Marlaine Lockheed

Facing Forward: Schooling for Learning in Africa

Sub-Saharan Africa is becoming more diverse, urbanized, and integrated regionally and globally, bringing the promise of more and better jobs to the continent’s sizable and growing youth population. Realizing this potential requires that young Africans have a solid foundation in basic education and opportunities for many of them to continue beyond basic education. These youths, the continent’s future workforce are essential for countries to tap into the world’s rich accumulation of scientific and technological knowledge for economic and social transformation. This mechanism is so critical that many, if not all, African leaders have increasingly made the building of knowledge capital a centerpiece of their countries’ visions and strategies for development. For the past 25 years, Sub-Saharan Africa has focused on enrolling students in primary school, the first step in developing human capital. How to build Sub-Saharan Africa’s knowledge capital by improving learning outcomes in basic education while expanding access and completion is the focus of this book. It draws lessons from the region and for the region about what works to boost learning and how to better implement what is known to have worked. It also adds to the literature with its extensive new analyses of multiple datasets from the region, integrating findings about children’s learning, access to school, and progress through basic education.