5 minute read
Increasing educational opportunities in Africa, Keith Allen
When Cyrille Nkontchou and Eric Pignot met in Boston, Massachusetts in 2012 they discussed the low proportion of African students at their alma maters – Harvard and MIT. Why so few, especially in comparison to students from India? The India/Africa comparison is valuable because, although India has a slightly higher population than the 54 African countries combined (1.339 billion vs 1.216 billion), the demographic profile of Africa means that the youth population is slightly larger. Looking at the number of students in higher education in the USA, however, reveals a clear bias towards India – with three times as many students as from the African continent.
There is no doubt that students across Africa are just as determined to obtain a good education as are those in India; they have the same innate abilities. The difference – as Cyrille and Eric appreciated – is opportunity. Of course, there is wide diversity across the vast African continent. Countries such as Ghana and Egypt have powerful historic traditions in educational provision; others such as Niger and Côte d’Ivoire offer students much reduced opportunities. Enko Keur Gorgui: An MYP2 Science
Increasing educational opportunities in Africa
Keith Allen explains a project that offers opportunities to students across the continent
class (in Senegal).
Examination of the detailed data from UNESCO on student mobility in relation to higher education (http://uis.unesco. org/en/uis-student-flow) shows that the disparity noticed by Cyrille and Eric is not totally clear cut. UIS data shows 535,563 African students moving to another country for higher education, compared with 332,033 for India. But, part of the African mobility is to other parts of the continent. Universities in Egypt, Ghana and South Africa have strong reputations; newer institutions in those countries and in Kenya, Mauritius, Morocco and Rwanda, for instance, have growing appeal. Moreover, for francophone students, the main direction of movement for tertiary education is to France … where African students outnumber Indians by 40:1.
Those caveats aside, it is still clear that the availability of high quality education in many parts of Africa is significantly below the opportunities afforded in other developing nations. Cyrille and Eric decided to try to ameliorate the situation, and Enko Education was born to establish a network of African international schools. Enko Education’s mission is to increase
Enko Riverside: enthusiastic Cambridge Lower Secondary students at their school (in Mozambique). access to the world’s leading universities through high quality international education. In 2020, it will be running 16 schools in Botswana, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Côte d’Ivoire, Mali, Mozambique, Senegal, South Africa and Zambia. Within the next few years, the number of schools is likely to double.
Readers of this magazine will have clear ideas as to what is meant by ‘high quality international education’. In terms of curriculum frameworks, Enko Education schools offer International Baccalaureate (IB) programmes (Primary Years Programme (PYP), Middle Years Programme (MYP), Diploma Programme (DP), thus far); one is operating Fieldwork’s International Early Years Curriculum; several run Cambridge Primary and/or Secondary courses. These provide opportunities for African youngsters to develop the skills and abilities to be able to access good universities and then, after a few years, to return to Africa to make significant contributions to its rapid development.
But, running these programmes in our contexts is tough. We must keep costs down to ensure that local families can afford the opportunities provided. [That said, there are also significant scholarship programmes to allow more access to disadvantaged youngsters.] Some things that educators in more affluent parts of the world may take for granted are much more difficult in Africa. Our schools are vast distances from each other. For example, flying from the Head Office in Johannesburg to Dakar takes at least 15 hours. So, getting teachers together for professional development has to be done online. Accessing equipment or chemicals for science laboratories, and other resources, requires many months of advance planning … and significant costs. Even then, bureaucracy may get in the way.
One key to reducing the impact of these locationdependent increased costs is to have a small but dedicated team in ‘Enko Central’. Some are based in South Africa, others in Burkina Faso, Kenya, France, the UK and Georgia. Regular, tightly-focused Zoom sessions, during which specific skills are shared across the network, allow for effective communication. The biggest cost-cutter, which allows the schools to be affordable for middle-class African families, is only to hire local staff. Each school is led by a highly-experienced international educator. S/he then recruits teachers with the potential to be effective managers of learning. Enko Education can offer salaries that are competitive in relation to national schools, although they fall short of the figures offered by ‘traditional’ international schools with their globally-nomadic teachers. Much training is done in-house – although more is always needed. Recently, we have been able to utilise the expertise of 30+ highly experienced IB DP educators (some working in French, others in English; many with 20+ years of experience of the IB DP) to help our teachers with assessment tasks. All has been done online.
The next step is to establish a mentoring system whereby teachers in Enko schools can be guided by ‘experts’ so that they too can become highly skilled educators. We will start with IB DP Mathematics and Science, but then expand into other subjects and programmes. Each ‘expert’ is being asked to give two hours of her/his time per week during term-time. A small honorarium is offered.
When Cyrille and Eric first discussed the idea of expanding educational opportunities for African youth they had great dreams, but did not know how well the ideas could come to fruition. When a student from the first cohort to graduate in 2017 gained access to Yale (with a significant financial aid package), they got a boost from seeing their plans can come to fruition. Two years later, with nearly 3,000 students in our schools, we know that many more ambitious Africans will be flooding through the gates of top universities in the coming years.
