Education in Africa

Education in Africa

Africans value education and all governments see improving educational access and quality as essential to national economic and political development. Despite scarce financial resources, many countries have made noteworthy achievements in raising literacy rates in recent decades. Adult literacy rates of 70 percent or more are characteristic of East, Central, and southern Africa, except, notably, in Somalia, Angola, Ethiopia, and Mozambique. Gains have been less impressive in West Africa: Many countries still have literacy rates below 60 percent, and the rates in Niger, Burkina Faso, and Sierra Leone are among the world’s lowest. Cameroon, Ghana, and Nigeria are notable exceptions, with particularly high literacy rates. Libya, Tunisia, and Algeria in North Africa have rates of 90 percent or higher. Females have significantly lower literacy rates than males across most of Africa.

Compulsory school attendance, starting at either 6 or 7 years of age and lasting until the ages of 11 to 16, is now universal in Africa. In many instances, education is free. A major obstacle to universal education is the problem of providing enough teachers, schools, and classroom materials to meet children’s needs, especially in remote rural areas. Huge national debts, the economic austerity measures designed to eliminate them, and military expenditures have all limited the funds that most countries have available to devote to education. Another obstacle to ensuring that all children receive education is the fact that they are still an important part of the workforce across Africa. They provide childcare, work farms and herds, and perform a range of other menial jobs, such as drawing water and collecting firewood. Parents may also lack the financial means to send their children to school, or may be forced to choose which ones can go and which ones cannot. Boys are usually given preference over girls in access to education and they typically stay in school much longer. The rationale for this is based on future income-earning potential: As matters currently stand, males have access to more and better paying jobs than females. Deteriorating economic conditions have actually led the income-earning and literacy gaps between males and females to widen even more.

Universities have space for only a tiny fraction of secondary school graduates and competition to secure admittance is intense. Those who are admitted are not guaranteed a good education, however. University libraries are often poorly stocked and, most critically, lack up-to-date scientific journals. Computers are few and Internet access rare. Most campuses were built in the 1950s and 1960s and have deteriorated, the more so because of limited funds for maintenance. The quality of higher education is also affected by frequent student protests over issues ranging from poor living conditions to politics. On many occasions governments have responded with force and closed campuses for considerable periods of time. While faculties are usually of high quality, with many members having been trained in Europe and North America, the conditions severely constrain what they can do. As a result, many look outside Africa for employment, which contributes significantly to Africa’s brain drain.

 

African Manufacturing

In general, African manufacturing is an underdeveloped activity in Africa. Countries with more developed manufacturing sectors include South Africa, Zimbabwe, Egypt, Algeria, Burkina Faso, and Côte d’Ivoire.

Much of Africa’s modern industrial activity involves the processing of raw materials. Processed foods are largely consumed by Africa’s expanding urban populations, while raw materials such as minerals, petroleum, and timber are processed almost entirely for export.

The bulk of the rest of Africa’s manufacturing output consists of consumer goods such as textiles, footwear, beverages, and soap. The technology used in manufacturing ranges from rudimentary tools used in small-scale cottage industries to large-scale factories. Although its impact on the national economy is frequently underestimated, the cottage industry sector of the economy produces significant amounts of goods both for local consumption and for the tourist trade. Textile and footwear plants, on the other hand, can be sizable, often requiring modern machinery. Heavy industry—such as the production of metal, cars, motorcycles, bicycles, and household appliances—is limited to a few countries, notably South Africa, Egypt, Algeria, Zimbabwe, Nigeria, and Côte d’Ivoire. Almost all consumer goods produced in Africa are sold and used within Africa rather than being exported.

African manufacturing grew in the 1960s and 1970s, but declined in some countries—including Nigeria, Ethiopia, Ghana, Tanzania, Zambia, and Zimbabwe—in the 1980s and 1990s for several reasons. Firstly, many oil-rich countries like Nigeria relied too heavily on extracting and exporting petroleum and neglected their manufacturing sector. Second, war and political unrest disrupted development efforts and caused the role of manufacturing to decline in formerly robust economies like those of Nigeria, Sudan, Ethiopia, and Zimbabwe. The development of African manufacturing has also been hindered by a general lack of investment capital, as well as by misguided economic strategies and corruption. In addition, multinational corporations have tended to discourage African manufacturing, seeking instead to trade their manufactured goods for African raw materials. Africa also has an inherently small market for consumer goods due to its mostly rural, subsistence-oriented population. African manufacturing is still considered under developed because most countries within the region still rely heavily on imported products from the west and even when they produce certain products they may not compete favorably with others due to a number of factors, which could be political or economic.

 

Abidjan

Abidjan city, southeastern Côte d’Ivoire is the de facto capital, chief seaport, and largest city of the country. It is built on several converging peninsulas and islands, connected by bridges, in Ébrié Lagoon. Its modern port was opened in 1950, when the Vridi Canal was cut through a sandbar, linking the sheltered and relatively deep lagoon with the Gulf of Guinea and the Atlantic Ocean. Exports include coffee, cacao, timber, bananas, pineapples, and palm and fish products. Manufacturing, which has greatly expanded since the 1960s, includes vehicle and radio assembly and the production of textiles, metal products, clothing, foodstuffs, plastic, rubber, and petroleum products; tourism is of increasing importance. The city is the hub of the national road system and the terminus of the Abidjan-Niger Railway, which extends north into Burkina Faso.

Abidjan is an attractive, largely modern city with parks and broad boulevards. Districts include Cocody, an elegant residential area to the east of the modern business district, and to the south, on Petit-Bassam Island, Treichville, with its large traditional market. Abidjan is the site of the University of Cocody (founded in 1958) and the University of Abobo-Adjamé (1957), as well as several technical colleges and libraries; the national museum here contains collections of Ivorian art. Banco National Park, a forested area, lies north of the city.

Abidjan was a small village in 1904, when it became the terminus of a railroad to the interior; it had no port facilities, however, and growth was slow. In 1934 it succeeded Bingerville as the capital of the then French colony of Côte d’Ivoire, a position it retained after the colony gained independence in 1960. Although Yamoussoukro was named the administrative capital in 1983, Abidjan still possesses the seat of government and remains the center of the nation’s cultural and commercial life. Abidjan has a population of 3,337,000 (2003 estimate).