Africa’s year of education

2024 is marked as the African Union (AU)’s first year of education. The timing of this could not have been more ideal. Since the countries of the continent started to gain independence, despite the determination, progress in the education sector has been slow. In order to transform its education system, Africa will require a massive amount of funding. While the corporate sector, multilateral organisations, and donors are willing to assist, the AU must encourage domestic funding to finance the education system. Going forward, spending wisely on this limited budget would also be essential.

In 2015, when the world agreed on an Agenda for Sustainable Development, the UN acknowledged the role of education in catalysing development and achieving sustainable development. Therefore, it is no surprise that the UN has reserved Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 4 entirely to promote education. The motive of this goal is to promote inclusive, equitable, and high-quality education while fostering lifelong learning opportunities for everyone. During the UN Summit in late 2023, global leaders assessed the state of the SDG 4 implementation, particularly in Africa and acknowledged its slow progress and some key areas for improvement.

Indeed, Africa is facing significant challenges in pursuing SDG 4. This prompted the planning of an AU high-level side event in September 2023. During the event in New York, the Specialised Technical Committee on Education, Science, and Technology examined and jointly produced a draft declaration. Several African leaders, UN representatives, and partners attended the event. They stressed the importance of working together to address education sector challenges and dedicated the year 2024 towards making Africa’s education sector more inclusive and resilient. As the year draws a close, it would be interesting to evaluate the progress of education and find the gaps.

Africa has advanced significantly in the last 60 years in education, with more children now completing their schooling. The primary school completion rate in the continent has increased from a marginal 52% to a decent 69% between 2000 and 2022. The percentage of students dropping out of high school also decreased, with 50% of students finishing lower secondary education, up from 35% and upper secondary education, which rose by 23%.

Meanwhile, the number of students enrolled in tertiary education increased—from less than 800,000 in 1970 to more than 17 million. More girls than ever before are enrolled in school. Since the Global Education Summit 2021, 21 African heads of state have signed the Declaration on Education Financing. This calls for significant financial commitments and investments from the African governments. The AU has tried to utilise its year of education to revitalise members’ commitment to enhance domestic resource mobilisation.

Despite these progresses, Africa continues to host the world’s most extensive number of school-age children who do not attend school, and approximately 98 million never attended school. By the time these kids reach ten, over nine out of ten school-age children will be unable to read or comprehend a simple paragraph. The impact of the Covid pandemic was severe for Africa, where millions of children, adolescents, and young people had to miss school. With one in three girls being married before turning 18, Africa is the only place in the world where gender parity in enrollment at any level of the educational system has not been attained, thus creating a severe disadvantage for girls. According to UNESCO data, approximately 118.5 million girls are currently out of school.

The primary source of financing education comes from the national budgets, although these frequently fall short of meeting basic needs, including teacher preparation, pay, supplies, and overhead. Budgets for education have decreased by an average of 14% in nearly half of the low-income countries since 2020. In addition, debt repayment accounted for a large part of public expenditure. Indeed, there was a massive budget cut for the education sector due to the pandemic. However, even before the pandemic, few countries across the continent spent as per international standards.

With the world’s fastest-growing child population, the demand for education in Africa is set to rise. By 2060, more than 750 million children are anticipated to attain school age. The existing system is hardly adequate even for the present. Governments face severe financial strain, which affects the demand for early childhood development interventions, service delivery, and ongoing funding for universal access to high-quality education, particularly for girls. It would be challenging for African leaders to develop good education infrastructure for this large number of students.

African influence is now being seen on a global scale. There is an avalanche on Africa+1 Summits, with more and more new players being added to court Africa. The AU recently became a member of G20. As Africa asserts its position in the international world order, it needs to be strong to become a 21st-century global superpower. Becoming Africa which Africans dream of, would require some determined efforts towards capacity building. Only if this newly-found status is complimented with high-quality education that helps every girl and boy reach their full potential can African countries rise along with the country’s youthful population. A great deal of rethinking and redesigning is the order of the day to make the education system in Africa more innovative, inclusive, relevant, and sensitive to the needs and ambitions of African youth.

When Nelson Mandela stated, “It is not beyond our power to create a world in which all children have access to a good education,” he acknowledged and promoted the fundamental necessity of education. Despite considerable challenges, the resources and technology to update Africa’s educational systems for the 21st century are available. However, everything will depend on political will.

This article is authored by Samir Bhattacharya, associate fellow, Observer Research Foundation, New Delhi.