• Agenda
  • Initiatives
  • Reports
  • Events
  • About
    • Our Mission
    • Leadership and Governance
    • Our Members and Partners
    • Communities
    • History
    • Klaus Schwab
    • Media
    • Contact Us
    • Careers
    • World Economic Forum USA
    • Privacy and Terms of Use
  • EN ES FR 日本語 中文
  • Login to TopLink

We use cookies to improve your experience on our website. By using our website you consent to all cookies in accordance with our updated Cookie Notice.

I accept
    Hamburger
  • World Economic Forum Logo
  • Agenda
  • Initiatives
  • Reports
  • Events
  • About
  • TopLink
  • Search Cancel

Report Home

  • Top 10 Trends of 2015
    • 1. Deepening income inequality
    • 2. Persistent jobless growth
    • 3. Lack of leadership
    • 4. Rising geostrategic competition
    • 5. Weakening of representative democracy
    • 6. Rising pollution in the developing world
    • 7. Increasing occurrence of severe weather events
    • 8. Intensifying nationalism
    • 9. Increasing water stress
    • 10. Growing importance of health in the economy
    • Immigration in focus: an overlooked trend?
  • Regional Challenges
    • Regional Challenges: Middle-East & North Africa
    • Regional Challenges: Europe
    • Regional Challenges: Asia
    • Regional Challenges: North America
    • Regional Challenges: Sub-Saharan Africa
    • Regional Challenges: Latin America
    • Tension points: Assessing the state of geopolitics
  • Global leadership and governance
    • A call to lead: the essential qualities for stronger leadership
    • Global Leadership Index
    • New governance architecture: strategies to change the way we lead
    • LGBT: moving towards equality
  • Future Agenda
    • Synthetic biology: Designing our existence?
    • Brain-computer interaction: Transforming our networked future?
    • Deep sea mining: The new resource frontier?
    • Emerging nuclear powers: A safe path to energy security?
    • The evolution of monetary policy: A new era for central banks?
    • Mapping the future: The future of education
    • Mapping the future: The future of work
    • Mapping the future: The future of the internet
  • About this report
    • Welcome
    • Introduction
    • Making the Outlook on the Global Agenda 2015
    • Acknowledgements
  • Browse by Topic
    • Africa
    • Asia-Pacific
    • Brain Research
    • Climate Change
    • Corruption
    • Decarbonizing Energy
    • Economics and Finance
    • Economies
    • Education
    • Emerging Technologies
    • Employment, Skills and Human Capital
    • Environment and Sustainability
    • Europe and Eurasia
    • Future of Government
    • Global Economic Imbalances
    • Global Financial System
    • Global Governance
    • Global Health and Healthcare
    • Global Issues
    • Human Rights
    • Industries
    • Internet Governance
    • Latin America
    • Middle East and North Africa
    • Migration
    • North America
    • Nuclear Security
    • Oceans
    • Science and Technology
    • Security and Governance
    • Society and Human Development
    • Water
  • Top 10 Infographics
  • Download as PDF
  • Download Chinese language version as PDF
Outlook on the Global Agenda 2015   Regional Challenges: Sub-Saharan Africa
Home
Outlook on the Global Agenda 2015   Regional Challenges: Sub-Saharan Africa
Home
Outlook on the Global Agenda 2015 Home
  • Report Home
  • Top 10 Trends of 2015
    • 1. Deepening income inequality
    • 2. Persistent jobless growth
    • 3. Lack of leadership
    • 4. Rising geostrategic competition
    • 5. Weakening of representative democracy
    • 6. Rising pollution in the developing world
    • 7. Increasing occurrence of severe weather events
    • 8. Intensifying nationalism
    • 9. Increasing water stress
    • 10. Growing importance of health in the economy
    • Immigration in focus: an overlooked trend?
  • Regional Challenges
    • Regional Challenges: Middle-East & North Africa
    • Regional Challenges: Europe
    • Regional Challenges: Asia
    • Regional Challenges: North America
    • Regional Challenges: Sub-Saharan Africa
    • Regional Challenges: Latin America
    • Tension points: Assessing the state of geopolitics
  • Global leadership and governance
    • A call to lead: the essential qualities for stronger leadership
    • Global Leadership Index
    • New governance architecture: strategies to change the way we lead
    • LGBT: moving towards equality
  • Future Agenda
    • Synthetic biology: Designing our existence?
    • Brain-computer interaction: Transforming our networked future?
    • Deep sea mining: The new resource frontier?
    • Emerging nuclear powers: A safe path to energy security?
    • The evolution of monetary policy: A new era for central banks?
    • Mapping the future: The future of education
    • Mapping the future: The future of work
    • Mapping the future: The future of the internet
  • About this report
    • Welcome
    • Introduction
    • Making the Outlook on the Global Agenda 2015
    • Acknowledgements
  • Browse by Topic
    • Africa
    • Asia-Pacific
    • Brain Research
    • Climate Change
    • Corruption
    • Decarbonizing Energy
    • Economics and Finance
    • Economies
    • Education
    • Emerging Technologies
    • Employment, Skills and Human Capital
    • Environment and Sustainability
    • Europe and Eurasia
    • Future of Government
    • Global Economic Imbalances
    • Global Financial System
    • Global Governance
    • Global Health and Healthcare
    • Global Issues
    • Human Rights
    • Industries
    • Internet Governance
    • Latin America
    • Middle East and North Africa
    • Migration
    • North America
    • Nuclear Security
    • Oceans
    • Science and Technology
    • Security and Governance
    • Society and Human Development
    • Water
  • Top 10 Infographics
  • Download as PDF
  • Download Chinese language version as PDF
Image Map

Middle East & North Africa | Europe | Asia | North America | Sub-Saharan Africa | Latin America | Tension points: Assessing the state of geopolitics

Share

Download PDF
  • Africa
  • Economies
  • Education

Author

ramos

 

Maria Ramos
Chief Executive Officer of Barclays Africa Group, and Chair of the Global Agenda Council on Africa

Author

ramos

 

Maria Ramos
Chief Executive Officer of Barclays Africa Group, and Chair of the Global Agenda Council on Africa


Tellingly, this year’s Survey on the Global Agenda revealed education and skills development as the biggest challenge facing Africa in 2015, followed by building sustainable governance systems and the delivery of hard infrastructure. Almost every stakeholder group ranked education as the most important issue; respondents also suggested that business is the stakeholder that will be most affected by Africa’s educational challenges.

Highlight

Tweet
African governments must remain focused on investing in education and skills improvement

Highlight

Tweet
African governments must remain focused on investing in education and skills improvement
While UNESCO predicts that Africa will soon be home to 50% of the world’s illiterate population, Maria Ramos, Chief Executive of Barclays Africa Group, points to the focus of governments and businesses on creating real improvements through training programmes and scholarships.

“We must make sure that governments remain focused on funding and investing in education and skills improvement, and that they encourage partnerships with donors, business and local communities,” she says.

quoteleft

We must make sure that governments remain focused on funding and investing in education and skills improvement.

quoteright

But given Africa’s rapid increase in mobile phone users – 40-fold since 2000 – it is clear that technology will play a fundamental role. Ramos points to Ghana’s Open Learning Exchange which looks at innovative teaching and learning models, as well as South African experiments with digitizing the curricula and making it available on tablets.

Key Challenges

“Apart from the fact that you take away a lot of logistics costs associated with it, mobile technology makes education accessible to young learners in remote parts of the country. It also addresses concerns about the quality of educators because you can upskill teachers quickly and provide them with ongoing support through a range of online platforms.”

Education isn’t the only area where African leaders must engage with their people.

Ramos highlights the significant improvements in “governance, fiscal management, macroeconomic management and greater accountability” made in countries like Rwanda. She says accountability remains the biggest obstacle to developing appropriate governance. “When you limit democracy and you have a lack of accountability to citizens, you undermine the basic principles that facilitate economic development and ensure broad political stability.”

While investment in human capital is critical, the need to address the infrastructure deficit is equally important.

Source: Survey on the Global Agenda 2014

Highlight

Tweet
Africa is facing infrastructural challenges that have an impact on economic development

Highlight

Tweet
Africa is facing infrastructural challenges that have an impact on economic development
Africa is facing infrastructural challenges – not least with regards to the provision of energy – that have an impact on economic development. Countries including Kenya, Tanzania, Nigeria, Ghana, South Africa and Ethiopia have made significant progress in both the renewable and non-renewable energy sectors, but growth and development can only be sustainable with additional targeted investments. And yet the results of this year’s Survey show pessimism around this issue. Almost 40% of respondents doubted that Africa’s infrastructural problems would be dealt with in a meaningful way in the near to mid-term future.

More optimistic observers point to the fact that the build-up of infrastructure is supported through foreign direct investments and trade with other emerging economies – such as the record $200 billion China-Africa trade flows – and agencies such as the African Development Bank and the World Bank. But for Ramos, a significant development is that regional and local investors are starting to chip in. This also helps to shift from traditional investments based on the extraction of natural resources to more “strategic investments focused on a broader set of development opportunities and long term sustainability”.


Source: Survey on the Global Agenda 2014

Related material

Back to Top
Subscribe for updates
A weekly update of what’s on the Global Agenda
Follow Us
About
Our Mission
Leadership and Governance
Our Members and Partners
The Fourth Industrial Revolution
Centre for the Fourth Industrial Revolution
Communities
History
Klaus Schwab
Our Impact
Media
Pictures
A Global Platform for Geostrategic Collaboration
Careers
Open Forum
Contact Us
Mapping Global Transformations
Code of Conduct
World Economic Forum LLC
Sustainability
World Economic Forum Privacy Policy
Media
News
Accreditation
Subscribe to our news
Members & Partners
Member login to TopLink
Strategic Partners' area
Partner Institutes' area
Global sites
Centre for the Fourth Industrial Revolution
Open Forum
Global Shapers
Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship
EN ES FR 日本語 中文
© 2021 World Economic Forum
Privacy Policy & Terms of Service