LET’S NOT WASTE THE DEMOGRAPHIC DIVIDEND
Business schools can show the way for Africa’s educational upliftment
SA business schools can play a leading role in helping Africa’s youth compete effectively in a post-pandemic, global digital economy. With a growing population of 1.4-billion people, 60% of them under the age of 25, Africa is undergoing an unprecedented population explosion. By 2050, the continent will be home to 2.5-billion people. By 2100, Africa’s youth alone will outnumber Europe’s total inhabitants twice over.
This fact will define Africa’s future. While much of the world enters what has been termed a “demographic winter” — when an ageing citizenry meets low birth rates — Africa is approaching a “demographic dividend”, when people of working age outnumber the rest.
Despite the excitement associated with such projections, the challenges of rapid population growth and urbanisation in a low-growth world are daunting. One thing is certain: without access to education and opportunity, Africa will never realise the potential of its dividend.
Higher education, and business education in particular, remains elitist on the continent. Only 10% of its people enrol in university and fewer still attend a business school. For Africa to reach its potential and ensure the continent is not left behind yet again — risking further societal catastrophe as a burgeoning youth with lofty expectations collides with widespread lack of opportunity — access to inclusive, effective higher education is key.
It is trite to point to the scarcity of resources on the continent. Africa is short of financial, infrastructural and academic resources. Technology offers a solution.
The quickest, surest way to change the status quo is online.
It provides an unprecedented opportunity to innovate and improve access to education. This does not mean online teaching will supplant the traditional functions of a university. The two exist best in partnership.
The response to Covid has demonstrated the reach and success of this mode of delivery, even under emergency conditions. The pandemic has forced us to move beyond mere rhetoric about the fourth industrial revolution and universal education.
At the outbreak of the pandemic last year, only 25% of African higher-education institutions moved education online, compared with 85% in Europe. By May 2021, a quarter of higher education institutions across the continent were still not functioning.
African countries can no longer afford the slow response and complacency that characterise their education sector. Real and immediate responses are needed in the form of online solutions. For ill-equipped and under-resourced institutions, options include the use of specialist education providers, who met this challenge elsewhere in the world and can put African institutions online quickly and painlessly.
The only obstacles are mind-set and regulation, which need to modernise to suit a changing world and the associated demands in education.
Few African institutions have the resources to respond to the need for online education. SA business schools are best placed to address this challenge. By so doing, they have an opportunity to grow their market beyond SA’s borders.
Ideally, they can partner with professional online management services companies. The latter’s marketing and design expertise, allied to schools’ academic credibility and contextual knowledge, would build a formidable virtual campus.
This approach has been successful in Latin America, a region with similar developmental challenges. With the influx of international brands entering the African market through their online offerings, the window is narrowing fast.
If SA schools fail to take the opportunity, a foreign school certainly will.
The challenges of unstable and unaffordable internet access, lack of skilled personnel to manage the technological shift, and unreliable electricity supply remain. But these can be overcome through partnerships and shared value models.
Fostering alternative learning environments through accessible, innovative solutions and technological advances is imperative. The future of education in Africa relies on reducing the digitallearning divide and building critical digital and literacy skills. Virtual campuses spanning the continent may just be the answer.