Publication: Sub-Saharan African Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics Research: A Decade of Development
Loading...
Files in English
4,250 downloads
Published
2016
ISSN
Date
2015-11-25
Author(s)
Editor(s)
Abstract
This book analyzes Africa's current performance in Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) research, as well as future trends. It looks at Africa's research performance over a decade, what it means for the continent's development and how it can benefit the growing number of young people who leave university each year looking for jobs. The book focuses on research output and citation impact, important indicators of the strength of a region's research enterprise. These indicators are correlated with the region's long-term development and important drivers of economic success. Moreover, research is a key ingredient for quality higher education. The research performance of these regions is compared to that of South Africa, Malaysia, and Vietnam; the latter two countries had a comparable research base to the SSA regions at the beginning of the period of analysis.
Link to Data Set
Citation
“Blom, Andreas; Lan, George; Adil, Mariam. 2016. Sub-Saharan African Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics Research: A Decade of Development. World Bank Study. © World Bank. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/23142 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.”
Digital Object Identifier
Associated URLs
Associated content
Other publications in this report series
Journal
Journal Volume
Journal Issue
Collections
Related items
Showing items related by metadata.
Publication Developing Science, Mathematics, and ICT Education in Sub-Saharan Africa : Patterns and Promising Practices(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2007)This thematic study is about developing science, mathematics and ICT (SMICT) in secondary education. The study is based on country studies from 10 Sub-Saharan African countries: Botswana, Burkina Faso, Ghana, Namibia, Nigeria, Senegal, South Africa, Uganda, Tanzania, and Zimbabwe, and a literature review. It reveals a number of huge challenges in SMICT education in Sub-Saharan Africa: poorly-resourced schools; large classes; a curriculum hardly relevant to the daily lives of students; a lack of qualified teachers; and inadequate teacher education programs.Publication Benchmarking Institutions of Applied Sciences, Engineering and Technology in Sub-Saharan Africa(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2016-06-06)In this benchmarking report, a comprehensive benchmarking analysis of the participating Sub-Saharan African universities is conducted in terms of the key indicators identified and constructed for the purpose of assessing institutional performance and health. While university benchmarking is a relatively new approach for most Sub-Saharan African universities that are participating for the first time in this process, it has been used as a diagnosis and planning tool by many universities to understand and track their own performance over time and against their local and global peers. For Sub-Saharan African universities, there is a need to take stock of outstanding achievements in the past, catch up with local peers in the near future, and set long-term targets on the road to becoming a top-performing university in the world. It is expected that this benchmarking analysis will serve as the basis for understanding the relative performance of Sub-Saharan African universities as well as a catalyst for these universities to take appropriate quality improvement measures and carry out effective strategic planning. For this phase of the Partnership for Skills in Applied Sciences, Engineering and Technology (PASET) Regional Benchmarking Initiative, 28 out of the 48 Sub-Saharan African universities that signed up have participated and attempted the benchmarking exercise to different extents.Publication Expanding Tertiary Education for Well-Paid Jobs(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2016-05-11)Expanding tertiary education with quality, relevance, and equity is one of the most decisive challenges facing Kenya’s future, including achievement of the ideals of the 2010 Constitution and, especially, its 2030 vision, which aims at transforming Kenya into a “newly industrializing, middle-income, globally competitive, and prosperous country.” That is because tertiary education can contribute in a critical manner to successfully overcome several of the country’s challenges. This book provides analysis and policy recommendations to the government of Kenya, tertiary education leaders, and the many stakeholders on managing the massive tertiary education expansion facing the country. It discusses the motivation for the analysis and its choice of three critical topics— quality and relevance, governance, and student financing. Then it reviews the findings in each area and concludes with a set of policy recommendations.Publication Mathematics Education in Sub-Saharan Africa(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2016-06)This study on Assessment of mathematics education in Sub Saharan African countries is in support of the efforts to improve mathematics education in the countries of Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). The study is in response to a growing recognition that countries in SSA will need to boost performance in the Science Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) subjects if they are to realize their full potential in a competitive global market increasingly shaped by the use of new technologies. Chapter 1 of this report lists the constituent countries of SSA and describes the study’s research questions and methods. Chapter 2 explores the economic and social arguments for making the improvement of mathematics education in the region a priority. Chapter 3 presents evidence as to current levels of numeracy and mathematical competence in the countries of SSA from a wide range of assessments. Chapter 4 looks at factors which have the potential to raise mathematical achievement indirectly by improving the quality of schooling in general. Chapter 5 considers the effectiveness of various interventions targeted specifically at improving mathematical outcomes. Chapter 6 and Chapter 7 are dedicated to issues concerning the capacities of serving teachers of mathematics and the pre-service training arrangements for those preparing to teach mathematics in schools. Chapter 8 describes assessment practices and their potential roles in improving learning outcomes. Chapter 9 gives an overview of a range of more recent initiatives designed to improve mathematics education both in SSA and beyond. Chapter 10 summarizes the study’s main findings and sets out some suggestions for overcoming barriers to progress. Finally, Appendix A sets out the findings of the in-country surveys.Publication Employability and Skill Set of Newly Graduated Engineers in India(2011-04-01)Skill shortage remains one of the major constraints to continued growth of the Indian economy. This employer survey seeks to address this knowledge-gap by answering three questions: (i) Which skills do employers consider important when hiring new engineering graduates? (ii) How satisfied are employers with the skills of engineering graduates? and (iii) In which important skills are the engineers falling short? The results confirm a widespread dissatisfaction with the current graduates -- 64 percent of employers hiring fresh engineering graduates are only somewhat satisfied with the quality of the new hires or worse. After classifying all skills by factor analysis, the authors find that employers perceive Soft Skills (Core Employability Skills and Communication Skills) to be very important. Skill gaps are particularly severe in the higher-order thinking skills ranked according to Bloom's taxonomy. In contrast, communication in English has the smallest skill gap, but remains one of the most demanded skills by the employers. Although employers across India asks for the same set of soft skills, their skill demands differ for Professional Skills across economic sectors, company sizes, and regions. These findings suggest that engineering education institutions should: (i) seek to improve the skill set of graduates; (ii) recognize the importance of Soft Skills, (iii) refocus the assessments, teaching-learning process, and curricula away from lower-order thinking skills, such as remembering and understanding, toward higher-order skills, such as analyzing and solving engineering problems, as well as creativity; and (iv) interact more with employers to understand the particular demand for skills in that region and sector.
Users also downloaded
Showing related downloaded files
Publication Doing Business in 2005(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2004)2004 was a good year for doing business in most transition economies, the World Bank Group concluded in its Doing Business in 2005 survey, the second in its series tracking regulatory reforms aimed at improving the ease of doing business in the world's economies. However, the survey found that conditions for starting and running a business in poorer countries were consistently more burdensome than in richer countries. The top 5 economies on the ease of doing business were, in order: New Zealand, United States, Singapore, Hong Kong (China), and Australia. Slovakia was the leading reformer, together with Lithuania breaking into the list of the 20 economies with the best business conditions. The major impetus for reform in 2003 was competition in the enlarged European Union. Doing Business in 2004 presented indicators in 5 topics (starting a business, hiring and firing workers, enforcing contracts, getting credit and closing a business), so this report updates these measures. There are two additional sets: registering property and protecting investors. The indicators are used to analyze economic and social outcomes, such as productivity, investment, informality, corruption, unemployment, and poverty, and identify what reforms have worked, where and why.Publication Poverty, Prosperity, and Planet Report 2024(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-10-15)The Poverty, Prosperity, and Planet Report 2024 is the latest edition of the series formerly known as Poverty and Shared Prosperity. The report emphasizes that reducing poverty and increasing shared prosperity must be achieved in ways that do not come at unacceptably high costs to the environment. The current “polycrisis”—where the multiple crises of slow economic growth, increased fragility, climate risks, and heightened uncertainty have come together at the same time—makes national development strategies and international cooperation difficult. Offering the first post-Coronavirus (COVID)-19 pandemic assessment of global progress on this interlinked agenda, the report finds that global poverty reduction has resumed but at a pace slower than before the COVID-19 crisis. Nearly 700 million people worldwide live in extreme poverty with less than US$2.15 per person per day. Progress has essentially plateaued amid lower economic growth and the impacts of COVID-19 and other crises. Today, extreme poverty is concentrated mostly in Sub-Saharan Africa and fragile settings. At a higher standard more typical of upper-middle-income countries—US$6.85 per person per day—almost one-half of the world is living in poverty. The report also provides evidence that the number of countries that have high levels of income inequality has declined considerably during the past two decades, but the pace of improvements in shared prosperity has slowed, and that inequality remains high in Latin America and the Caribbean and Sub-Saharan Africa. Worldwide, people’s incomes today would need to increase fivefold on average to reach a minimum prosperity threshold of US$25 per person per day. Where there has been progress in poverty reduction and shared prosperity, there is evidence of an increasing ability of countries to manage natural hazards, but climate risks are significantly higher in the poorest settings. Nearly one in five people globally is at risk of experiencing welfare losses due to an extreme weather event from which they will struggle to recover. The interconnected issues of climate change and poverty call for a united and inclusive effort from the global community. Development cooperation stakeholders—from governments, nongovernmental organizations, and the private sector to communities and citizens acting locally in every corner of the globe—hold pivotal roles in promoting fair and sustainable transitions. By emphasizing strategies that yield multiple benefits and diligently monitoring and addressing trade-offs, we can strive toward a future that is prosperous, equitable, and resilient.Publication Global Economic Prospects, January 2025(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-01-16)Global growth is expected to hold steady at 2.7 percent in 2025-26. However, the global economy appears to be settling at a low growth rate that will be insufficient to foster sustained economic development—with the possibility of further headwinds from heightened policy uncertainty and adverse trade policy shifts, geopolitical tensions, persistent inflation, and climate-related natural disasters. Against this backdrop, emerging market and developing economies are set to enter the second quarter of the twenty-first century with per capita incomes on a trajectory that implies substantially slower catch-up toward advanced-economy living standards than they previously experienced. Without course corrections, most low-income countries are unlikely to graduate to middle-income status by the middle of the century. Policy action at both global and national levels is needed to foster a more favorable external environment, enhance macroeconomic stability, reduce structural constraints, address the effects of climate change, and thus accelerate long-term growth and development.Publication Digital Progress and Trends Report 2023(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-03-05)Digitalization is the transformational opportunity of our time. The digital sector has become a powerhouse of innovation, economic growth, and job creation. Value added in the IT services sector grew at 8 percent annually during 2000–22, nearly twice as fast as the global economy. Employment growth in IT services reached 7 percent annually, six times higher than total employment growth. The diffusion and adoption of digital technologies are just as critical as their invention. Digital uptake has accelerated since the COVID-19 pandemic, with 1.5 billion new internet users added from 2018 to 2022. The share of firms investing in digital solutions around the world has more than doubled from 2020 to 2022. Low-income countries, vulnerable populations, and small firms, however, have been falling behind, while transformative digital innovations such as artificial intelligence (AI) have been accelerating in higher-income countries. Although more than 90 percent of the population in high-income countries was online in 2022, only one in four people in low-income countries used the internet, and the speed of their connection was typically only a small fraction of that in wealthier countries. As businesses in technologically advanced countries integrate generative AI into their products and services, less than half of the businesses in many low- and middle-income countries have an internet connection. The growing digital divide is exacerbating the poverty and productivity gaps between richer and poorer economies. The Digital Progress and Trends Report series will track global digitalization progress and highlight policy trends, debates, and implications for low- and middle-income countries. The series adds to the global efforts to study the progress and trends of digitalization in two main ways: · By compiling, curating, and analyzing data from diverse sources to present a comprehensive picture of digitalization in low- and middle-income countries, including in-depth analyses on understudied topics. · By developing insights on policy opportunities, challenges, and debates and reflecting the perspectives of various stakeholders and the World Bank’s operational experiences. This report, the first in the series, aims to inform evidence-based policy making and motivate action among internal and external audiences and stakeholders. The report will bring global attention to high-performing countries that have valuable experience to share as well as to areas where efforts will need to be redoubled.Publication Quantitative Analysis of Road Transport Agreements (QuARTA)(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2013-04-13)Road freight transport is indispensable to international economic cooperation and foreign trade. Across all continents, it is commonly used for short and medium distances and in long distance haulage when minimizing time is important. In all instances governments play a critical role in ensuring the competitive advantage of private sector operators. Countries often have many opportunities to minimize the physical or administrative barriers that increase costs, take measures to enhance the attractiveness and competitiveness of road transport, or generally nurture the integral role of international road freight transport in the global trade logistics industry. Road freight transport is critical to domestic and international trade. It is the dominant mode of transport for overland movement of trade traffic, carrying more than 80 percent of traffic in most regions. Generally, nearly all trade traffic is carried by road at some point. Therefore, the cost and quality of road transport services is of critical importance to trade competitiveness of countries and regions within countries. In fact, road transport is fundamental to modern international division of labor and supply-chain management.