary level enrolment. Over 60% of all new HIV infections in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) are contracted by girls and young women between the ages of 15 and 24 – in some countries this figure is above 70%.

The burden of maternal mortality in SSA is the greatest in the world – the lifetime risk of dying during pregnancy or childbirth is 1 in 13. Deliberate violence against women, including rape, is reaching epidemic proportions in many conflict areas across the continent. Women still lack access to economic opportunities and are often part of the informal economy.

The World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Report ranks 130 countries according to the size of their gender gaps, based on health, education, economic and political criteria. The report reveals those countries that are role models in dividing resources equitably between women and men, regardless of their overall level of resources. Africa is the second lowest ranking region in the world, ahead only of the Middle East.

On health gaps, Africa is ahead of Asia but falls below all other emerging regions. On education gaps, the region is the lowest ranking region in the world. Women lag far behind men in terms of economic and political participation – although Africa ranks ahead of both Latin America and the Middle East on these categories.

Top five African countries ranked by educational attainment
(ranking out of 130):

1. Lesotho (joint 1st)
2. Botswana (26)
3. South Africa (45)
4.Mauritius (77)
5. Namibia (83)

Bottom five African countries:

1. Chad (130)
2. Benin (128)
3. Mali (127)
4. Ethiopia (126)
5. Burkina Faso (125)

Source: Global Gender Gap Index 2008

Why are these gaps a loss not only for individual girls and women but also a lost opportunity for societies and economies as whole? Women make up one-half of the global human resource pool – countries that do not invest adequately in educating and empowering girls and capitalising on the female portion of the talent pool are undermining their economies’ resilience, productivity and competitive potential.

Girls’ education has significant multiplier effects on fertility rates and child health. Furthermore, for every additional year spent in school in the developing world by a girl, her future income potential can increase by over 10%; this is even more significant considering that women and girls reinvest 90% of their income back into families, compared to under 40% for men. Investing in girls is investing in development. In particular, as resources shrink during this global economic downturn, including funding for aid, investing in girls should be recognised as a high-return investment.

Moreover, the talents of today’s educated and skilled women – and future generations of educated girls – will remain untapped if the region’s businesses do not provide a level playing field and do not effectively capitalise on the female half of the human resource pool. There is compelling evidence that diverse groups and teams are better at problem solving than homogenous ones. This implies that most business environments have thus far not been nurturing the best decisions and will need to make vital readjustments today to begin preparing for the post-crisis labour market.

Saadia Zahidi is head of women leaders and gender parity programme at the World Economic Forum