Higher education in Africa needs rebirth

one of which is unusually reduced demand from consumers for goods and services that thankfully seems to have improved a little in recent years.

Many economists around the globe, however still believe that Africa as a whole remains an attractive investment destination for the wheeler-dealers, big-time entrepreneurs, and multinational corporations (MNCs) which are forever prowling the world economic landscape in the single-minded pursuit of promising sectors and companies which can help them to bluntly put increase their wealth.

True, it is an indisputable fact that African countries abundantly endowed with natural resources such as oil for one and which failed to take prudent steps to diversify their economies during the continent’s now waning commodities-fueled economic boom have been especially hit hard by the current depressed global prices of commodities such as platinum and oil, with the sharp fall in prices of the latter arguably taking many by surprise.

Nevertheless, in spite of the doubtlessly present economic pain being suffered by African countries which largely relied on the sale of their mineral wealth and plentiful natural resources to keep their economies healthily ticking over, there are quite a few sectors in various countries on the continent which can potentially offer great returns for foreign investors.

These sectors include the retail industry which already is being covetously eyed by the likes of France’s famous supermarket chain Carrefour and the popular American fast food eatery KFC among others which are already venturing with growing confidence into different areas of the continent on the sound economic premise (as research shows) that the ranks of the middle-class in Africa are expected to keep swelling in the years to come.

In addition, the real estate and agricultural sectors are also regarded as being ripe for investment.

Still, even though some African nations are weathering the current global economic storm better than many developed economies, the continent as a whole faces an extremely serious problem, one which many have quite rightly described as an almighty ticking time-bomb: Youth unemployment.

Indeed, Africa has an increasingly large population of youths, which is often alluded to by economists and experts as the continent’s youth bulge.

Consider the fact that fewer than seven percent of Africans have college degrees in contrast to thirty percent of North Americans and Europeans, even despite the wholly troubling statistic that more than half of the continent’s population is under the age of thirty.

Unquestioningly, the political class in many African nations is really worried about how they will be able to provide not just quality education but crucially jobs to the continent’s teeming masses of young people.

But before we sink our teeth into that aspect of our discussion, we need to focus first of all on the education which is being offered by universities and other higher learning institutions on the continent which apparently is still not equipping graduates with the requisite skills demanded in the labour marketplace.

Indeed, employers in the job market have been complaining for some time that the education which young people are getting at higher learning institutions on the continent increasingly does not relate to the needs of the labour marketplace.

It is a staggering surprise to note that many governments in Africa have yet to take heed of this worrying complaint, which puts into question the kind of education that tertiary institutions on the continent provide.

With the numbers of youths on the continent projected to grow bigger in the coming years, this is a truly concerning obstacle to Africa’s development which urgently requires employers from various walks of life, leaders, and Pan-African governing bodies to sit down together, deliberate on the problem and collectively figure out a way of solving it.

Furthermore, it might also be a good idea if African governments invested more in vocational training institutions as a way of arming jobless graduates and diploma holders with important skills in various trades which can at least help to tide them over and keep going with their self-esteem intact until they later find the occupations for which they were trained to do.

The continent’s youth bulge is without a doubt a massive headache which we shall need to overcome.
So, the sooner we get round to doing so, the better off we all shall be.