Search

This study investigates the role of education in modulating the effect of ICT on governance in 53 African countries between 2002 and 2020. The Two-Step System Generalized Method of Moment (GMM) strategy is adopted to address the potential endogeneity problem. Governance is computed as a composite index that encompasses the six indicators of the Worldwide Governance Indicators (Control of corruption, rule of law, political stability, regulatory quality, government effectiveness, and voice and accountability). ICT is measured by the number of individuals using the internet, mobile cellular subscribers and fixed broadband subscription. The findings of the study reveal that the quality of governance in Africa is enhanced by growth in ICT. The findings further indicate that the interaction between ICT and education procure positive net effects on governance. In addition, we observed that ICT still enhances the quality of governance in African countries that have adopted the French civil law and the British common law system. The study suggests the design of policies for enhancing e-governance and ICT in African institutions, and are recommended to be used as part of the school curriculum for quality management.

Social protection interventions have been used as a poverty reduction strategy in many countries. Free Basic Education is one of the social protection interventions implemented in most developing countries. This review assessed the outcome of the implementation of Free Basic Education in Africa, using Ghana, Uganda, Kenya, and Malawi as a test case. Thirty-Seven (37) published documents were used for the study. The study is underpinned by Bagozzi's Goal Theory and Conceptualized with Knowledge Gaps and Knowledge Management Strategies. The study noted that, the Free Basic Education Policy has increased primary school net enrolment rates in these countries holding all other confounders constant. The study also revealed that, the implementation of the Free Basic Education Policy did not reduce educational expenditure as expected as school authorities continue to levy pupils. The objective of removing financial barriers was therefore not met, and the quality of teaching and learning delivery in most schools has fallen due to high pupils-teacher ratio and other implementation challenges. Based upon these findings, the study concluded that, there is the need for constant stakeholder interaction, efficient financial practices, fiscal space creation, provision of more educational infrastructure, recruitment of additional teachers, measures to ensure quality of teaching and learning delivery and effective monitoring of social protection intervention programmes in Africa.

Background: More than half of the children in the world experience some form of interpersonal violence every year. As compared with high-income countries, policy responses in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) are limited due to resource constraints and paucity of evidence for effective interventions to reduce violence against children in their own contexts, amongst other factors. Objectives: The aim of this evidence and gap map (EGM) is to provide an overview of the existing evidence available and to identify gaps in the evidence base on the effectiveness of interventions to reduce violence against children in LMICs. This report covers evidence published in English; a follow-up study is under preparation focusing on evidence in five additional languages--Arabic, Chinese, French, Portuguese and Spanish. Methods: The intervention-outcome framework for this EGM is based on INSPIRE--Seven Strategies for Ending Violence against Children, published by WHO and other partners in 2016. The seven strategies include implementation and enforcement of laws; norms and values, safe environment; parent-child and caregiver support; income and economic strengthening; response and support services; education and life skills. The search included both academic and grey literature available online. We included impact evaluations and systematic reviews that assessed the effectiveness of interventions to reduce interpersonal violence against children (0-18 years) in LMICs (World Bank, 2018b). Interventions targeting subpopulation of parents, teachers and caregivers of 0-18 years' age group were also included. A critical appraisal of all included studies was carried out using standardised tools. Results: The map includes 152 studies published in English of which 55 are systematic reviews and 97 are impact evaluations. Most studies in the map are from Sub-Saharan Africa. Education and life skills are the most widely populated intervention area of the map followed by income and economic strengthening interventions. Very few studies measure impact on economic and social outcomes, and few conduct cost-analysis. Conclusion: More studies focusing on low-income and fragile and conflict-affected settings (FCS) and studying and reporting on cost-analysis are required to address gaps in the evidence. Most interventions covered in the literature focused on addressing a wide range of forms of violence and harm, which limited understanding of how and for whom the interventions work in a given context, for specific forms of violence. More impact evaluation studies are required that assess specific forms of violence, gendered effects of interventions and on diverse social groups in a given context, utilising mixed methods.

In the mid-2000s, large numbers of refugees from North Africa and the Middle East sought to reach Europe to escape persecution, war, and famine. Images of children, women, and men in inhumane conditions attempting to reach the mainland began to circulate worldwide. This phenomenon culminated in 2015 with the worst immigration crisis in Europe since the end of World War II. In this study, Vasco d'Agnese draws on Hannah Arendt's work to demonstrate that refugees, in embarking on their often excruciating journeys, represent the paradigm of acting, natality, and a "new beginning," features that, for Arendt, characterize the human experience. Starting from this premise, d'Agnese presents two refugee stories and attempts to foreground their intrinsically educational nature with two aims. The first is that engaging with these stories may help transform the traditional view of refugees as vulnerable, suffering, and needy, and instead promote a view that acknowledges refugees' actions, their agency, and that does justice to the strength, determination, and resiliency they demonstrate in taking the actions they do. The second aim is to show how the renewal of natality represented by such stories serves as a foundation for a different engagement with education. If, as Arendt argues, education is first and foremost about preserving natality, the renewal of natality seen in these refugee stories is one of the best educational examples we may find. In refugee stories, the natality of education is, in a profound sense, actualized.

This article investigates how development education campaigns affect schoolchildren's understanding of both global and domestic poverty, through examining the 2012 Lenten campaign by the Irish agency, Trócaire. It analyses Trócaire campaign material as well as its reception by schoolchildren, aged 10-12. We found the material contained neo-colonial stereotypes about Africa as a primitive place dependent on Western aid, displaying continuity with the prior 'Black Baby Phenomenon'. This refers to the collection boxes Irish children were given with a picture of a black baby on them, which fostered an understanding of Africans as helpless childlike victims, Children in our focus groups understood the Africans portrayed by the Trócaire campaign as hopeless, primitive, intellectually inferior Others. Furthermore, this there was strong indication that this imagery fostered social distance towards ethnic minorities in Ireland and encouraged children to minimise domestic poverty, through considering this to be only an issue in 'developing countries'.

Education, skills, and the development of an African workforce are at a critical moment. While it is recognized that Chinese firms hire local people, the focus of the debate is more on the position and opportunities for training and advancement. As such, the paper tries to answer the following questions. Does China really contribute to skills development in Africa? Does China employment, education, and skills transfer pattern contribute to Africa's own structural transformation and benefit African workforce? In attempting to answer these questions, this paper first lays out the current magnitude of demand for skills in Africa and the priorities for education and skills transfer that can successfully address Africa's skills shortage. Significantly, this will enable researchers and non-researchers to understand the diversity of Chinese firms' skills transfer patterns and the reasons behind these patterns. In order to present a comprehensive and precise picture as well as understand the context for China and Africa education and skills transfer development, the paper draws from various data collected from diverse sources, including government statistics, firm reports, second-hand academic literature, local and international news media, official government reports, and research studies. The paper suggests that the assessment of skills transfer pattern should not only consider employees' and employers' direct interests, but also in the short run, skills transfer should focus on offering short, practical courses to secondary and higher education graduates involving primarily on-the-job training. In the long run, there is a need to change the way employees and students are trained, including curriculum reforms that favor science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. Emphasis should also be placed on critical thinking, problem-solving, discovery, and experiential training.

In this philosophical paper, we investigate the project of doing philosophy with children in Africa. While the philosophy for children program has its roots in the Anglo-Saxon world, we contend that it can sit well in Africa if given an African outlook. We challenge Eurocentric specialists, who are attempting a wholesale introduction of the Matthew Lipman model of philosophy for children in schools in Africa, to realign their perspective. This paper takes a critical look at the currency of the post-colonial and Africanization agendas in education by exploring the plausibility of a uniquely African philosophy for children program. We argue that for any philosophy to be African, it should be an amalgamation of the traditional and the modern in order to epitomize the twenty-first century African existential conditions that ameliorate educational practices previously subject to Eurocentric hegemony.

Pre-colonial Africa was neither an educationally nor a technologically unsophisticated continent. While education was an integral part of the culture, issues of language identification and standardisation which are subject to contentious debate today were insignificant. Children learned community knowledge and history by asking questions instead of being taught in a hegemonic alien language. This article argues that education and development should take place in a broader context of human rights, and explores the links between three areas often dealt with separately, namely: language, education and development. The authors of this paper demonstrate that changing the face of the multi-dimensionalities of poverty within societies is possible only when education is constructed in a rights perspective over the favoured colonial languages, which are not an integral part of the culture and resources of a community. The authors make a distinction between the "right to education" and "rights in education," the latter of which are found to be more significant for the challenges Africa faces. It is argued here that the elements of Amartya Sen's "threshold" conditions for inclusion in human rights and self-development in education are essential, and that a more promising architecture of education would include what the authors term meta-narrative frameworks, i.e. interrelated policies. The authors contend that the neoliberal commodification of the knowledge sector has only exacerbated human rights and capabilities deprivation--which encompasses both human and income poverty.

The purpose of this 2-year study was to investigate Malawian teacher educators' perspectives and dispositions toward teaching about ecological sustainability issues in Malawi, a developing country in sub-Sahara Africa. This study was embedded in a larger theoretical framework of investigating earth systems science through the understanding of nature-knowledge-culture systems from local, place-based perspectives. Specifically, we were interested in learning more about eco-justice issues that are related to environmental degradation in Malawi and the potential role of inquiry-oriented pedagogies in addressing these issues. In a science methods course, the African educators' views on deforestation and teaching about ecological sustainability were explored within the context of the local environment and culture. Teachers participated in inquiry pedagogies designed to promote the sharing of perspectives related to the connections between culture and ecological degradation. Strategies encouraging dialogue and reflection included role-playing, class discussions, curriculum development activities, teaching experiences with children, and field trips to a nature preserve. Data were analyzed from postcolonial and critical pedagogy of place theoretical perspectives to better understand the hybridization of viewpoints influenced by both Western and indigenous science and the political hegemonies that impact sustainable living in Malawi. Findings suggested that the colonial legacy of Malawi continues to impact the ecological sustainability issue of deforestation. Inquiry-oriented pedagogies and connections to indigenous science were embraced by the Malawian educators as a means to involve children in investigation, decision making, and ownership of critical environmental issues.

The AIDS pandemic raging across sub-Saharan Africa does not stop with personal carnage. It also threatens whole systems, including what is arguably the most critical for the region's future--education. Where rates of HIV infection are high, as they are in much of southern and eastern Africa, experts warn, the effects on social stability and education are so great that young people are being robbed of hope, and national development is being stunted. In a final merciless twist, declines in education reduce the chances of arresting the pandemic, since schools may be the best way to reach uninfected young people with the information, skills, and attitudes that ultimately protect them. Education can literally be a lifesaver for children who must grow up quickly--especially girls, whether by enabling them to learn how to make a living or to protect themselves against the virus. The crisis of HIV/AIDS has way more to do with people in schools than physicians in hospitals.

This selected, annotated bibliography of information resources in English and/or French is divided into sections on books; documents and articles; UNESCO publications; reference works; and African periodicals. A list of institutions concerned with education in Africa is included, as well as educational documentation and information services in Africa. (MBR)

Access to education and health care are core development goals of the United Nations since its inception. Today, almost all countries have education and health systems in place. In former colonies, the historical roots of these systems can often be traced back to colonial times. In this article, we argue that spending on social services for the local population was seen as a necessary condition to expand the trade-based colonial economy especially in the initial stage of social services dating back to the interwar period. Using novel data on health and education expenditure in 35 former British and French African colonies during the height of their empires (1919–39), we show that trade volumes account for a large share in the variance of expenditure on education but not health services, and that present-day expenditures partly reflect these patterns. Our results suggest that similar mechanisms are at play within the two empires and differences between them are in degree rather than in kind. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We estimate horizontal inequality across the African continent over time based on four identity cleavages—location, ethnicity, gender, and religion—and four well‐being indicators—education, asset ownership, child nutrition, and under‐five survival. Improvements in social indicators over the last 25 years appear to be equalizing, with a decline in most horizontal inequalities. However, most countries in Africa show higher levels of horizontal inequalities than countries in Asia or Latin America. Spatial inequalities remain particularly high in Africa, but there is also high variation in levels and trends of horizontal inequalities across the African continent. For example, education inequality across identity cleavages seems to be particularly high in West African countries, whereas ethnic inequality across well‐being indicators seems to be particularly high in Southern African countries. Various African countries have even witnessed a recent increase in specific horizontal inequalities. Our results support policymakers in identifying the most severe and deteriorating forms of horizontal inequality in their countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study explored the enablers and obstacles to the integration of traditional medicine and mainstream medicine in mental health services in West Africa. This study is a systematic review conducted in accordance with the relevant parts of the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic reviews and Meta-analyses. Keywords searches were done in databases, and other reference lists were also searched. The Rainbow model of integrated care and a thematic analysis framework were used to account for the factors influencing the integration of traditional medicine and mainstream medicine in mental health services in West Africa. A total of 12 studies met the eligibility criteria after the evaluation of 6413 articles from databases and reference lists. The themes of: policy and implementation; different conceptualisation of mental health/referrals; trust issues, and education and training, were enablers or obstacles of integration depending on how they worked to facilitate or hinder integration. There was an indication of little integration of TM and MM at the macro, meso and micro levels in mental health services in West Africa. Though the study does cover all the West African states evenly, it is recommended that policy-makers and stakeholders interested in integration should ensure integration activities, especially policies, cut across all the levels of the rainbow model of integrated care and are planned and aligned at the macro, meso and micro levels instead of using ad hoc measures, informal initiatives or placing TM services in MM mental health services, which do not amount to integration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the challenges posed by the digital revolution and its influence on the education system. Enthusiasm among digital natives for departing from traditional teaching methods in favour of digital tools to enhance higher education learning is evident. Employing document analysis, this research extracts valuable insights. The selection of published materials pertinent to migration is achieved through purposive and convenience sampling. The Technology Acceptance Model emerged as the suitable framework, highlighting that user perception of technology's user-friendliness and utility predicts their attitude towards adopting digital tools. The study's outcomes predominantly favour the facilitation of the process of learning. The effectiveness of a variety of technological tools including blogs, discussion forums, announcements and videos, which encourage engagement and enhance learning process overall, is highlighted by constructive feedback. Considering these findings, the study proposes that higher education institutions cultivate a professional migration identity by embracing platforms like Moodle. Platforms include zoom, video conferencing, TEAMS, and WhatsApp may be the first to undergo the transfer process. This strategic approach is recommended to effectively address technological hurdles, ultimately enhancing, and sustaining online teaching and learning practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Public libraries constitute an important part of social life and are crucial for supporting the educational system in any society. However, in many African countries, awareness of the role that public libraries can play in strengthening the social contract is largely unrecognized. This may be partly due to the social background that was/is based on oral tradition, to which libraries can adapt in order to sustain the tradition. In the current era, with the fast advancement of technologies, the library's role has changed from a passive institution to an active one by creating new interactive services and activities. The human right for each and every person to have access to information, education, and knowledge plays a significant role in the inclusion and integration of citizens for their lifelong learning and continuous development. Countries' development relies on the participation of each citizen, who needs equal opportunities and quality education, including the right to benefit from public institutions such as libraries. Hence, this article explores the roles of public libraries in enhancing educational systems and social inclusion in Africa and provides some of the challenges and obstacles faced in this concern. It also examines some remedies and recommendations that can help strengthen social inclusion, particularly in certain African developing countries, as they aim to support the development of educational systems in isolated areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The quests and advocacies for co-operations, alliances, integration and unity amongst African countries are quite historical, and are ever resonating in discourses on international relations. It is such advocacies that birthed the idea for the formation of the Organization of African Unity (OAU), Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), Southern African Development Community (SADC), etc. Unfortunately, not even the rationale for the metamorphosis from OAU to the African Union (AU) has been able to entrench the much desired unity of purpose amongst African states. This paper posits that the conversations on strategies for a closer and sustainable integration in Africa should not only be centred on socio-economic and political paradigms, but should deeply reflect cultural cum educational matrixes. The paper hypothesizes that cultural transmission, which is a fundamental goal of any educational system, has to be emphatically explored in the drive for integration and unity in Africa. It therefore conceptually highlighted the link between culture and education in regional integration, with reminiscences of such linkages in Africa. The paper however observes that, beyond the affirmations and declarations arising from Treaties and Charters by some regional fora in Africa, the varied uses of education for the purposes of cultural transmission, promotion of African history and languages, in addition to the merits of intellectual exchanges, are to be further surveyed as the plausible templates that would encourage integration in Africa. Consequently, the paper suggests that socio-political institutions, governments, sub-regional blocs and other agents of diplomacy and development in Africa should carefully reconsider the multi-dimensional values of education in the realization of the dreams of African nationalists for a well-integrated and united Africa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Theoretically, the impact of human development on energy poverty could occur through a number of channels, for instance, through improved social mobility and employability. In this study, we elaborate on these channels and examine how human development affects energy poverty in Africa, where access to electricity is a challenge for many. We proxy human development with scores on the human development index (HDI), human capital and education levels and analyse panel data on 40 African countries from 2000 to 2018. Employing a battery of estimation methods, the results suggest that an increase in human development generally improves energy poverty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 2023 Sustainable Development Goal Report reveals that Africa is still struggling in its pursuit to achieve universal healthcare coverage. However, financial risk protection and human capital development could come to the rescue by facilitating the attainment of quality healthcare services. This study examines the effect of financial inclusion on healthcare in Africa, spanning from 2000 to 2021. Healthcare is proxied by life expectancy at birth, the immunisation rate, and the lifetime risk of maternal death. Financial inclusion is approached through access and usage of financial services. After controlling for the problem of potential endogeneity through the system generalised method of moment (GMM), the findings reveal that financial inclusion enhances healthcare in Africa, signifying that financially included individuals have a higher conditional probability of spending more on improving their health relative to the financially excluded individuals. Moreover, the findings indicate that education and technology diffusion are imperative in the quest for enhancing healthcare in Africa. In addition, after testing for sensitivity analysis by adopting different indicators of healthcare, the results remain consistent throughout the study, confirming the role of financial inclusion in enhancing healthcare in Africa. After computing the marginal effects, the findings depict that education and financial inclusion interact to produce positive synergy effects, signifying that the positive role of financial inclusion and education in enhancing healthcare outweighs the negative conditional effect. The results recommend policymakers establish a framework that promotes financial literacy for the enhancement of healthcare in Africa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Educational workshops are channels for raising awareness and implementing childhood interventions in African communities. However, community (in)action during and after workshops can be a dichotomy that is less researched. Using a joint dialogic and ethnographic approach, we analysed and observed the responses and actions of NGO workers and rural folks on the occasion of a childhood intervention project. Findings reveal that community action in childhood during face‐to‐face interaction can be contradictory aftermath. We use the analytical framework of dramaturgy to inform and discuss how NGOs can get to know rural folks' deep‐seated perspectives on childhoods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]