Concerning education in Africa

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Morgan State University to Offer Three Degree Programs in Ghana Following Board Approval
February 10, 2020



BALTIMORE — Morgan State University (MSU) is slated to establish an international presence on the African continent by way of a new pilot program. During the recent public session of the MSU Board of Regents’ winter quarterly meeting, the Board unanimously approved a proposal for the university to begin offering three degree programs — a Master of Business Administration, a Master of Science in Global Multimedia Journalism and Communications, and a Bachelor of Science in Entrepreneurship — in partnership with the African University College of Communications (AUCC) in Adabraka, Accra, Ghana. The pilot program is scheduled to begin in fall 2020, creating opportunities for western African students to pursue degrees from Morgan. The collaboration marks a first of its kind for an HBCU in Ghana, with Morgan poised to join only a select few American universities offering degree programs in Africa.

“Over the past five years, we have been very interested in Africa and have been eyeing expansion into new markets. We look forward to piloting these three academic degree programs in Ghana, and if this initiative is successful in attracting top-notch students and awarding them highly valued Morgan degrees, we will consider establishing a more physical presence in Africa,” said Morgan President David Wilson. “So long as I am the president of this institution, Morgan will never be in stasis. We cannot afford to stand still. It is incumbent upon the university to always lean forward and continuously explore all viable opportunities in this rapidly transforming higher education environment.”

Coinciding with the expansion abroad, domestically the Board also authorized the University to pursue the addition of a new Master of Science in Advanced Computing degree program. Pending Maryland Higher Education Commission (MHEC) approval, the M.S. in Advanced Computing would be the only degree of its kind offered at a Maryland university, and Morgan would be the sole HBCU in the nation to offer it. The availability of the program at Morgan would offer students a solid foundation in emerging areas of computer sciences such as artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, data science, machine learning and cloud computing.

In addition, during its fall meeting this past November, MSU’s Board of Regents supported the addition of a new degree program in cloud computing. MHEC recently approved Morgan’s request to offer a new Bachelor of Science in Cloud Computing beginning in fall 2020.

In January, an administrative team, led by Morgan’s provost, traveled to Ghana for a site visit at AUCC, a University of Ghana affiliate institution, and to finalize the remaining details of the proposed collaboration. The arrangement calls for Morgan professors from the Earl G. Graves School of Business and Management and the School of Global Journalism and Communication to travel to Ghana to teach courses throughout the year to incoming cohorts. Each of the three degree programs would be offered in a hybrid delivery consisting of face-to-face and online instruction. Morgan is seeking at least 20 students to begin the pilot. An evaluation of the programs is slated for the end of the inaugural year.

Recent economic trends indicate that Africa will be the top emerging market of the 21st century. With 1.2 billion inhabitants (up from 447 million in 1980), more than 50 percent of them under the age of 30, Africa is projected by the United Nations Population Division to witness an accelerated population growth in the immediate future. Most African governments are allocating a significant amount of their annual revenue to increase access to primary and secondary schools for their young and rapidly growing populations. One area that the majority of African governments have not been able to expand rapidly is access to “tertiary education,” or colleges and universities. At present, public higher education institutions in Africa can accommodate less than 5 percent of the overall demand.

“Morgan State University will deliver highly innovative M.S. and B.S. programs that fully prepare individuals to be global leaders,” said Lesia Crumpton-Young, Ph.D., provost and senior vice president for Academic Affairs at Morgan State University. “These program graduates will serve as catalysts for economic growth and development throughout the African continent and beyond.”

In response to a national need for a workforce skilled in computing, Morgan proposes to offer a Master of Science in Advanced Computing degree program, available both online and in a traditional classroom setting. Based on an innovative curriculum, the new program would be designed for students who have recently completed a bachelor’s degree program in computer science and/or related fields and who wish to enhance their careers, explore research opportunities in computer science or apply their acquired skills in transdisciplinary teams or for a specific focus. With a one-year completion option, the M.S. in Advanced Computing would serve as a complement to the new B.S. in Cloud Computing.

“Morgan understands what employers, particularly those in the technology sector, are looking for from our graduates,” added Dr. Wilson. “They need talent with particular skill sets, and we are bringing forth degree programs to provide those skills. Our students who are matriculating in these programs are going to be highly sought after, the world over.”

Both the proposed transdisciplinary M.S. program and the B.S. in Cloud Computing will be managed by the Department of Computer Science in Morgan’s School of Computer, Mathematical and Natural Sciences.

 

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The Economisthttps://www.economist.com/middle-ea...y-and-the-african-school-of-economics#content

No-frills education
Trust, slavery and the African School of Economics
Leonard Wantchekon is trying to build a world-class university in Benin

May 21, 2020https://www.economist.com/printedition/2020-05-23

AS LEONARD WANTCHEKON was having breakfast with his wife, Catherine Kossou, in 2007, she recalled how one friend could not trust anyone. Even as a child her friend would say: “That person is going to sell you,” or “He will make you disappear.”

The words struck a chord with Mr Wantchekon. Now a professor at Princeton University, he was born in Zagnanado in central Benin. Some of the music he listened to in his youth—such as that of Orchestre Poly-Rythmo de Cotonou—had songs that warned against trusting those close to you.

He wondered: “Does this have something to do with slavery?” Benin was a hub of the slave trade. More than 1m people were trafficked from the interior to the port of Ouidah, and then to America, Brazil or the Caribbean. Alongside Nathan Nunn of Harvard University, Mr Wantchekon looked for a relationship between the intensity of the slave trade and low levels of trust (and thus commerce). He found one. The resulting article is in the top 1% of most-cited economics papers.

The story of the paper has broader relevance, explains Mr Wantchekon (pictured). It was his data-mining skills that helped him find the answer. But it was his Beninese background that raised the question.

Mr Wantchekon is one of just a few African economists at elite Western universities. Most scholarship about Africa is done by academics who are neither African-born nor based in Africa. Influential development journals have few African scholars on their boards. Most major conferences about Africa do not take place there.

The imbalance is partly a result of bias in overseas universities. But it is also because of conditions at African ones. Higher education is not a priority for politicians, who often send their children abroad, or donors, who prefer to fund schools. The result is underfunded and overcrowded universities that do not equip enough African graduates with the skills required to get into world-class doctoral programmes.

The consequence is a profound loss, argues Mr Wantchekon. Countless young African intellectuals do not get a fair chance. The world gets a skewed picture of African countries because many of the best researchers come from elsewhere.

That may be changing. In 2014 Mr Wantchekon founded the African School of Economics in Abomey-Calavi, Benin. Its aim is to offer African students the highest standards of mathematics and economics teaching, ensuring they can compete with graduates overseas.

It is refreshingly drab, with no splurging on a flashy campus or needless technology. The 100 or so students pay $2,400 per year, about the same as at a public university. “This is not about doing something grandiose,” says Mr Wantchekon. It is a model that can be replicated. Another campus was opened this year in Ivory Coast.

The school draws on several influences. The name nods to the London School of Economics. Princeton is one of more than a dozen “academic partners”. But another institution serves as an inspiration, too.

Mr Wantchekon’s home town had one of the first schools set up by missionaries in Benin. Its presence changed the lives of many young people—and not just pupils. Studies by Mr Wantchekon and others have shown that the effects of missionary schools were felt broadly. Even children of villagers who did not go to the schools did better in life, a result of higher aspirations and a better-educated social network. Mr Wantchekon believes that his new school of economics can have widespread knock-on effects as well.

The journey of the son of two illiterate farmers from rural Benin to the Ivy League is remarkable. But so is the detour. After enrolling at university Mr Wantchekon became an activist, campaigning against Mathieu Kérékou, a dictator who ruled for nearly 30 years. He lived on the run for five years before being arrested in 1985.

A year and a half later, after charming prison guards and exaggerating his arthritis to get treatment outside the prison, Mr Wantchekon escaped. He crossed the border to Nigeria and, after a brief spell in Ivory Coast, became a refugee in Canada. He returned to his studies, completing a PhD at Northwestern University under the mentorship of Roger Myerson, a Nobel laureate, who describes him as “one of the best students I ever had”.

Mr Wantchekon retains a fascination for African politics. He has written about the conditions under which warlordism can turn into democracy. He has co-written probably the only studies in which presidential candidates running in elections have subjected themselves to randomised controlled trials. These have found that, while promises of patronage are powerful in swaying voters, as cynics suggest, there are caveats. Women are less wooed by patronage, for example. And when candidates held town-hall meetings to discuss policy platforms, voters became more likely to vote on the basis of education and health rather than handouts.

Another result of Mr Wantchekon’s political past is a preference for empiricism over ideology. A trip to Albania ended his blind affection for socialism. His school is not part of efforts to “decolonise” the African academy. Any student of politics must read Rousseau and Madison, he argues. The aim is to add to the sum of human knowledge, not subtract from it. “Be angry but also be thoughtful,” he says. ■

 

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[Swahili P'Bitek]

In primary school, we were 65 crammed in a class, and this was when public primary school education was still dependable in urban areas (late 2000s, early 10s) before people started really depending on "low income private schools" that now outperform public schools, but are no better since even though they may perform better in national examinations, they just drill and overwork students. Now global investors have stepped in to offer loans to these so called "low income private schools" all over Africa, and while this is going on, public schools are still left unattended, especially in rural areas, where people don't even have classes.

Secondary schools are a little bit better, since the best performing schools with repute are mostly public( they, however account for only about 10% of all public schools), but only take in students based on their performance at primary level and tend to have the best facilities and teachers. So you have schools that take in only "intelligent" students, and the rest take the rest, and the yearly national examinations reflect this "left behind" culture where supposedly poor performers are condemned to further difficulties. Universities and colleges are a hotbed of incompetence and corruption that results in manufactured underfunding. Lecturers are basically doing charity work and a good number are not paid most of the time.

My experiences in my country's system have made me critical of it from a primary to tertiary level, as I think it sets up many to fail even before they are 10 years old, as a lot of brilliant minds are lost in this classist system.

 

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Cyrille Nkontchou, founder and chairman of Enko Education

Cameroonian businessman and investor Cyrille Nkontchou is an alumnus of Harvard Business School and is currently the Chairman of the HBS Africa Advisory Board.
He is the founder and chairman of Enko Education, an African private schools business. Enko currently operates 14 schools across nine countries. Sven Hugo talked to Nkontchou about building the company, lessons learnt and some of the unexploited opportunities in Africa’s education sector.

Dec. 23, 2020

Where does one begin to create an international private school network?
As background to the founding of Enko Education, I started an investment banking firm called Liquid Africa in 2000. As head of research for sub-Saharan African markets at Merrill Lynch, I figured it was time to get on the other side of the fence by investing my own money, which is really where the appetite for being on the investment side of business was born.

In 2009, I co-founded Enko Capital, an asset management business focused on investments in Africa. Today, we manage about half a billion US dollars invested in Africa in equity, private equity and fixed income platforms.


I seriously considered education as an investment in 2012. The decision was inspired by my mom, Justine, who many years ago had also set up her own successful school in Cameroon.

In 2012, we presented our idea to the Global Entrepreneurship Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), which assigns students to do research work on projects. We worked with MIT over a six-month period, including a month on-site in South Africa, to analyse the opportunities of our education model. From that study came the spark for Enko Education. It is where I met my business partner and co-founder, Eric Pignot, who was studying at the MIT Sloan School of Management at the time.

Our ambition is to get young Africans into reputable universities abroad. It became clear that even though African students were keen to study overseas, they struggled to get into good universities. If you don’t have a curriculum whereby international universities can compare your results against that of another applicant, the chances are slim that you’re going to be accepted, even as the best student in the country. We had to implement a curriculum whereby our students could be compared with other international applicants.

Quality education in Africa is costly and beyond the means of the majority of African parents. We, therefore, had to enter the market at a fraction of the cost of other international schools.

Take us through the process of setting up the first school.
Starting out, our vision for the business was still unclear. In 2014, we bought our first school in South Africa, which already had a local curriculum in place. It proved a bad investment. We owned a 40% stake in the school but our vision for the business was misaligned with the other stakeholder. Enko still owns the school but it’s an alien in our portfolio.

In the same year, we opened the first school in Cameroon, renting the building that my mom was using to train teachers for her school. It didn’t go as planned … we began the year with four students and eight teachers. Having said that, our first learners performed very well and we produced the first Cameroonian to ever go to Yale University. Financially, it was a disaster but the learning outcome was successful.

Why was the take-up so poor?
It was a difficult value proposition to explain to parents, especially with the unfamiliar International Baccalaureate (IB) curriculum. We decided to align with IB as it is an international curriculum that is not nation-specific.


Our school was also more expensive than the French, local-curriculum schools the parents already trusted. In Francophone African countries, the French schools are the most recognised and we were offering something new and more expensive.

When did Enko’s fortunes start to change?
After three years, we saw a turnaround. We hired the right people: young, dynamic individuals who believed in the business.

Proparco, an SME-focused investor, provided much-needed capital and helped us to institutionalise the business, putting in place a strong board that could give guidance and challenge us when necessary.

Over time, we refined our pitch to parents, who started believing in our vision. We also received a lot of support from the International Baccalaureate organisation, which saw merit in what we were doing. The organisation helped us fast-track our accreditation, which we managed to get in two years instead of the usual five. This helped validate the Enko promise in the eyes of parents.

We knew from the beginning it was going to take time to convince parents of the suitability of the International Baccalaureate curriculum.

In 2016, we opened two schools; and in 2017, we opened another five.

Explain the Enko business model.
The business model for the majority of our schools is based on the greenfield model, where we start schools from scratch in countries where the IB curriculum isn’t yet available.


When we identify a potential opportunity for a school, an Enko employee visits the premises we plan on renting and arranges authorisation from the local education authorities. This process usually kicks off in January, and by September we are ready to open the school. Typically, our schools open with 50 students, growing to 100 the year thereafter, and 150 the following year. Each school roughly takes three years to break even; it costs us about $600,000 from start to breaking even.

Apart from the greenfield model, we also bought two schools in Senegal, which were already up and running with the IB curriculum.

Today, we have 14 schools, of which the majority began as greenfield schools. Three of these were acquired. Two years ago, we started with a new Enko-managed model, which is becoming our new source of growth. Under this model, we manage the school on behalf of the owners.

What are the major challenges of running this business?
We don’t own the school premises, so we can go to market much faster than building a school from the ground up. However, this becomes an issue when the schools grow and the premises are not specifically built to accommodate this growth.

At the moment, our schools are profitable but constrained by capacity. We are searching for a way to have purpose-built infrastructure with higher capacity; where we can find partners specifically interested in owning and building school real estate, while we manage it.

An Enko classroom in Dakar, Senegal

Which income bracket do you cater for?
Enko Education caters largely to locals, unlike our competitors that target expats. If you look at a typical international school, about 90–100% of pupils are expats, which means their parents can afford the $20,000 to $40,000 annual school fees.

Our tuition fees are about $3,000 per annum and most of our parents are in the upper-middle-class bracket, which includes people who typically earn between $55,000 and $60,000 a year.

How are you able to offer these competitive fees?
We have a couple of levellers. Infrastructure is the biggest expense in running a school. For example, a school like St Stithians in Johannesburg, South Africa will have a property value of hundreds of millions of rands. Our competitors have to justify their expenses and they link that to fees. We don’t get involved in real estate.

Leasing has two implications: capital expenditure and time to market. We don’t mind starting in premises with low capacity and then moving to a bigger place once the school is full.


The largest operating expense is the cost of teachers; we usually have one teacher for every 10 students. To control this cost, we build capacity rather than merely hiring expats. We make an effort to identify talented local teachers and provide the training they require. Most are locals and we invest in the personal development of our teachers.

Which African countries offer the greatest growth opportunities for Enko Education?
Nigeria is the biggest market. We’re currently working on a project there with capacity for 3,000 pupils. In the next five years, we are aiming for 10,000 students in our schools across Nigeria.

The Enko value proposition works in markets where there is not much on offer in the way of international schools. Mozambique and Angola are prime examples. Kenya, for instance, is a large market but competition is intense, which we tend to shy away from.

Our bread and butter are still the smaller French-speaking African markets. We’ll keep penetrating these and get more schools into these countries. Eventually, we are aiming for five to six campuses in each of the Francophone countries.

In addition to Enko’s offering, what other opportunities do you see in Africa’s education sector?
Education-focused technology (edtech) is showing big potential for remote learning but that is on a global scale and not unique to Africa. Edtech becomes more relevant in higher education, where there’s even more room for leveraging technology. Consider that most universities have moved online due to Covid-19 and have done so successfully.

In Africa, there are opportunities in related services, such as student accommodation. And there’s a lot of potential in financing education. If you develop the capacity to spot students who can do extremely well and invest in them, it can be profitable and it’s possible to change the face of Africa. Intelligence is spread equally, the problem is financial means, especially in Africa.

If you had the chance to start this business again, what would you do differently?
Our initial mistakes prompted us to make the right adjustments but we probably should have raised more money in our early rounds of fundraising. Growth plans become challenging if capital dries up; it forces you into more fundraising or slows your progress. You have to raise more money at the beginning than you think is necessary

 

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Professor Nemata Blyden. If the last name sounds familiar, yes she is the great grand daughter of the Pan Africanist Edward Wilmot Blyden.

 

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The Hero’s Walk by Hero Lager is a documentary on the Igbo Apprentice System. The Igbo Apprentice system is one that has built wealth for many and economic growths for communities. For the first time, the story is told by the people. The Hero’s Walk Documentary chronicles the journey of the average young Igbo man into entrepreneurship. Over the years, this model of entrepreneurship training has formed an integral part of the culture and tradition of the Igbo people who have continued to inspire people of other regions with their dedication to perpetuating the legacy of hands-on training and mentoring as a pathway to successful entrepreneurship. The Hero's Walk documentary celebrates this great Legacy

 

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August 14, 2022

African fictions to boost the scientific culture in Africa​

Poster of the TV series created by Stéphane Kenmoe, "Science dans la cité", Science in the City.



Kenmoe earned his PhD at the Max Planck Institute for Iron Research, then occupied his first postdoctoral position at the University of Duisburg-Essen, where he is now pursuing habilitation, one the possible paths to professorship in Germany.


Kenmoe is a natural-born communicator and his combined passion for both science and communications has shaped his engagements of the last years. As a scientist from Cameroon, he is well aware that in Africa there's a gap between science and decision makers, between science and regular people, between science and possible private donors. "There's a disconnect in Africa between the brilliant ideas of scientists working towards Africa's development and those who take decisions," he pointed out. And, he has been fully engaged in contributing to filling that gap.


Kenmoe firmly believes that scientists themselves have to communicate science, make it palatable, accessible, using the tools they have. "We, scientists, have to promote science, and build an energy that is missing in the African society: the energy that connects science to everybody, including people who can invest into science, as well as policymakers," he said.

Kenmoe was never formally trained as a communicator: connecting to people and explaining science just came natural to him. But, he recalled, "six years ago, I went back to Cameroon on holiday, and a former classmate of mine, who is a journalist, invited me to participate in his TV show, because he was missing a guest." That's how it all started. The show was called 'L'expert'—The Expert—and Kenmoe's friend encouraged him to talk about quantum physics. Which he did successfully. Now, in addition to his strictly scientific engagements, Kenmoe is a well-known science communicator often featuring in African TV shows and on social media (Facebook and You Tube). He even produced a TV series.


He believes that every scientist should get the message across using the 'tool'—or one may call it additional vocation—she or he has, may it be writing a novel, producing a TV show, speaking in public or painting. "There are world-class scientists in Africa," he said, "and communications is not only about eloquence. Good communicators are people who, by a given means, make themselves understood by somebody else."


"Africa is driven by the urgent needs to innovate, to eat, to have good health care," he continued. And this is the reason why it's so important for scientists to be good communicators! If not, regular people handling such basic issues as achieving food security cannot, and will not, respond to the 'call of science'. They may do so only if and when science is 'translated' into something that directly affects their lives, their livelihoods and well-being.



* English dubbed trailer for the series



"Science communications is key to create the political will to promote science in Africa, and to involve regular people, people who go to bars, which, in many African countries, are the main gathering places," Kenmoe explained. This is why, the setting of the TV series he produced—"Science in the city"—is a bar. The series' main character is a scientist by training, who opens a bar because he could not find a job as a scientist, but who ultimately makes a profit in his commercial activity using his scientific background. The series is available online on the pan-African Cameroon-based DASH TV and CINAF, and was screened in African universities, and to secondary school students and during workshops all over the continent.

If science is understood, if science becomes approachable, then it can really fulfil the goal of improving peoples' lives, of improving life in, and the development of, Africa. Kenmoe is paving the way of science communications in Africa. May he be a role model for other scientists.

 

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Educational mobility gap between Muslims and Christians in Africa isn’t budging, study finds​

May 25, 2023
Co-authored by a Brown economist, the study found that over the last three generations, Christian children have surpassed their parents’ level of education at a much higher rate than Muslim and traditionalist children in Africa.



PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — It has been more than a half century since most African countries gained independence from their European colonizers, who spent decades mining the continent’s precious natural resources and spreading Christianity.
Yet many decades later, African Christians are still seeing bigger generation-over-generation educational gains than Muslims, and they’re seeing even larger gains than those who practice traditional Indigenous religions. And in some areas, the educational gap between Christians and non-Christians is growing wider.
That’s according to a new study led by economics scholars at Brown University, Harvard University and the London Business School. The study drew on 50 years of census data from 2,286 districts across 21 African countries to present the first comprehensive account of the differences in intergenerational educational mobility across religious denominations of Africa, home to 17% of the global population and some of the largest Christian and Muslim communities in the world.
Published in Nature on Tuesday, May 16, the study raises new questions about the connections between education, wealth and culture in Africa.

Abstract
The African people and leaders have long seen education as a driving force of development and liberation, a view shared by international institutions3,4, as schooling has large economic and non-economic returns, particularly in low-income settings5. In this study, we examine the educational progress across faiths throughout postcolonial Africa, home to some of the world’s largest Christian and Muslim communities. We construct comprehensive religion-specific measures of intergenerational mobility in education using census data from 2,286 districts in 21 countries and document the following. First, Christians have better mobility outcomes than Traditionalists and Muslims. Second, differences in intergenerational mobility between Christians and Muslims persist among those residing in the same district, in households with comparable economic and family backgrounds. Third, although Muslims benefit as much as Christians when they move early in life to high-mobility regions, they are less likely to do so. Their low internal mobility accentuates the educational deficit, as Muslims reside on average in areas that are less urbanized and more remote with limited infrastructure. Fourth, the Christian–Muslim gap is most prominent in areas with large Muslim communities, where the latter also register the lowest emigration rates. As African governments and international organizations invest heavily in educational programmes, our findings highlight the need to understand better the private and social returns to schooling across faiths in religiously segregated communities and to carefully think about religious inequalities in the take-up of educational policies6.

Spoiler: Full Study