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The future of Africa

OPEM STUDENT AT TOGO

Since many years, the African Continent seems to be affected by many crises. Diseases, poverty and    distress, wars and tribal conflicts, bad governance, political crises, unemployment and hopeless seem like the major problems of Africa. But the most important crises in Africa are the problem of Education and Capacity Building.

The basis factor of stability and development is Human Resource as illiteracy is the source of all crises. Obviously we don’t have in Africa a national or continental education system base on our assets and our needs. The intensity of the solar ray in Africa continent is one of the most powerful in the world. The average wind velocity in Africa is about 15% higher than in developed countries. But these natural factors and forces are not used to make easy our day to day life.

The increasingly number of illiteracy in Africa is a fact as our teaching method and the essence of our education policy. The type of education systems heritage from colonial period is based on understanding pedagogy. This type of education is not focus on the needs of Africans and doesn’t develop the mental that has to find solutions for his own problems. The number of student in university, the type of the education systems, the quality of the education, are some factors that characterize the human resource and the Capacity Building. In Africa, the effect of Education in the society is very weak. Meaning there is less of implementation of education in our day to day life. Although the international community and the governments are making efforts, a large majority of African population depend on agricultural, fishing and breeding. The African leaderships probably know that there is no development without sustainable and quality Education. But we are still following and trying to copy the Education systems of developed countries instead of developing our own Education Philosophy taking into account our culture, our assets, our needs, our environment, our delocalization and the advantage of the Education systems in developed countries. Unfortunately it’s quite impossible in a large part of Africa to develop a curricular from primary to university and train fully the human resource for a proper Capacity Building that is the basis of development. The worst crisis in Africa is a lack of Quality Education and Capacity Building. As long as African leaders don’t make Education a priority and a major vector for the development, as long as illiteracy will still general, as long as we maintain a poor and weak Education system, Africa will unfortunately not know development. Education is a key of the development but what kind of Education promotes development?

Most of Africans for whom it’s possible attend college or university in developed countries, where Capacity Building is always one of the important subjects of the political government. But the quality and the essence of Education in these countries are so far from what we can have in Africa. More than 55% of African human resource is out of the continent. Indeed we need to know what’s going on about Education in developed countries and even take example on it but we have to “Africanized” our own Education Systems. Skill development of pupils in a pratice Education systems based on research, ICT, learning by fun, learning by doing, video Education and teaching by entertainment, Projects Pedagogy and implementation of the competences in the village and the cities are some vectors of this conceptualization.

What is worrying and even alarming is that, the new conceptualization of modern Education system in developed countries is based on Technology. Today, Information and Communication Technology is become a fundamental tool of Education. But basically, Education brought Technology and we are lack of technology in Africa. Now Technology becomes a tool that enhances Education. Synthesis: so far we are from Technology; so far we will be in developing Quality Education in Africa. We are not doing enough for Education in Africa.

The first challenge to face in 21st century in Africa is “How to promote appropriate, modern and Quality Education”? From this, we can create a human resource and develop a really Capacity Building necessary to solve our day to day problems like diseases, poverty and distress, wars and tribal conflicts, unemployment and hopeless.

 

Victor AFANOU