Experts at the African Development Bank’s (AfDB’s) High-level dialogue in Kenya on Wednesday charged African leaders on the need to rev up efforts to attract private-sector financing to enhance tertiary education and equip the continent’s youth with competitive skills.
The bank has been actively engaged in education and skills development since 1975, committing significant resources to strengthen science, technology, engineering and mathematics infrastructure at tertiary levels and enhance sector policy environments.
The experts, who gave the charge during a panel discussion at the Bank’s 2024 Annual Meetings in Nairobi, stressed the importance of political commitment to guarantee returns on private sector investments in education.
The African Press Organisation (APO) Group, in a news circulated on behalf of the AfDB, quoted the former Tanzanian President and Board Chair of the Global Partnership for Education, Jakaya Kikwete, as saying in his contribution during the panel discussion, that there is a growing need for African governments’ renewed commitment to increase national education expenditure to harness Africa’s demographic potential as the world’s largest future labor force.
He said: “To build a stronger tertiary education pipeline, we need to build strong foundations with early learning, primary and secondary education to provide a talent pool of trained young people for lifelong learning that will make them thrive.”
During the session, the AfDB signed a Joint Declaration of Intent with GIZ to scale up joint commitments to skills development to enhance youth employability in Africa. The collaboration through the Build4Skills initiative will place youth trainees for workplace training within Bank-supported infrastructure projects in agriculture, water or transport sectors for 6 to 12 months.
Build4Skills aligns with the Bank’s Action Plan on Skills for Employability and Productivity in Africa 2021-2025, which aims to support a skilled and productive labor force.
Speaking at the forum, Director-General Africa, German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ), Birgit Pickel, said: “This is the first Declaration of Intent between the two organizations in the field of education, and we highly welcome this collaboration. It’s a sign of our intent to scale up our joint commitment to vocational training and skills development in African countries. In light of the current challenges, this is more urgent than ever.”
In his remarks, the bank’s Vice President for Agriculture, Human, and Social Development, Dr. Beth Dunford, explained that the development finance institution had committed $964 million to tertiary education and skills development over the past decade.
According to him, the “focus has been on strengthening infrastructure for Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) and catalyzing private sector investments in skills development and job creation.”
She highlighted the Bank’s $80 million support for Nigeria’s Ekiti state Special Economic Zone project and a $23 million investment in Rwanda’s Centre of Excellence for Aviation Skills as some of the projects that will help boost economies and create jobs.
Similarly, the African Union (AU) Commissioner for Education, Science, Technology, and Innovation, Prof. Mohamed Belhocine, said increased investment in tertiary education required national, continental, and global action.
He noted that between 2017 and 2019, only seven African countries met the required 6 percent of GDP expenditure on education, with the average standing at around 4 percent of GDP.
In his contribution during the panel discussion, Group CEO of Equity Holdings, Dr. James Mwangi, shared how collaboration with tertiary institutions is boosting human resource development across the continent, adding that group has provided scholarships to at least 23,000 students in partnership with the Kenyan government.
The AfDB organized the event titled ‘Policy Dialogue on Innovative Financing for Tertiary Education in Africa: Revitalizing the Role of the Private Sector’ in collaboration with the Kenyan government, the African Union Commission, and the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH.
Participants at forum explored strategies and best practices to stimulate private-sector financing for tertiary education.
Over 10,000 participants registered for the AfDB’s hybrid 2024 Annual Meetings, with around 5,000 delegates attending physically while several heads of state are expected to feature in a presidential dialogue on Wednesday.
