Online Reporter
Ronald Takudzwa Sambona (Youth advocate and educator)
I take it as a matter of personal pride that Africa’s population structure gives it great potential and makes it best suited for economic growth vis-à-vis other continents.
Approximately 65 percent of our African population is the youth. With the advent of the 21st century, the Fourth Industrial Revolution (also known as the Technological Revolution) has affected global economies to the extent that transformation is needed if we are to come out on top as a continent.
To survive in the Fourth Industrial Revolution, Africa must shift from traditional education systems to more robust, disruptive and transformative education systems.
Africa like the rest of the world is affected by what one lady calls the poly-crisis referring to Covid, climate change, conflict and costs of living which are rising. The way we deal with this crisis as Africa is through leveraging our greatest assets, our youth and our women. To maximise the full potential of our youth and women, Africa needs more than just a quality education. We need what l would mark as a transformative education to effectively address and solve problems in our economies.
I found it shocking that more than a century after Thomas Edison developed the light bulb, more than 600 million Africans are still in the dark. More than half of our African population do not have the necessary energy to power their lives.
Research has also found out that by the year 2050, only 6 percent of Africans would have acquired a tertiary education. All this and more underscores the immediate burden thrust upon leaders to deal rightly with these growing problems urgently.
Regardless of the alluring impediments we face as a continent, there is hope we can channel into our hearts and minds as we divert focus to our youth and women. In this era of accelerated change, overwhelming complexity and excessive competition, a transformative education has to be competent enough to equip the people with the ability to be able to upgrade their skills with time, to facilitate critical thinking, and also to address the work markets.
Not only must a transformative education empower the people by giving them tools to improve their lives, but also inform them on how they can improve those lives. In a sense a transformative education should inspire people to learn new things, teach its people to adapt to whatever new things emerge, and also teach them to do jobs that do not yet exist today.
Even though as Africa we have the largest youth workforce, we have a unique problem that could be leveraged into our greatest strength if taken care of immediately. Unlike other continents Africa has a huge deficit of technology and how to use that technology for productivity and higher productivity.
This is where education leaps in to solve this problem. Taking into account the fact that only 6 percent of Africans would have completed tertiary education by 2050, and the accelerating rate of technological change, there is need to fast-track education starting from primary level to tertiary level.
This also requires us as governments to develop more Vocational Training Centres to do away with tech and skills deficits. Educational institutions have no choice but to adopt technology at an earlier stage in students’ learning process. By doing so learners would have enough skills and capacity when they enter the workforce. It is still surprising that some people in our workforce lack even the basic skills of operating a computer. Such a scenario in our workforce should educate us that it is not just about the quantity of Africa’s workforce, but its quality in an everchanging global environment that will catapult the continent towards great progress and prosperity.
This process of skills development, capacity building, and digital literacy in connection with our youth and women ties into Aspiration 6 of African Agenda 2063 which states that the full potential of Africa should be unleashed through its women and youth. These elements embody a transformative education necessary for economic growth, citizens empowerment and independent states in this technological era. To educate our people on the good usage of technology will prove to be our ally in the near future, but to do otherwise would be catastrophic and a weakness that our enemies will exploit. The truth of the matter is we have a lot of responsibility on our shoulders if we are to turn our youth and women into our greatest asset as Africa.
Someone once said that humanity happens in the unspoken moments. In that same vein I would extrapolate that real progress of Africa will happen in these quiet moments of united action backed by a deep-seated faith in our own shared future as a people. As we work towards the future we envision, let us appreciate the intensity and gravity of this moment, and embrace transformation in education as a catalyst for growth and development.
Thank you! I rest my case.
