By Jonathan Wolff, Guardian News and Media Lt |
The key to improving the African economy is an increase in the number of well-qualified, argumentative young people willing to challenge the status quo. According to Markus Haacker, an international economist working at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and the World Bank, the HIV/Aids epidemic ravaging sub-Saharan Africa appears to have had little, if any, impact on macroeconomic growth in the region. This sounds, at first sight, rather welcome, if very surprising, news. Aids has spread through much of sub-Saharan Africa with immense health and social impact. It affects people of all ages, breaking up families, even destroying entire villages. Apparently it is reducing average life expectancy by up to 20 years in some countries. You would think its economic effects would be equally massive, taking out the workforce on which growth depends. So why not? When Haacker offers an explanation, it turns into one of the more depressing things I have heard lately. Much of southern Africa's economic wealth comes from a small number of high value activities: diamonds, uranium, copper, and so on. Relative to the wealth they create, these industries need relatively few workers, and companies arrange for treatment of workers affected by HIV/Aids. And when workers grow sick or die of Aids, there are plenty of others to take their places. Where there is such a large labour surplus, relative to the needs of major industry, the devastation of the workforce has a surprisingly small effect on economic activity. On the other hand, HIV/Aids goes virtually unchecked in the informal sector of subsistence farming and small trading, where access to treatment remains very limited. But this sector barely counts towards GDP. And this is why Aids has not had the macroeconomic effects that might have been expected. Why, though, is this a matter for Education Guardian? Well, the existence of such uneven development is partly perpetuated by another fact that looks at first sight rather cheery, but disguises a more disturbing reality. The rate of graduate-level unemployment in sub-Saharan African is thought to be very low. Why? Because there are so few graduates in the first place. Just like in the old days of elite university education in the UK, those who acquire a degree have their pick of jobs. In Africa, the jobs are in government or public service, and in NGOs, but also in the management of the extraction industries, and the banks and legal and financial institutions that serve them. And a proportion leave to take their chances elsewhere. Unlike the so-called "Bric" countries Brazil, Russia, India and China which are competing for world economic super-power status, sub-Saharan Africa has no pool of what are politely called "highly trained previously disadvantaged people". There may be the desire for development, for the diversification of the economy, and for the creation of more jobs requiring higher levels of skill and pay. But with low numbers of ambitious graduates, there is little dynamic to drive these changes. It is an odd argument, but there seems to be a case for saying that economic development is facilitated by a growing number of people who are highly educated but equally highly disgruntled. If there are not enough jobs in the civil service or diamond firms, the highly trained will have to look for other ways of using their talents. They may well stir things up, try things out. Perhaps look for new economic opportunities. Without such people, economies are likely to be static and over-dependent on existing ways of doing things, including relying on foreign investment and management. There is, of course, plenty of entrepreneurial activity already in Africa, but much of it is small-scale and informal. Without a pool of graduates who can find their way around the banking and commercial worlds, it is likely to stay that way, perpetuating a two-pace economy with a hole in the middle. And so I'm happy to join the call for massive investment in university education in the developing world. African countries need large groups of articulate, argumentative, well-qualified young people who think that their society has badly let them down. Link here |
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J-L K.
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