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26 April 2000

There has long been little doubt about the importance of the role of education to the formation and accumulation of human capital. In a paper presented to the Dakar forum on the future competitiveness of African economies, Dr. Adedeji noted that Adam Smith and Alfred Marshall had already underscored the importance of education as a "fixed capital that benefited not only the person who acquires it, but also the society to which that person belongs". One can and should be critical of this approach to education as "fixed capital" and of the related notion of human capital. We cannot, however, ignore the fact that today more than ever a country's human potential is the decisive and determining factor when compared with its physical potential. Our world is in fact undergoing a fundamental change in which wealth resides less and less in physical materials and more and more in the immaterial assets of human intelligence, knowledge, attitudes, behaviour, adaptability and creativity. With the "dematerialization of production" currently witnessed in the industrialized countries, value added is being sought in intellectual input. Investing in the development of human resources is therefore an economic imperative in the industrialized countries, since, according to the Delors Commission, the "treasure" of the new global economy is hidden in education.

In African countries, the economic value of investment in education is also recognized today. The work presented by Charles Soludo to the abovementioned forum on competitiveness largely confirms this: the competitiveness of African economies will, to a large extent, depend on the increase and improvement of the capacity of Africans to produce quality goods and services. We can go further and advance the idea that, even under a favourable scenario of increased capital flows into Africa, the total productivity of the factors of production, which is the key to competitiveness, will remain illusory without an improvement in the quality of labour. This justifies, in economic terms, the special efforts that must be made to reform educational systems and training policies and programmes so that they would make a more significant contribution to the development of appropriate skills, competencies and attitudes that are conducive to professional ethics, effectiveness and innovation.

The impact on and value of education to society had earlier been clearly established. One may recall, in particular, the studies conducted by UNESCO (Sources, February 1995) which indicated, for example, that the education of girls translated into a decline of between 5 and 10 per cent in infant mortality and into a significant drop in fertility. The statistics also revealed a direct correlation between literacy rates and life expectancy. Such conclusions had led Professor Ki Zerbo to argue that the education of populations was a question of life and death in Africa. "Educate or perish". That, according to the historian from Burkina Faso, is the choice that faces Africa.

It should therefore come as no surprise that African States have subscribed to the objectives and goals set by the international conferences on human development: Education (Jomtien, 1990), Children (New York, 1990), Environment (Rio de Janeiro, 1993), Population (Cairo, 1994), Women (Beijing, 1995), Social Development (Copenhagen, 1995), Food (Rome, 1996). Nor is it surprising that the United Nations Special Initiative on Africa, which covers the period from 1995 to 2004, should attach primary importance to education, since 50 per cent of the (X) billion dollars required for the (X) sectors that have been identified in the Initiative would have to be allocated to education if we are to achieve by 2004 the global objective of education for all, which had been set for the year 2000 by the Jomtien Conference in 1990. We are aware that this objective is far from having been achieved, that illiteracy remains a very serious and worsening problem with overall rates of enrollment in primary schools lower than 50 per cent and ranging between 7 and 20 per cent in secondary schools in many countries. We also know that, without a reversal of the trend observed over the past 20 years towards the stagnation, if not decline in public investment in education, due mainly to the rigor of structural adjustment programmes, Africa will continue to have increasing numbers of illiterate populations at a time when the opposite trend is being observed in the rest of the world. Such a prospect is clearly not acceptable. Africa therefore has no other option but to resolutely mobilize itself to obtain the financial resources needed to develop its human potential. Given the frustrations experienced with the level of Official Development Assistance, new sources of financing must be found, from the internal resources of countries to foreign direct investment (FDI).

Assuming that these resources can be mobilized, three questions will remain. The first concerns the content of education. One notes, in fact (Sources, 1995) that in the developing countries, there is no great difference between the number of years spent in school and the rate of employment. The difficulty of finding paid employment that fulfills the aspirations nourished at school and/or university and the inability to create for oneself a remunerated activity, despite the education received, could suggest that the content and norms of education need to be re-examined. The insularity of the school in relation to the environment in which it is situated, school curricula and time-tables that imitate those of the metropolises of the former colonies, the waste that results from the distribution of resources among several ministerial departments, excessive centralization of the system, including personnel management, constitute in this regard, mistakes that are known and often denounced, but which nevertheless continue to be made without it always being possible to determine which of them is the result of the absence of political will on the part of African leaders, the conservatism of certain socio-professional categories or the limited capacity of national and international institutions to encourage and/or manage innovation.

There is also the question of the technological choices that are made by developing countries. These choices may perhaps permit an increase in production, but if they are not well thought out, may eliminate more jobs than they create. Dr. Kane adverted to this in a paper presented to the forum on competitiveness referred to above. But of equal importance, at least in a basic sense, as the questions related to the content of education or the technological choices of African countries, is the mistaken approach to education as a period in the life of the individual - generally between the ages of 6 and 20-25 years, before the individual embarks upon his life as a worker - when in fact education should be a permanent, cross-cutting dimension of life. How can we ensure that individuals and groups learn to learn throughout their lives? That is the question to be asked as soon as we accept that we do not cease to learn (report of the Faure Commission) and that the capacity to learn constitutes in the final analysis the only lasting competitive advantage of individuals and organizations.

Of course, all of these questions cannot be answered satisfactorily without reference to the major question of our time, which is what are the end goals and content of development. In other words, it is the vision of development that we have which determines our response to these questions. The more explicit and clearly articulated it is, the more it will be forged in a democratic way and the more are our responses likely to be lasting. In this regard, the prospective studies that are underway or already completed in Africa, with the technical support of the UNDP programme African Futures, constitute no doubt one element to be taken into consideration in the search for solutions to the problems of education in Africa.

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