Demographic transition may be the biggest single opportunity for the
economies of sub-Saharan Africa, but countries will only be able to enjoy
the dividends if they make sufficient investment in education.
The region’s population is poised to double to 2 billion by 2050. As the
Chart of the Week shows, that expansion will be led by growth in the working-age population of
those ages 15 to 64 that will outpace other age groups and drive almost all
the increase.
Sub-Saharan Africa has made notable progress in expanding access to schools
in recent decades, but outcomes in the region still trail those in other
emerging market and developing economies, as we explore in our latest
Regional Economic Outlook.
Nearly three in 10 school-age children do not attend school. For primary
school students, the completion rate is around 65 percent, compared with a
world average of 87 percent. And the literacy rate for those ages 15 to 24
is only 75 percent, below the nearly 90 percent rate in other emerging
market and developing economies. On top of this, pandemic-related school
closures led to learning losses that in some cases reversed years of
progress.
One reason for these shortfalls is that government spending on education in
sub-Saharan Africa falls short of international benchmarks in several
countries. The median education budget was equal to about 3.5 percent of
gross domestic product in 2020, which is below the international recommendation of at least 4 percent of GDP. But recent IMF analysis reveals that
achieving the key Sustainable Development Goal of universal primary and
secondary school enrollment by 2030 may require doubling education
expenditures as a share of GDP, including from both public and private
funding sources.
Greater spending to improve access is important, but equally important is
the effort to ensure that funds are efficiently used. Indeed, for the median
country in sub-Saharan Africa, only 15 percent of students in primary and
secondary school achieve more than the minimum learning outcome, while
teacher training rates have fallen steadily for two decades.
Investment in education provides clear long-term economic gains that more
than justify the cost. Greater government spending on education offers
economic benefits such as higher productivity and foreign direct investment,
as shown in the latest
Fiscal Monitor. Governments in sub-Saharan Africa should protect education budgets
amid tighter fiscal constraints and the
ongoing funding squeeze, and implement best practices in public financial management on raising domestic revenue and ensuring that funds are well-spent.
For their part, donors and international organizations should maintain or
expand education funding support across the region. This will ensure the
supply of a productive labor force that will be needed more and more
urgently by a rapidly aging world, and help the region become one of the
world’s most dynamic sources of new demand for consumption and investment.
More broadly, it is critical to better
connect the region’s abundant human resources with the abundant capital in
advanced economies and major emerging markets. With the right kind of
policies—especially in education—we could see sub-Saharan Africa attracting
long-term flows of investment, technology, and know-how. And, given rapidly
evolving technology and the landscape for jobs, this could unlock the full
potential of the region’s young people, better equipping them for the
future.
—This blog is based on the April 2024 Regional Economic Outlook for sub-Saharan Africa. For more on the region’s demographic
transformation, see
African
Century
in the September 2023 issue of Finance & Development magazine.
Listen to our podcast for more from the authors of the regional outlook.