Moving Beyond Poverty-Laced Certificates

It is indeed a pessimistic fact that Africa may have 90% of the world's poor by 2030. However, lessons from history point to an optimistic future.




Our colonial masters thought out a system of education that churns out experts and managers for established business systems, political order, and constricted economic structures. Here is our 21st century outcome: a teeming population of entitled 'educated unemployed' people with nothing more than certificates to brandish.


Moreover, with Africa's ever growing population and relatively stagnant absorptive and industrial capacity, our rising unemployment and poverty rates should not be surprising. 


My stance is that Africa and its development thinkers can forge and institute sustainable systems of re-orientation, critical and creative thought, and balanced education that can release empowered nation-builders and wealth creators. 


Africa has all the creative, human, and natural resources it needs to minimise its incidence of poverty. Obviously, decades of aid dependence have not transformed the African narrative, so let us try to take the enterprise curve.


The African finance market (in addition to inter-continental finance markets) is looking up, with visionaries like the AfDB President, so it is safe and secure to venture. 


Let us roll up our sleeves.

#Africa
#Nigeria
#development

Photo credit: Bloomberg

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