Africa Human Development

14 items available

Permanent URI for this collection

http://hdl.handle.net/10986/2144

This series of country-specific books and working papers are prepared in collaboration with relevant governments and partner organizations in order to enhance the knowledge base for policy development. These books institutionalize our collective knowledge in the field of health, education, labor markets, and other aspects of human development so that this knowledge can be widely shared among stakeholders. This series was discontinued in 2012.

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Education in the Republic of South Sudan : Status and Challenges for a New System

(Washington, DC, 2012-06-22) World Bank

This education status report (ESR), prepared at the request of the Government of South Sudan (GoSS), provides a comprehensive snapshot of an education sector that is emerging from a long period of civil strife. It confirms the strong appetite among the people for education; in turn, more educated citizens are needed to provide the bedrock of the new country and its prospects. The purpose of this report is to enhance the knowledge base for policy development in the education sector and, more broadly, create a platform for engaging a diverse audience in dialogue on education policies in the new country. The ultimate aim is to help develop a shared vision for the future of the education system among government, citizens, and partners in Africa's newest nation. The report clearly shows that the education system in South Sudan faces all the challenges of a new nation that is making a visible effort to catch up quickly from a very low base by rapidly increasing student enrollment. These challenges include a concentration of students in the early grades; a high proportion of overage students, repetition, and dropout; and weak levels of student learning. Further, the report indicates that South Sudan is beginning to feel the effects of its success at increasing enrollment at the primary level with growing demand for secondary and higher education. The report also highlights the low overall quality of education, and emphasizes that quality of education and accountability of the education sector should become central considerations early on in the development of the education system. Finally, the report emphasizes the importance of South Sudan's unique Alternative Education System (AES), which will continue to play a central part in the education system for years to come. The majority of youth and adults in the country today may never benefit from formal basic education, but their learning needs must be met if South Sudan is to build a solid state and society. The AES is currently offering accelerated learning programs to more than 200,000 youth and adults and holds significant promise.
The Status of the Education Sector in Sudan

(World Bank, 2012-01-24) World Bank

This publication is the first comprehensive overview of the education sector in Sudan. The challenge that remains is to design policy responses to the issues identified within the forthcoming education sector strategic plan. More important, these policies-already being discussed with the Ministry of General Education (MoGE) must be effectively implemented so that Sudan can make faster progress toward achieving the Education for All (EFA) targets and Millennium Development Goal's (MDGs). It is my hope that this report will serve as the basis for an evidence-based and equity oriented approach to education planning and investment. This approach will have positive repercussions for overall economic growth, poverty alleviation, and human development in 21st-century Sudan. This report was prepared in collaboration with a national team from the MoGE and partners active in the education sector in Sudan. Over a period of 18 months, this collaboration facilitated considerable capacity building in data collection and analysis, as well as regular dissemination of the analysis to a wider audience.
Combating Malnutrition in Ethiopia : An Evidence-Based Approach for Sustained Results

(World Bank, 2012) Rajkumar, Andrew Sunil ; Gaukler, Christopher ; Tilahun, Jessica

Malnutrition can be transient like an acute disease. More often, it is chronic, a lifelong, intergenerational condition beginning early in life and continuing into old age. Most under-nutrition starts during pregnancy and the first two years of life. After a child reaches 24 months of age, damage from early malnutrition is irreversible. Various indicators are commonly used to measure and monitor malnutrition, including rates of stunting, wasting, and underweight among children under five years of age (see the glossary for definitions and explanations). Stunting is a measure of long-term, chronic malnutrition. Wasting is a measure of more transient, acute, but reversible malnutrition. These two measures are often not highly correlated. Underweight is a composite index of stunting and wasting; an underweight child can be stunted, wasted, or both. The government of Ethiopia formulated and approved the first National Nutrition Strategy in February 2008 to concentrate efforts on reducing malnutrition. The National Nutrition Program was approved in December 2008 to implement the strategy following a programmatic approach. The Ministry of Health is the lead agency overseeing the program and implementing its key aspects; other ministries and sectors are also involved in the multisectoral effort to reduce malnutrition.
Developing Post-Primary Education in Sub-Saharan Africa : Assessing the Financial Sustainability of Alternative Pathways

(World Bank, 2010) Mingat, Alain ; Ledoux, Blandine ; Rakotomalala, Ramahatra

All countries in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) face the prospect of a substantial increase in the number of primary school completers in the coming years. Although initial conditions vary widely from country to country, this increase will inevitably intensify pressure on the education system, particularly at the secondary and tertiary levels. African countries may thus find it timely to align their education policies and strategies to the emerging challenges. A key goal is to ensure that the education system continues to develop in an efficient, equitable, and fiscally sustainable manner even as it expands to accommodate the rising numbers seeking a place in secondary and tertiary education. The rest of this report is organized as follows. Chapter two elaborates the policy context for education development in SSA. Chapter three explains the methodology and data sources. Chapter four examines the challenges and constraints posed by the sheer volume of increases in enrollments in post-primary education with which most education systems in SSA must grapple in the coming years. Taking these constraints into account, the report evaluates the scope for policy development from three perspectives in the subsequent chapters: the coverage of education systems (chapter five), the quality and cost of service delivery (chapter six), and the division of financing by public and private sources (chapter seven). The fiscal implications of plausible policy packages that SSA countries might consider are assessed in chapter eight. Chapter nine seems up the general conclusions of the report.
School Construction Strategies for Universal Primary Education in Africa : Should Communities Be Empowered to Build their Schools?

(World Bank, 2009) Theunynck, Serge

This book examines the scope of the infrastructure challenge in Sub-Saharan Africa and the constraints to scaling up at an affordable cost. It assesses the experiences of African countries with school planning, school facility designs, construction technologies, and construction management over the past thirty years, and draws lessons on promising approaches to enable African countries to scale up the facilities required to achieve the Education for All (EFA) goals and Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) of complete quality primary education for all children at the lowest marginal cost. The book is organized along the following lines. Chapter one reviews the nature and scope of the primary school infrastructure challenges. Chapter two reviews the experience of African countries with school planning and resource allocation norms and how they have affected the volume, functionality, and distribution of primary school facilities. Chapters three, four, and five examine the impact of construction technology and approaches to construction management on the cost of school infrastructure and the ability to scale up. Chapter six delves more deeply into how to set up one of the most cost- effective approaches to school provision the community-based approach. Chapter seven looks at maintenance issues. Chapter eight deals with corruption and chapter nine with donors. Chapter ten provides an estimate of the infrastructure cost of the EFA challenge and recommendation for countries and donors to improve the efficiency of the resources spent for school construction.
Teachers for Rural Schools : Experiences in Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Tanzania, and Uganda

(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2008) Mulkeen, Aidan ; Chen, Dandan

Achieving universal primary education and "Education for All" (EFA) is one of the development priorities within the context of the millennium development goals. In many Sub-Saharan African countries, one of the key challenges is to provide good-quality basic education to the 10-20 percent of primary school-age children who are still out of school. Among these out-of-school children, the most difficult to reach are living in rural and remote areas. In recent years, large investments have greatly improved school infrastructure and access, but finding effective ways of supplying teachers to schools in rural and remote areas remains a key policy concern. To examine the issues related to providing teachers for rural schools, five countries-Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Tanzania, and Uganda-prepared national case studies and, along with representatives from Zambia, came together for a workshop on "policy, planning, and management of rural primary school teachers" in Lesotho in May 2005. Building on the national reports, this workshop considered the challenges of teacher provision in rural areas and examined the viable policy options.
At the Crossroads Choice for Secondary Education in Sub-Saharan Africa

(Washington, DC : World Bank, 2008) Verspoor, Adriaan M

The challenges of education development in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) at the beginning of the 21st century are urgent and unprecedented. Faced with persistent gaps in the coverage of primary schooling, almost all countries have launched major efforts to ensure that all children will have the opportunity to complete primary education of acceptable quality. Concurrently, accelerating economic growth and social change are creating an urgent imperative to expand access to further learning to strengthen the human resources base. This report provides a timely resource on good practices and potential solutions for developing and sustaining high-quality secondary education systems in African countries. It contains elements of a roadmap for improving the responsiveness of Africa's secondary education systems to the challenges of the 21st century. Its main objective is to facilitate policy dialogue within African countries and between those countries and their development partners. This book addresses issues concerning the education of youth about 12 to 18 years old. It draws on the outcomes of the Secondary Education in Africa (SEIA) initiative, which supported workshops in Kampala, Dakar, and Accra and commissioned eight thematic studies and several background papers underpinning key sections of this book. The emphasis is on general junior and senior secondary education, complementing earlier work on skills development in Sub-Saharan Africa. Secondary education has generally been neglected in education policy and practice. This is now changing, but still suffers from being addressed separately from other parts of the system. What are needed are secondary education plans that are integrated with longer-term national plans for education development.
Building Science, Technology, and Innovation Capacity in Rwanda : Developing Practical Solutions to Practical Problems

(Washington, DC : World Bank, 2008) Watkins, Alfred ; Verma, Anubha

The purpose of this report is to show how development issues and policy initiatives shaped the design and structure of the science, technology, and innovation (STI) capacity-building program that eventually emerged from the partnership between the Government of Rwanda and the World Bank. Too often, government STI capacity building programs do not closely link specific STI investments and the country's economic and social development objectives, almost as if investing in science and research and development (R&D) obviated the need to design detailed programmatic linkages and develop mission oriented capacity-building programs. These challenges fall into two broad categories: (a) improving the lives of the rural poor, reducing poverty, and achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and (b) generating wealth, diversifying the economy, and supporting private sector initiatives to produce and sell value-added natural resource (mostly agricultural) exports.
Costs and Financing of Higher Education in Francophone Africa

(Washington, DC : World Bank, 2008) Brossard, Mathieu ; Foko, Borel ; UNESCO-BREDA

This study is a follow-up to the Higher Education for Francophone Africa's Development Conference, held from June 13 to 15, 2006 in Ouagadougou at the initiative of the World Bank in collaboration with the Government of Burkina Faso, the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the Agence Universitaire de la Francophonie. It continues and expands upon discussions that took place during that event. This study includes two sections. The first analyzes the expenditure for the higher education in the countries of French-speaking Africa by adopting a dual comparison approach: (i) chronologically, for the last 15 years, and (ii) inter alia, in particular juxtaposing French-speaking Africa compared to other developing regions. The second part presents financial simulation models in regard to national higher education development plans for the countries of French-speaking Africa.
Education in Sierra Leone : Present Challenges, Future Opportunities

(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2007) World Bank

The purpose of this report is to provide an analysis of the education sector that enables a shared understanding among stakeholders, and thus lays a foundation for the preparation of an Education Sector Plan. With this objective in mind, the study outlines the current status of the education sector and highlights issues that policy makers need to address to move the sector forward. It also simulates a few policy scenarios and their financial implications to facilitate discussions about future feasible, affordable, and sustainable policy options. The coverage of this report -- a stock-taking exercise based on data, studies, reports, and documents available up to the 2004/05 school year -- is limited to key factors, including access, quality, equity, management, and finance, and has an emphasis on basic education.