Knowledge empowers Africa: The benefits of increased investment in education
In this Policy Brief, a team of researchers formulate two scenarios about education.
In African Futures Policy Brief Number 2, a team of researchers formulate two scenarios about education. Using historic data, the researchers identify the African countries that have made the most dramatic improvements in primary school completion and secondary school enrolment over the last 20 years. The researchers formulate a positive scenario by applying these aggressive, yet plausible, development rates to all countries across the continent. The researchers compare this positive scenario with a base case scenario from the International Futures software. If education enrolment and completion rates of all African nations advanced as rapidly as those from the best-practice countries in Africa, then the continent would:
- Effectively meet the goal of universal primary education by 2030 and universal basic education by 2035
- Achieve 85 per cent upper-secondary enrolment by 2050
- Reduce by 2050 the number of malnourished children by 3,5 million, the number of people living on less than US$ 1,25 per day by 60 million and the chance of state failure by nearly 8 per cent
- Add US$ 2,5 trillion to Africa’s gross domestic product (GDP) through 2050, which is more than five times the cumulative increase in overall spending on education through that year.
About the African Futures project:
The African Futures Project is a collaboration between the Institute for Security Studies and the Frederick S. Pardee Center for International Futures (www.ifs.du.edu) at the Josef Korbel School of International Studies, University of Denver. These organizations leverage each others’ expertise to provide forward-looking, policy-relevant material that frames uncertainty around human development in Africa.
Authors: Keith Gehring, Mohammod T Irfan, Patrick McLennan, Jonathan D Moyer, Hopolang Selebalo and Erin Torkelson
Series editors: Jonathan D Moyer and Erin Torkelson
