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Higher
Education and Economic Development in Africa
David
Bloom, David Canning, and Kevin Chan1,
Harvard University
September 20, 2005
http://www.eldis.org/cf/search/disp/DocDisplay.cfm?Doc=DOC22156&Resource=f1educ
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Executive
summary
For
several decades, African countries and the donor institutions they
work with have placed great emphasis on primary and, more recently,
secondary education. But they have neglected tertiary education
as an added means to improve economic growth and mitigate poverty.
This paper
challenges the long-held belief in the international development
community that tertiary education has little role in promoting economic
growth. It reviews evidence about the impact that tertiary education
can have on economic growth and poverty reduction, with a focus
on the countries of Sub-Saharan Africa. Enrollment rates for higher
education in Sub-Saharan Africa are by far the lowest in the world.
Currently, the gross enrollment ratio in the region stands at only
5 per cent.2
Because of a longstanding
belief that primary and secondary schooling are more important than
tertiary education for economic development, the international development
community has encouraged African governments’ relative neglect of
higher education. For example, from 1985 to 1989, 17 per cent of the
World Bank’s worldwide education-sector spending was on higher education.
But from 1995 to 1999, the proportion allotted to higher education
declined to just 7 per cent. Higher education in Africa has suffered
from such reductions in spending. Many African countries struggle
to maintain even low enrollment levels, and the academic research
output in the region is among the world’s lowest. Recent evidence
suggests, however, that higher education can produce both public and
private benefits. The private benefits for individuals are well established,
and include better employment prospects, higher salaries, and a greater
ability to save and invest. These benefits may result in better health
and improved quality of life.
Public channels,
though less well studied, also exist. One possible channel through
which higher education can enhance economic development is through
technological catch-up. In a knowledge economy, tertiary education
can help economies gain ground on more technologically advanced
societies, as graduates are likely to be more aware of and better
able to use new technologies.
Our analysis supports
the idea that expanding tertiary education may promote faster technological
catch-up and improve a country’s ability to maximize its economic
output. Sub-Saharan Africa’s current production level is about 23
per cent below its production possibility frontier. We conclude that,
given this shortfall, increasing the stock of tertiary education by
one year could maximize the rate of technological catch-up at a rate
of 0.63 percentage points a year, or 3.2 percentage points over five
years.
This finding
challenges the belief that tertiary education has little role in
promoting economic growth. Tertiary education may improve technological
catch-up and, in doing so, maximize Africa’s potential to achieve
its greatest possible economic growth given current constraints.
Investing in tertiary education in Africa may accelerate technological
diffusion, which would decrease knowledge gaps and help reduce poverty
in the region.
In recent years,
organizations such as the World Bank and major donor governments
have conceded that tertiary schooling may have a positive impact
on economic development. There are signs of progress for higher
education in Sub-Saharan Africa, and some African countries have
put in place innovative policies to strengthen tertiary education
systems. But this progress is limited in comparison with the progress
of other world regions. This may result from insufficient understanding
of the positive effects that higher education can have on economic
development. The findings of this paper suggest that more investment
in higher education may be justified, while more research into the
role of higher education in development is certainly warranted.
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1. The authors
thank Helen Curry, Om Lala, Larry Rosenberg, and Mark Weston for
their assistance on this paper, and are grateful for comments by
Dr. Happy Kufigwa Siphambe. Special thanks goes to Peter Materu
and William Saint for general guidance and specific comments and
to seminar participants at the World Bank. This research was commissioned
by the World Bank (AFTHD). The findings, interpretations and conclusions
expressed here are those of the authors alone, and do not necessarily
reflect the views of the Board of Executive Directors of the World
Bank or of the governments they represent.
2. Based on
authors' calculations derived from data available online from UNESCO
(www.uis.unesco.org).
Please credit www.kubatana.net if you make use of material from this website.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License unless stated otherwise.
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