The University Of Ndam (Darou Alim) Project
In a knowledge economy,
tertiary education can help economies gain ground
on more technologically advanced societies, as graduates
are likely to be more aware of and better able to
use new technologies.
Our analysis supports the idea that expanding tertiary education
may promote faster technological catch-up and improve
a country’s ability to maximize its economic
output. Sub-Saharan Africa’s current production
level is about 23 per cent below its production
possibility frontier. We conclude that, given this
shortfall, increasing the stock of tertiary education
by one year could maximize the rate of technological
catch-up at a rate of 0.63 percentage points a year,
or 3.2 percentage points over five years.
This finding challenges the belief that tertiary
education has little role in promoting economic
growth. Tertiary education may improve technological
catch-up and, in doing so, maximize Africa’s
potential to achieve its greatest possible economic
growth given current constraints. Investing in tertiary
education in Africa may accelerate technological
diffusion, which would decrease knowledge gaps and
help reduce poverty in the region.
The Dakar summit on “Education for All”
in 2000, for example, advocated only for primary
education as a driver of social welfare. It left
tertiary education in the background.
Part of the reason for the exclusion of higher education from development
initiatives lies in the shortage of empirical evidence that it affects
economic growth and poverty reduction. After World War II, several economists,
including Milton Friedman, Gary Becker, and Jacob Mincer, developed the
“human capital” theory to examine the benefits of education
for individuals and society.
<next
>
