STEM Education and African Development
by Dr Nkem Khumbah
Dr Nkem Khumbah
The
current discussion of Africa’s heralded economic growth and rise as a
world power is leading to increased optimism and self-confidence on the
continent. The discussion has revolved around the need to strengthen its
human capabilities to sustain such growth and ensure that the growth is
accompanied by significantly less poverty and greater shared prosperity
for the continent.
However,
the foundations of the economic performance underlying this Africa
rising phenomena are shallow. It has been predominantly based on the
extraction of natural resources rather than an increase in productivity
or expansion in economic sectors. Most African economies and societies
continue to be dominated by the low-level processing of natural
resources and the production of simple consumer goods for local
consumption Their economies have remained substantially untransformed
from the colonial phase of raw material production and export.
Over
the last three decades, a global wave of market liberalization has
produced an interconnected world economy that has brought unprecedented
structural changes that have placed Nation’s abilities to master and
utilize Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) as key
determinants of economic growth, development, and security.
In
the 1960s and 1970s, many economies in South America –such as Argentina
– enjoyed significant capital accumulation. But complacency and
short-term approaches resulted in the failure to transition their
economies to technological innovation as the basis for development.
At
the same time countries such as South Korea, China, and Israel
consciously decided to invest substantial government revenues in
building world-class laboratories to support education and research in
STEM, and to enable intellectual work and commercial exploitation of
these subjects. After a generation of investment, they have seen
enormous returns as evidenced by the growth of their STEM workforce,
undergirding their emergence as major players in the global
science-based economy. For example, Samsung of South Korea wields global
prominence in electronics today, thanks to a workforce that includes
over 40,000 engineers in Software development alone; China is able to
leverage its large engineering workforce to establish its footprint in
Africa, while some studies attribute between 50% and 85% of US GDP
growth over the past 50 years to advancements in domestic science and
engineering competencies.
As
national abilities to master and utilize science to produce
technologies that enable innovation have increasingly assumed
determinative influence on economic development, Africa’s failure to
re-balance its educational offerings from humanities and social
sciences, towards STEM subjects constitute the most serious challenge to
its ability to sustain its current economic growth and be one of the
world’s leading continents in manufacturing and exports.
Comparative
indicators of how Africa lags behind other regions of the world in
scientific productivity and knowledge systems abound. Problems with
higher education institutional infrastructure inputs—such as electricity
and water supply, staff shortages and ever-increasing enrollments due
to fast growing youth population, research infrastructure, weak
governance and quality assurance, and the many material challenges to
Higher Education Institutions in Africa – are also well documented.
Recent discourses about African Higher Education have tilted towards
these material challenges, and less on the need to correct long-standing
imbalances in the disciplinary offerings, to make up for long delays in
developing STEM capabilities on the continent Even with prevailing
challenges to Higher Education, Africa’s current stock of graduates with
secondary- and tertiary-level skills is still highly skewed towards the
humanities and social sciences, while the proportion of students in
STEM averages less than 25 percent.
After some 16 years of subsidized
public education, these graduates face unemployment rates of up to 90%
in some instances, while their countries continue to transfer major
resources to expatriate countries for construction and maintenance of
its public infrastructures because of the lack of a competent domestic
STEM workforce; and at the end, the continued lack of domestic
expertise means African countries cannot maintain their own
infrastructures or develop new industries, lest they bring back the
expatriates at more cost. For example, Nigeria requires 51,000 more
engineers in its electric power infrastructure than it currently
produces.
Further,
the increasingly technical nature of many public and private sector
international negotiations on subjects pertinent to Africa’s development
and security -–such as climate change, trade and finance– favors
countries that use advanced scientific knowledge to inform their
positions, further constraining Africa’s position in international
affairs and trade.
African
Political leadership has yet to embrace the STEM Education imperative
for transforming African society with the enthusiasm it deserves; and
policies aimed at addressing Africa’s long term prospects in STEM needs
to be situated within a global context, to better appreciate all the
actors and forces influencing its development, as well as the level of
attention and effort required for meaningful progress.
Nations
that have developed high technological capacities understand the
importance of world-class STEM education all too well, and they are
increasingly strengthening their scientists and STEM institutions to
build strong reputations and compete for the best international
students, faculty, and resources. These countries have developed
ever-stronger strategies for STEM education and research, as measured by
their investment levels in these areas. They are also offering
attractive opportunities, as employers worldwide are projected to face a
shortage of over 85 million high- and medium-skilled STEM workers by
2020.
African
leaders’ increasing vocal support for STEM on the international stage
has provided a welcome and much-needed boost for science on the
continent. However, the dangers of superficiality and short-term
approaches threaten the sustained and long-term planning that is
requisite for any meaningful transformation of the sector. Indeed,
purposeful funding for science is either meager or absent in many
African countries, while some non-Africa countries dedicate as much as
4% of their GDPs to scientific research (the average of top 40 national
annual budgetary allocations to STEM R&Dis $40 Billion). The effect
is a widening gap between Africa’ STEM progress and that of more
advanced countries, thus exacerbating prevailing disparities in income
and development, amidst Africa’s positive economic “performance.”
Heavy
reliance on international expertise and funds results in STEM
development in Africa being shaped mostly by international donor and
bilateral and multilateral partnerships (e.g. US-based Foundations, the
European Union–Africa Joint Strategy, the India–Africa Science and
Technology Initiatives and the China–Africa Science and Technology
Partnership). While these instruments bring much needed goodwill,
expertise and finances in support of African development, with over half
of all STEM funding coming from international partners, most of current
implementation mechanisms are not structured to promote African
ownership, accountability and sustainability.
The
heavy influence of international agencies on STEM activity in Africa
also tends to fragmentize inter-African research communities, with each
of the sub-regions collaborating more with international partners and
less with one another, as measured through their publications output.
Inter-African collaborations (collaborations without any South-African
or international collaborator) comprise just 2%, 0.9%, and 2.9% of all
East African, West & Central African, and Southern African total
research output.
In
contrast, 40% to 80% of African Regional STI publications are with
external partners, with the majority in fields of most interest to
international donors, such as Health and Agriculture. While these areas
are of primary importance to Africa, heavy donor influence in these
areas has also meant research and education activity in other
complementary areas necessary to enable Africa develop a vibrant
fundamental STEM space – such as frontier physics, mathematics and
computer science—are neglected, or practically nonexistent. With its
vast extractive resources and activity, there is hardly any activity in
complementary Engineering disciplines, effectively depriving Africa from
engaging in STEM research and knowledge systems that could derive from
strategic advantages in associated extractive industries.
If
Africa is to realize its aspirations contained in the African Union’s
continental agenda 2063 and Science, Technology, Innovation Strategy for
Africa (STISA), its governments have to forcefully revitalize their
higher education systems towards STEM Education, as the next – even
pivotal— frontier in the continent’s historical evolution. It is the
caliber of its university graduates in STEM fields that will produce and
manage the knowledge that will give relevance to its other institutions
– governance, trade, defense, agriculture, health, finance, energy and
diplomacy. It is through a vitalized STEM Education that Africa may turn
its increasing demographics into a dividend to enhance its democracies.
A
way to start is for African nations and regional economic communities
to establish STEM Education and Research Strategies. This will entail
prescient and deliberate policies to identify and invest in select
universities as national and continental assets ―perhaps their most
potent assets, and as the most important ingredients in continental
development objectives. The Korean Advanced Institute of Science and
Technology (KAIST) and its symbiotic relationship with the modern South
Korean economy is exemplary. The strategy may include investments to
transform select Technical and Vocational Institutions into elite
selective STEM-focused secondary schools that will train highly
motivated and able students, and focus on preparing them for ambitious
post secondary study and STEM careers.
Youth
employability, development of a STEM workforce and industrial
transformation together present common challenges, with implications for
STEM education that can neither be fully defined nor addressed by the
public policy sector, the university systems or the business sectors
alone in isolation. These challenges are best addressed by the creation
of appropriate and highly effective interface between government bodies
that make policies, the university community that trains the workforce,
and the business community that absorbs university graduates and
translates research products into improvements of the economic and
social sectors.
Policy makers are best positioned to institute such an interface as an
ongoing convening of leadership from all three sectors – government,
university, and industry – to dialogue candidly, co-define common
problems and craft overarching solutions, and to commit these three
communities to co-forge and co-champion execution of solutions to these
common problems. Such a convening will serve to catalyze support and
action across government, university, and industry to meet Africa’s
critical science and technology needs for the much-desired science-led
economic transformation and graduates employability.
While
specific African STEM initiatives—such as networks and Centers of
Excellence— enable important concrete development at varying levels of
impact, the vitality, stature and utility of each STEM disciplinary
enterprise (such as Physics, computer science, Engineering, etc.)
depends on the space it occupies on the regional spectrum of competing
interests, respectability, and resource allocation in the Higher
education sector.
*Original Article published in Africa Policy Review
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