It wasn’t just the tropical heat that felt familiar to Diom when he first arrived to start a Business degree at Murdoch University in Dubai International Academic City. Despite being the only student from Cameroon on campus he says he fit right in. “I saw a lot of students from different countries so immediately I felt at home,” he beams. “There are a lot of African students here and I’d never heard of Kazakhstan before, but I got to know it!”
Diom was one of the more than 22,000 students from Cameroon, 9% of total tertiary enrolments, who decided to seek education abroad last year. His experience of pursuing an Australian degree in a foreign country is characteristic of the growing role transnational education (TNE) has in answering demand among African students for a quality education.
Traditionally African students pursue postgraduate degrees in applied sciences, engineering or agriculture fields aiming to find a job in the oil & gas industries
In terms of statistics Cameroon fares better than other African countries. Over 11% of university-aged students are enrolled in tertiary education, higher than the Sub-Saharan average of 6% and public ex- penditure for a tertiary student as a percentage of GDP per capita is just 40% while in Ethiopia, Madagas- car and Guinea it’s over 100%.
According to Unesco, high expenditures per capita of GDP on tertiary education suggests that public resources are highly concentrated on relatively few students and are indicative of the current state of education in most countries on the continent: demand is high but enrol- ments remain low due to poor teaching standards, few resources and little industry to employ graduates.
Mobility Patterns
African students accounted for almost 10% of international students in 2010 worldwide according to Campus France, with the ratio of outbound mobile students to domestic students higher than 25% in most countries. Destinations tend to be dictated by historical and linguistic ties and cross-border convenience; France attracted the largest proportion of students in 2010 – 222,390 followed by South Africa, 114,551. The UK and the USA received around 73,000 students each.
Morocco, Nigeria and Algeria are the largest source countries on the continent for France. Open Doors data from 2013 shows that Nigeria was the top African source country for universities in the USA followed by Kenya, Ghana, South Africa, Ethiopia and Cameroon.
As a study destination, South Africa is the region’s main education hub with international enrollments growing from 12,000 to over 60,000 from 1994 to 2006. According to the Institute of International Education’s Project Atlas, international students made up 8% of all South African tertiary enrolments in 2009.
In that year, the top five countries of origin of foreign students were Zimbabwe, Namibia, Botswana, Lesotho and Swaziland but South Africa has also become the top attractor on the continent for students from the US.
Traditionally African students are employment-motivated, which influences their fields of study – most pursue postgraduate degrees in applied sciences, engineering or agriculture fields aiming to find a job in the oil & gas industries.
Driving Demand
As large proportions of populations near the age of tertiary education in most African countries, governments find themselves with a severe supply shortage. Quite simply, the demand for quality higher education cannot be met by local, publicly funded suppliers.
This creates opportunities for in-country tuition and skills development across all levels for foreign providers. Local governments recognise the need to partner with outside operators and are writing policies to make it easier for private providers to establish operations.
Most recently, the government in Kenya replaced its Commission for Higher Education with the Commission for University Education which will be charged with establishing a level regulatory playing field for public and private providers.
Africa’s middle class is expected to grow from 355 million (34% of Africa’s population) to 1.1 billion (42% of the population) in 2060. Consumer spending by the middle classes reached an estimated US$680 billion in 2008 – or nearly a quarter of Africa’s GDP.
There’s no doubt about it: what is developing about Africa at large is its buying power. Some estimates predict that spending will reach $2.2 trillion by 2030, making Africa accountable for 3% of worldwide consumption.
In many countries across sub-Saharan Africa, there is a demand for ESL courses, especially among students preparing to take an English-taught degree course
Huge investments in oil & gas, mineral extraction and agriculture industries have created the need for skilled wor kers. Vocational training opportunities abound in countries like Nigeria, the Ivory Coast, Uganda, Ghana and Ethiopia where funding comes mostly from governments aiming to build infrastructure or private companies looking to upskill their human capital.
Being able to compete in English – accepted now as the global language of business, commerce and international relations – has increased interest in English language teaching, especially in former Francophone and Lusaphone countries such as Rwanda, Gabon, Angola and Mozambique that are all aiming to transition to English as their official language.
“We’re busy not only managing traditional teaching centres for members of the public, but are working increasingly to support national governments making this shift to English, advising them on how to develop their curriculum, train their teachers and integrate ICT into the curriculum,” comments Tony Reilly, the British Council Country Director in Kenya.
And despite English already being the official language in many countries across sub-Saharan Africa, there is a demand for ESL courses, especially among students preparing to take an English-taught degree course.
Tony Crooks is team leader at the government-funded Australian Awards in Africa, which provide access to postgraduate education and professional training for Africans who return to their country after studying in Australia in support of the Millennium Development Goals. He says that in some cases, award winners coming from English-speaking countries aren’t able to meet IELTS minimum scores.
“You get into some quite heated political and post- colonial issues that go beyond the commercial interests of a testing organisation when you discuss the issue,” he comments. “You get into the question of whose standards of English are better. Many students speak a variety of English that is not the variety that is used in the academic circles of the UK and Australia.”
Assessing the risks
Compared with other emerging regions like Asia or Latin America, Africa presents a new set of challenges for international educators. Many countries lack the basic infrastructure of roads or grid electricity, stable governments, or sufficient economies to support skilled graduates.
When it comes to establishing foreign partnerships, Western universities “predominantly ignore Africa”, says education consultant Stuart Rennie.
“I think there’s a number of reasons for that – it’s a difficult, challenging and tough environment to work in, so a lot of the VCs and the senior management teams in universities shy away from it.”
“It’s a difficult, challenging and tough environment to work in, so a lot of the VCs and the senior management teams in universities shy away from it”
When it comes to recruitment, traditional channels are also not as straightforward in most African countries, with universities relying on direct enrolments or what Rennie describes are “crude agent networks”.
Bukky Awofisayo, an agent at UKEAS in Nigeria, agrees that the market is “saturated”.
“There are so many agents. There are one man, two man agents, there are big ones, there are international agents,” she says. “Everyone claims to be an agent without offering high quality services,” she adds, noting that accreditation schemes including the British Council’s help set legit operations apart.
Similarly, investors find most countries too remote and don’t have the support infrastructures to make investments and manage operations. As one private sector professional observed: “You really have to go deep into a country to decide whether it’s worth investing in”.
While tertiary enrolments have sky-rocketed since the 1970s in Sub-Saharan African countries, overall enrolments among the tertiary-aged population (18-24 years) remains at just 6%. Meanwhile, the tertiary gross enrolment ratio (GER) of the United States and Western Europe is around 72% and for most developing countries between 20-40%.
According to Abhinav Mital, a partner at strategic education advisory firm The Parthenon Group, a low GER implies a lack of skills to support the economy, which impacts productivity and growth.
“National government policy is needed that empowers the people. Until we do that the middle class isn’t going to last for long”
“Governments understand that but they don’t have the money to invest behind public institutions which have traditionally been the main source of education,” he counsels.
Over the past five to six years, private institutions have successfully filled the capacity gap, creating critical links between education and employability.
However, despite the relative progress that is attracting the interest of the most intrepid international educators, Mital says opportunities are still quite limited “because the markets function very differently and student preferences need to be understood more closely”.
He elaborates, “The way students operate and learn, the mode of study, sensitivity to fees, etc, are actually quite different from what you see in China and India; and students tend to be older.”
While growth in the middle class means more families can pay for quality higher education, there are concerns that without strong local industry these middle classes are in danger of disappearing.
“What is needed is an industrial policy that results in the building of economic infrastructure that will result in jobs for the middle class, which will result in revenues trickling down to the poor people,” explains Kelechi Kalu, Associate Provost for Global Strategies and International Affairs Professor at Ohio State University in the USA.
Ohio State sends students to many African countries to help drive research into product development, medicine, agronomy and engineering. Kalu’s position is that national government policy is needed “that empowers the people. Until we do that the middle class isn’t going to last for long”.
Meanwhile for the vocational education sector, overcoming stereotypes is one of the main challenges to reform, according to Michaela Baur, head of the Competence Centre TVET & Labour Market at the German development agency, GIZ.
“The image of [technical and vocational educationand training] TVET in many countries isn’t great,” she says. “There is a demand for qualified workers but most people would like to see their children more on the academic pathway of education. Mismatch unemployment is therefore quite common.”
Meeting the Challenges
The international community has always been involved in Africa but for the first time, Africa is also in a position to contribute to its own development.
The need for a skilled labour force has resulted in a boon for private and public vocational education providers. Both TVET UK and Germany’s GIZ have set up training programmes appealing to both commercial and aid prospects.
“The way we deal with Africa has got to be different from the way we deal with Europe”
Nigeria is set to become the largest market for TVET UK members and the organisation has recently opened its first international office in Lagos to facilitate partnerships with UK private vocational providers and governments or companies in Africa. These tend to be predominantly in oil & gas and agricultural sectors keen to have more qualified workers, says Matthew Anderson, TVET UK Director.
“The way we deal with Africa has got to be different from the way we deal with Europe,” he says. “They’ve skipped a generation of computers, they don’t all necessarily want to be shopkeepers or businessmen. They’ve got to be trained relevant to the industry they’re in.”
GIZ’s work tends to be less commercial, spending €1 million annually on average on each project with funds from the government. More frequently the projects receive funds from the development cooperations of other countries as well.
Additionally, there are projects financed by third parties, including national or provincial governments in Saudi Arabia or India. Typically programmes receive support over three years but Baur says most need to continue for at least 10 years in order to “make a sustainable change”.
“The idea is to improve or enhance the capacities of the responsible people in the countries,” she comments. ”Local ownership of the project is very important.”
In addition to the scholarship and recruitment initiatives the British Council typically carries out, it is also heading up a large-scale, multinational, three-year research project to measure graduate employability in Africa. The project will look at universities in five countries, four in Africa (Ghana, Nigeria, South Africa and Kenya) and also the UK, and analyse how they prepare graduates for work and participation in society.
The project, commissioned by the British Council and led by the Institute of Education at the University of London, is ending its first year.
“What we’ve discovered early on is what we actually don’t know about all the inter-relationships and the triggers for employable or unemployable graduates,” reveals Reilly. “We’re surprised that employability is such a critical issue, and yet there’s so little hard data and rigorous research evidence about it.”
“Technology enables learning to take place outside of traditional educational institutions like never before”
The British Council also promotes social entrepreneurism in countries like Senegal, Sudan and Ghana by collaborating with local businesses to fund “Apprentice” or ”Dragons Den” type television programmes. “They’re promoting the concept of graduate entrepreneurship and the need for higher education institutions to turn out graduates who aren’t job seekers but job creators,” explains Reilly.
Africa online
Not surprisingly, technology’s role in increasing access to education in Africa is elemental as the continent leapfrogs the desktop PC and goes directly to mobile.
”Just as most learning is informal, the most impact is being seen in informal learning,” observes Rebecca Stromeyer, Founder and Director at eLearning Africa. “Technology enables learning to take place outside of traditional educational institutions like never before.”
The lack of infrastructure is generating some creative solutions, such as the White Spaces project, which connects remote universities and schools in Tanzania, Kenya, South Africa and elsewhere to high-speed internet by using unused television frequencies.
And of course, billed as the democratic answer to finally crack barriers to education, Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) are appearing in a number of experiments to increase access to education in Africa.
Giving South Africa a run for its money, Mauritius has launched a national effort to become the education hub of Africa
The World Bank is partnering with Coursera to pilot the Youth Employment Accelerator Program Initiative in Tanzania that will create a MOOC IT curriculum designed in collaboration with local businesses. The idea is to directly prepare students to meet the high demand for IT specialists in the regional economy.
Meanwhile, France’s minister for higher education, Geneviève Fioraso, committed €12 million to develop the MOOC platform France Université Numérique (FUN) in January of this year, underlining that the initiative will target African students specifically.
In order to fill the gap in quality standards in public provision, African students are increasingly turning to forms of transnational education too. According to the UK’s HE International Unit, last year Africa accounted for more than 20% of total TNE provision globally, led by Nigeria, Ghana and Kenya which provided almost a tenth of students worldwide. Most TNE on the continent takes the form of students receiving degrees from out-of-country providers through local partner institutions.
International branch campuses are another form of TNE that has seen success in the region. Monash University was the first university to establish a campus on the continent, operating in Johannesburg since 2001 and catering to a growing number of international students from other African countries as well as locals.
Giving South Africa a run for its money, Mauritius has launched a national effort to become the education hub of Africa. It hosts several education villages and since 2010, the UK’s Middlesex University has been operating a branch campus there. Currently 720 students are enrolled with about half of the population made up of foreign students, mostly from other African countries.
Regional director Raj Gill says despite the university’s success in Dubai – a campus in another area keen to bring in foreign providers – Mauritius required a completely different approach. “When you’re setting up a campus, if you think you’re going to populate it with international students it doesn’t work,” he says.
“In a small place like Mauritius with already two local campuses and a host of other providers, you have to get a very good match of what is required internationally and what is required locally.”
Preparing for a sustainable future
While economies may be unstable across the continent, for private investors with experience in developing markets or focused specifically on Africa, higher education is the number one choice for investments.
While typically five years ago most investors would have looked only at South Africa, shifts in demographics in countries in East Africa, including Kenya and Ethiopia have created a frenzy among investors. Comparisons have been drawn between Africa and South Korea 70 years ago, based on the continent’s challenge to build education systems from the ground up.
“If you really look at a country that did it right it’s Korea,” says Chris Hoehne, Senior Managing Director at private equity firm Sterling Partners.
“Post-Korean War they started out in the same very tough circumstances and they’ve been committed to a variety of practices, one of them being a really strong commitment toward education that elevated their country to a first world economy and I think that we’re starting to see that practice taking root in Africa.”
But Africa’s commitment to education policy is very much dependent on creating sustainable economies. Upskilling human capital will continue to be of great importance to economic growth, but there must be an equal push to promote entrepreneurship within local industry.
Five years ago most investors would have looked only at South Africa, but shifts in demographics in countries in East Africa have created a frenzy among investors
“Young people in Africa and around the world will need jobs, jobs with security and fair pay so that they can build their lives and prepare for the future,” says Reilly at the British Council. “It hinges on this area of skills and employability,” he urges.
”Organisations like ourselves and the donor community need to ensure that with the expansion in access to higher education in Africa, universities aren’t just producing thousands of unemployed or underemployed graduates that will quickly become disaffected.”
Baur of GIZ also highlights the need to keep manufacturing within African borders. “The whole issue is making sure the production line somehow takes place in the developing country,” she says. “If you only focus on the supply side of labour then you have a lot of people who are employable but you don’t have jobs. If you only focus on the demand side of labour you have jobs but no people to fill them. It’s always very important to see the comprehensive picture.”
Countries on the radar for private investors are ones that have already established track records of growth, which is why South Africa will always be the most appealing place for investors – price points are higher and population is strong.
However, Kenya is also attractive because of the newly established regulatory support for private providers. We can also expect to see strong investor activity in West Africa (Morocco, Tunisia, Nigeria) and East Africa (Uganda and Tanzania) in the next two to three years.
Stromeyer expects to see an increasing number of e-learning products specifically for African markets that take into account the needs of users living in very diverse circumstances. ”The sustainability of this growth is dependent upon long-term commitment from governments, which must be prepared to support and enable home-grown enterprise, skills development and innovation,” she comments.
“Young people in Africa will need jobs with security and fair pay so that they can build their lives and prepare for the future”
She adds that security and stability are vital for long-term investments in technology. ”Investors, whether African or from further afield, need to have confidence that their interests won’t be affected by economic or political unrest.”
And as more international education leaders push for equality in student mobility, Kalu at Ohio State University believes that education exchanges with Africa present an unchallenged richness of culture, language and ideas for students from the developed world.
“I don’t think any other continent except maybe south Asia offers students that type of opportunity,” he says. ”If you go to Ghana it’s an entirely different set of culture effects from Nigeria, from South Africa, from Ethiopia.”
In order to ensure that Africa’s vastness and progress continues to be a source for opportunities for both native students and countries committed to working with Africa, partnership is essential, says Kalu. “An outsider can never fix Africa. Africa has to be fixed by Africans working collaboratively with outsiders.”
