Secondary education that prepares youth, and in particular young women, with the skills they need to enter the global workforce will play a critical role in unlocking this potential.
High-quality and relevant secondary education, accessible to all, can play an important role in driving long- term economic growth and reducing poverty in Africa by providing relevant skills to the growing workforce and unlocking productivity gains, particularly in the informal sector.
Various drivers, including digitalization, automation, climate change, and migration are changing the nature of work globally, including in Africa. These disruptive forces will have wide-reaching impacts, with some jobs disappearing, new opportunities emerging, and the nature of many jobs changing. These impacts will be felt across most sectors and industries and will affect both formal and informal businesses.
With high numbers of youth leaving school before completing 12 years of basic education, and low enrollment at the tertiary level, secondary education will increasingly become the main platform from which youth in Sub-Saharan Africa enter the labour force. It is therefore critical for secondary education to provide young people with the skills and competencies they need to secure and create employment opportunities.
Expanding access to high-quality, relevant secondary education in Sub-Saharan Africa is an urgent priority. Due to widespread success with increasing enrollment in and completion of primary school, a growing share of a growing population is transitioning to secondary. Yet, this expansion of the secondary education system will take place in a context where there are still gaps in enrollment and low learning levels at the primary level, a rapidly expanding youth population, and increasingly constrained fiscal space to invest in education.
Section 1.1
Africa is currently the youngest continent in the world and will continue to be so for the next several decades. Africa’s youth population is expected to nearly double to 456 million by 2050, and by 2075, almost half of the world’s young people will be African.[1]
It has been estimated that demographic transition in Africa could “explain 11–15 percent of GDP growth by 2030 and lead 40–60 million people out of poverty.”[1] Policymakers’ ability to harness this potential is, however, far from assured. and the working-age population must be skilled and engaged in productive employment.
Building on the success of African governments in expanding access to primary education, opening doors to quality, relevant education at the secondary level is the next frontier.
Source: UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UN-DESA) Population Division database, accessed August 2019. Note: “Youth” refers to young people aged 15–24
It has been estimated that demographic transition in Africa could “explain 11–15 percent of GDP growth by 2030 and lead 40–60 million people out of poverty.”[1] Policymakers’ ability to harness this potential is, however, far from assured. and the working-age population must be skilled and engaged in productive employment.
Building on the success of African governments in expanding access to primary education, opening doors to quality, relevant education at the secondary level is the next frontier.
The average total number of births per woman in Sub-Saharan Africa is 4.8, compared with a global average of 2.4.[1] The majority of countries in the region have not yet begun a demographic transition and fall under the “elevated” fertility category, meaning they will likely take longer to experience a demographic dividend (see Table 1.1).
Source: Fertility Rates (World Bank Indicator), based on most recent available data from the World Bank database, accessed January 2020. Groups adapted from Eliya Msiyaphazi Zulu, “Africa’s Demographic Transition and Demographic Dividend” (UN Expert Group Meeting on Changing Population Age Structures and Sustainable Development, New York, October 13, 2016), p. 6, adapting from ECA and AUC, “Creating and Capitalizing on the Demographic Dividend for Africa” (Addis Ababa: Economic Commission for Africa and African Union Commission, 2013), p. 18.
There is a strong relationship between education level and declining fertility rates: “women with no education in Sub-Saharan Africa have 6.7 births, on average, while the number falls to 5.8 for those with primary education and to 3.9 for those with secondary education.”[1] Policies that delay childbirth such as voluntary family planning, expanding access to contraception, and limiting early marriage, as well as policies that allow young mothers to re-enter the education system, are critical not only for upholding the rights of young women, but also for spurring demographic transition.
As described below in Box 1.2, there are significant demand-side challenges to generating the jobs necessary to absorb a growing youth population. Skills, however, are an important part of the equation.[2] Investing in broadening access to relevant secondary education will strengthen the region’s pool of human capital, help to lower fertility rates, and improve productivity, all of which increase a country’s chances of benefitting from a demographic dividend.
Now is the time to invest in ensuring that Africa’s growing youth population has the skills needed to engage in productive economic activity — be it in formal employment or through improved livelihoods in the informal sector. Secondary education will have a key role in ensuring that Africa’s youth will be equipped with relevant skills as they make up an increasing share of the global labour force.
Many aspire to develop knowledge economies, based on advances in science and technology, and thus aim to transform their education systems to develop a generation of young people who are equipped to lead this developmental shift. In the medium term, even as the digital sector and high-technology industries grow in Sub-Saharan Africa, there is a gulf between these aspirations, the level of human capital development in the region, and the realities of the job opportunities available to most young people.
While it is important not to see education as a “silver bullet,” nor to reduce the benefits of education to economic outcomes alone, there is an important relationship between education and economic growth. Investment in human capital, of which basic education is a key component, can bring returns at both the societal level in terms of economic growth and at the individual level in terms of higher wages.
While debate continues in the academic literature on the strength and direction of this relationship, recent studies that have used measures of education that reflect cognitive skill acquisition rather than years of schooling have presented new evidence linking education to growth.[1] Looking forward, the World Bank’s Africa Human Capital Plan suggests that “GDP per worker could be 2.5 times higher if everyone reached the benchmark of complete education and full health.”[2] Further, at the individual level, the World Bank finds that each additional year of schooling raises individual earnings by 11 percent for males and 14 percent for females, the highest returns on education of any region globally.[3] Individual benefits from education are also felt in the informal sector. Research from Ghana, Rwanda, and Tanzania shows a strong correlation between educational attainment and earnings in household enterprises.[4]
The simplified model outlined in Figure 1.2 shows the linkages between productivity and economic growth which both increase demand for skills and boost government revenues to be invested back in education. To this end, efforts to ensure the provision of relevant skills for the (still very small) formal sector should be combined with much stronger efforts to expand access to relevant secondary education that can enhance the skills of the majority of young people, whose only option for gaining a livelihood in the foreseeable future will be in the informal sector. These skills are also critical in order to ensure that all young Africans are well equipped to take advantage of new opportunities in an increasingly digital, automated, and connected world.
Source: Authors
Given that a great share of the African economy is comprised of small informal businesses, one of the key ways that improved education will contribute to economic growth is through raising productivity, and thus incomes, in the informal sector. For example, in the agricultural sector, farmers with higher levels of education are shown to be early adopters of improved inputs such as new seeds, tillage practices, fertilizer, and animal breeds, leading to improved output and earnings. Education is particularly important in environments undergoing rapid technological change.[2]
These relationships work in various directions: deeper and denser linkages between the formal and informal sectors are more likely where informal enterprises employ better-educated workers who know how to find and make these important connections. Evidence from West Africa suggests that informal firms perform better if they use inputs purchased from formal firms. They are more likely to do so if the informal firm is larger, has access to external finance, and if its owner is better educated.[3] Increasing the productivity of smallholder farms and household enterprises contributed to structural transformation in Asia and Latin America, and will be important to Africa’s future as well.
In Sub-Saharan Africa, 97 percent of workers with no education are informally employed. In Southern Africa, the level of informal employment is much lower than in the rest of Sub-Saharan Africa, but those with higher levels of education are still far more likely to have formal work than those without. It is important to note that this observed correlation does not imply that education is the only driver of access to formal work, or that it inevitably leads to formalization.
Source: Edward K. Brown and Helen Slater, “The Future of Work in Africa: Implications for Secondary Education and TVET Systems, Secondary Education in Africa Background Report” (Toronto: Mastercard Foundation, December 2018), p. 10, drawing on data from the International Labour Office Statistics (ILOSTAT) database (2017), reformatted by authors.
Capital investment, governance, strength of institutions, infrastructure, and technological advancement, among others, all influence economic growth. At present, several other external factors, including high levels of external debt in Sub-Saharan Africa, global financial risks, and changing trade patterns could also impact growth in Africa over the medium term. While it is clear that education alone does not guarantee growth, developing human capital is a critical element of both promoting long-run growth and ensuring that it is more inclusive.
This is true not only for individuals, but also for economies, and it means that there is a high societal cost to not prioritizing skills development. Investing in improved access and learning outcomes for all youth, including the most marginalized, is critical for promoting greater equity in skills, opportunities, and, ultimately, prosperity.
Africa’s youth employment landscape
As noted in Section 1.1.1., the region has the world’s youngest and fastest-growing population. Unlike the rest of the world, Africa will keep getting younger as the century advances.
The IMF estimates that approximately 20 million jobs need to be created per year over the next two decades to meet demand. In the East African Community, an estimated 2.6 million jobs must be created each year between 2015 and 2030; that means that 7,000 jobs must be created every day across the region simply to absorb the growing population.[2] In Rwanda, there are more youth turning 18 every two years (approximately 250,000 youth per year) than there are formal sector jobs in the entire economy.[3] To employ the growing youth cohort, African economies will have to rapidly generate high-productivity jobs.
Employment growth since 2000 has remained low, around three percent per annum (see Table 1.2), despite relatively strong economic growth. The African Development Bank (AfDB) estimates that the regional employment elasticity of GDP — a measure of how responsive growth in employment is to economic growth — is 0.41. This means that a one-percentage-point increase in economic growth will only translate into a 0.41-percentage-point increase in employment growth. As shown in Figure 1.4, with present labour force growth rates, the AfDB estimates that an average GDP growth rate of 6.8 percent per annum would be needed simply to stabilize the current unemployment rate in Africa, let alone reduce it.[4] It should be noted that the relationship between employment growth and GDP growth differs significantly across the African region and depends on the unique drivers of growth in a given country. For example, in countries where economic growth is driven by a capital-intensive resource sector, such as in Equatorial Guinea or Angola, employment is largely unresponsive to growth.[5] To address the employment challenge, African economies must either achieve significantly higher growth rates or increase the labour intensity of that growth.
Source: AFDB, “African Economic Outlook 2019” (Abidjan: African Development Bank Group, 2019), p. 4, reformatted by authors.
In 2018, the unemployment rate in Sub-Saharan Africa was six percent for the population as a whole,[1] and 13 percent for the youth population (ages 15–24).[2] While these figures are slightly above global averages, the unemployment rate does not adequately capture the realities of African labour markets that are characterized by significant underemployment, vulnerability, and informality. Unemployment is held relatively low as many people are left with little option but to accept work in challenging conditions, given the absence of strong social safety nets.
The underemployment rate — taking account of people working fewer hours than desired — is approximately double the more narrowly defined unemployment rate.[1] The share of the population in vulnerable employment — those who are self-employed or are contributing family workers, often associated with informal household enterprises or smallholder agriculture — also remains stubbornly high. Vulnerable employment has hardly changed since 2000, and still accounts for nearly 75 percent of the Sub-Saharan African labour force (see Table 1.2). Finally, while working poverty — those earning below the international poverty line of $1.90 per day — has decreased, it still represents over one-third of the population. Precarious working conditions often disproportionately affect women. As shown above in Table 1.2, the rate of vulnerable employment for women is nearly 15 percentage points higher than for men.
Approximately 40 percent of jobs in Africa are in “household enterprises” — unincorporated, informal, low-productivity businesses providing self-employment or family employment in farming or urban trading activities.[2] In 2018, household enterprises and agriculture comprised 85 percent of employment in low- and lower-middle-income countries in Sub-Saharan Africa.[3] It has been estimated that 75 percent of the 125 million new work-seekers coming into the Sub-Saharan African labour market between 2010 and 2020 would be in the informal sector — split roughly equally between agriculture and household enterprises. The size of the youth bulge in Africa combined with the current structure of the economy mean that the majority of this generation’s workers are likely to remain in the informal sector for many years to come.[4]
As average incomes rise, employment shifts toward services — both trade and commercial services (retail) and public and social services. Yet even in higher-income countries in Africa, agriculture still currently accounts for nearly a quarter of employment. Across all income levels, manufacturing constitutes a very small portion of employment. These trends are projected to continue to 2030, assuming recent growth patterns persist.
Source: Edward K. Brown and Helen Slater, “The Future of Work in Africa: Implications for Secondary Education and TVET Systems, Secondary Education in Africa Background Report” (Toronto: Mastercard Foundation, December 2018), p. 27, drawing on ILOSTAT (November 2017) modelled estimates and projections.
In 2015, agriculture was estimated to employ approximately 205 million people in Sub-Saharan Africa, including both smallholder commercial and subsistence producers.[1] The region has significant comparative advantages in this area, particularly if it is able to capitalize on upstream value addition opportunities in food processing and distribution. The World Bank projects the value of the region’s food and beverage markets will reach US$1 trillion by 2030, up from US$313 billion in 2010.[2]
Services employed an estimated 111 million people across Sub-Saharan Africa in 2015, a vast majority of whom worked in household enterprises.[3] Demand for services is growing with rising incomes and urbanization. Areas that currently make up a small share of employment but are growing quickly include “industries without smokestacks” — ICT-based services such as business process outsourcing — as well as transport and tourism. Creative industries may also have potential for growth in Africa.[4] In Nigeria, for instance, the movie industry directly employs 300,000 people and indirectly employs one million more through the value chain of distribution and support services.[5]
The trends of digitalization described above present many opportunities for progressive formalization of enterprises and making their markets more dynamic, such as marketing through social media, improving information flows, easing transport of goods and people, and unlocking access to financial services. Key to harnessing these benefits, however, will be a labour pool with strong foundational, digital, and 21st-century skills (see key skills in Chapter Two). Technical and vocational skills in each of these sectors will also be critical.
The nature of work is changing globally, including in Africa
These forces will have wide-reaching impacts on labour markets in Africa, with some jobs disappearing, new opportunities arising, and the task-content of many jobs changing. Increasing uncertainty and the pace of change will be felt across most sectors and industries and, importantly, will affect those working in both the formal and informal sectors.
The long-run effects of digitalization and automation are very difficult to predict with any precision, whether on a specific industry or on a specific place, yet there is reason for optimism. Early estimates of very high automation-induced job losses[1] have been heavily moderated by later studies, which make the crucial distinction between tasks, jobs, and occupations.[2] Automation will instead have far greater impacts on how work is carried out.[3]
Thus, some job-loss estimates have been revised downward: early predictions of 85 percent of jobs lost in Ethiopia have given way to estimates of five percent, and the same order of magnitude is expected elsewhere — five percent in Kenya, eight percent in Nigeria, and 13 percent in South Africa.[5] The estimates of job losses provided above do not account for the opportunities created by technological change and other forces, such as climate change and global trade opportunities. The emergence of new tasks and processes is likely to also lead to new occupations as well an increased need to work alongside and manage technology.
Digitalization and automation have the potential to exacerbate inequality, further deepening the “digital divide,” which is geographic, class-based, and gendered. Those who are able to utilize digital technology to enhance their productivity are likely to benefit through greater employability and higher wages. On the other hand, those who lack foundational skills that facilitate lifelong learning, and key skills like digital literacy, are more likely to be left behind (see Chapter Two for descriptions of skills).[6] These realities underscore the imperative of delivering relevant skills at scale to ensure that young people in Africa are ready to harness the potential of technological change and thereby boost their productivity.
Secondary education will increasingly become a key platform for work
with enrollment rising from a total of 60 million youth in lower and upper secondary in 2015 to an estimated 106 million enrolled by 2030 if current trends persist.[1] This increase in demand is driven in part by the remarkable strides African governments have made in expanding access to and completion of primary education and in part by the growing youth demographic in Africa.
Of the 98 percent of young people who enroll at the primary level in Sub-Saharan Africa, only nine percent make it to tertiary education and only six percent graduate.[2] In North Africa, while the gross enrollment rate at the tertiary level is higher, at 34 percent, over two-thirds of the population still transition into work without a tertiary education.[3] Figure 1.7 shows current enrollment rates compared to completion rates at each level of education, providing an estimate of the share of the population transitioning into the labour force from that level. At present, 42 percent of young people in Sub-Saharan Africa are transitioning into the world of work from the secondary education system, many without having completed the level. It is expected that this share will grow as governments expand secondary education to meet increasing demand.
Source: Gross Enrollment Ratios and Completion Rates, Sub-Saharan Africa (SDG Region) based on most recent available data (2017) from the UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UNESCO-UIS) database, accessed August 2019.
While preparing students for tertiary education remains critical, the majority of young people will seek preparation to enter the workforce through expanding secondary education systems. As access to secondary grows, this level of education provides an opportunity for governments to deliver a broad range of work-relevant skills at scale.
Until now, secondary education in Sub-Saharan Africa has served primarily as a stepping stone to tertiary education. Access has historically been limited to a privileged few, with high-stakes examinations serving as a winnowing device that limits progression through the education system for many young people. Curricula and pedagogical approaches have historically been highly academic and theoretical in nature, often not relevant to context or reflective of indigenous knowledge, and delivered primarily with the intent to prepare youth for further studies. Overly theoretical curricula with a limited focus on relevant skills can contribute to disengagement and dropout when students cannot obtain knowledge and competencies relevant to their contexts.[3]
The impact of this legacy is evident in the language of instruction and the prevalence of selective boarding schools at the secondary education level. Boarding schools have some advantages in terms of improving access for those in remote areas by removing the distance barrier, and for girls who are disproportionally affected by distance to school facilities. They are, however, very resource-intensive, contributing to the high unit cost of delivering secondary education, and diverting resources away from broader and more equitable expansion of access.[4] While access is expanding, many countries in Sub-Saharan Africa have yet to make the transition from an elitist model that promotes a select few, to a mass system that extends a 12-year basic education cycle to the majority.
It is at this formative level that there is great potential to help build the competencies and attitudes needed for a skilled, effective, and adaptable workforce. Many African governments have made progress on implementing curriculum reforms at the secondary level. Greater focus is needed, however, on updating both what is taught (see Chapter Two) and how it is taught (see Chapter Three) to ensure that secondary education is fit for purpose and able to provide skills relevant to the future of work to a much broader group of young people.
As acknowledged under the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, Article 28, every child has a right to access secondary education.[5] In addition to its intrinsic value, secondary education has wide-ranging benefits for individual and societal development, from increasing resiliency to climate change and natural disaster[6] to promoting engaged citizenry.[7] Secondary education for girls is associated with lower fertility rates, greater participation in the labour force, and higher earnings. Girls’ education also has positive impacts on the future health and education levels of their children
Expanding access to high-quality, relevant secondary education in Africa is an urgent and unprecedented challenge
Three factors make the challenge of expanding secondary education in Sub-Saharan Africa unprecedented. First, demand for this level of education is expanding rapidly as a growing share of a growing population transitions into lower secondary education. At the same time, there is “unfinished business” at the primary level, with persistent inequities in access and low levels of learning. Finally, factors that limit economic growth are likely to constrain domestic resources for investment in education.
As noted above, demand for secondary education in Sub-Saharan Africa will nearly double by 2030, with enrollment rising to 106 million in 2030, if current trends persist.[1] No other region has seen such a rapid increase in demand for secondary education.
Under the Education for All Framework and the Millennium Development Goals, gross enrollment rates for primary education have increased to nearly 100 per cent in the region. In Sub-Saharan Africa, completion and transition rates trail gross enrollment, and, while increasing, rates of progress have slowed in recent years.
The region is set to increase its share of the global youth population from 15 percent to 26 percent between 2015 and 2030, which implies a projected one-third increase in the population of school-aged children during this period, while the size of this population in all other developing regions will see a decrease.[2]
According to one estimate, just one in three adolescents in Sub-Saharan Africa who qualify for secondary school can currently be accommodated due to limited places. This is particularly the case for youth living in rural areas, where secondary school facilities are scarcer.[3]
Despite improvements in primary completion rates for both boys and girls, the overall primary completion rate for Sub-Saharan Africa in 2018 was 68.8 percent.[1] There is a significant gap between primary school enrollment and completion. Further, there are significant inequities in access and completion across gender, ethnic and linguistic backgrounds, race, geographic location, wealth, and disability. These disparities lead to an unequal starting point for young people’s transition into secondary education, and eventually into work.
Analysis by the Education Commission finds that if current trends continue, in low-income countries — many of which are in Sub-Saharan Africa — just three out of 10 school-age children will be on track to achieve primary-education-level skills.[2] This limits opportunities for primary school leavers and means that youth who enter secondary education are often not equipped with the basic literacy and math skills needed to engage with more sophisticated curricula in lower secondary education. This poor performance in learning key foundational skills highlights the need to continue investing in increasing the quality of primary education in addition to working toward greater equity in access.