The adoption of the African Continental Free Trade Agreement (AfCFTA) promises to bring together over 1.2 billion people to a single market with a combined Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of more than 3 trillion dollars. According to the World Bank, it is expected to lift 30 million people out of extreme poverty and raise the incomes of another 68 million living in moderate poverty. By easing customs procedures and removing red  tapes, the implementation of the AfCFTA will create up to $292 million in potential income gains.

Like every initiative in the digital age, the AfCFTA holds a promise of serving as an essential catalyst for the digital economy by facilitating more trade within Africa. For example, the trade bloc will provide access to a single digital market for the thousands of digital startups and e-commerce services on the continent. Furthermore, with significant gains already being harnessed in Africa's digital space despite the impediments caused by the lack of integration, the full implementation of the AfCFTA will see businesses achieving their full potentials. 

The AfCFTA has the prospects to expand E-commerce as internet and mobile phone penetration across Africa has been consolidated. With E-commerce, boosting Intra African trade and achieving the main objective of the AfCFTA will be made easier. According to Ajay Kumar Bramdeo, the African Union's ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva, "E-commerce has the potential to lift intra-African trade from the current rate of 18% and to boost Africa's share of global trade, currently estimated at less than 3%".

Moreover, the cost of data infrastructure needed to expand internet penetration further in Africa, which is a requisite in achieving a single digital market on the continent, will be cheaper if the said infrastructure serves wider markets. As a result of the scale economies that will arise as member countries open up their markets, instalment of digital infrastructure shall become cheaper, thus making Single Digital Market’s dream by 2030 a realistic target. Nevertheless, it is not the digital economy alone that stands to gain from the free trade area. The digital economy can facilitate multiple value chains and lessen the traditional boundaries for the exchange of goods and services thereby improving the effectiveness and gains of the AfCFTA. This reflects a somewhat simultaneous relationship between the AfCFTA and the digital economy.

It is safe to say that going digital exposes nascent enterprises to international counterparts who enjoy some basic standards that make them globally competitive. Africa is full of digital startups that hold so much promise for stimulating economic activity. Therefore, given these promises of the African Continental Free Trade Agreement and the digital economy, a data governance framework becomes necessary. Winnie Byanyima, the immediate past Executive Director of Oxfam International in 2019 noted that Africa has to avoid the earlier trade blocs' mistakes who had no ‘referees’ and no ‘rules’ at some point. Situating Byanyima's concern in the digital context justifies the need for data governance if a continental free trade area with minimal mistakes is what Africa wants to have.

The adoption of the AfCFTA in 2018 coincided with a record $700 million in annual investments in African startups. This points to the sheer amount of potential that the sector has to make the African continental free trade area even more worthwhile. Creativities in the tech space would continue to attract large investments into the African economy. In 2020, payment startup Paystack founded in Lagos Nigeria was acquired by Silicon Valley giant Stripe for $200 million. Such acquisitions, if sustained, drive foreign exchange earnings and facilitate the knowledge exchange and technology transfer needed to leapfrog the nascent AfCFTA.

Companies in the digital and telecoms industry have been calling for harmonization of data to enable them create efficient data and digital services. Africa must look beyond setting fair rules of the game in trade in goods and services only. The digital and data ecosystems have to be governed according to universal standards. In order to protect our trade bloc from becoming a safe haven for foreign tech companies seeking  to operate within our domain and  take unfair advantage of the lack  of data regulations, Africans must  develop a framework that will guarantee safety, privacy, and dignity of individuals and businesses alike.

The timeliness of the AfCFTA cannot be overemphasized. The digital economy poses an immense employment capacity which is likely to widen significantly from what would become the world’s largest free trade area. On the one hand, the massive growth of e-commerce is assured and the minimum investment required to install data infrastructure becomes within reach as cost per state reduces due to economies of scale. On the other, more non-aid investments are expected to continue flowing into the African digital sector, which will transform into jobs for a wider pool of Africa’s teeming youth. It is now left for Africans to reasonably exploit this huge advantage. What is needed is a consolidation of the opportunities in the digital economy with comprehensive data governance enforcement. However, this cannot be left on to the private sector to address, as one cannot be a judge in their own court, the government of the various African countries must take up the responsibility to come up with concise and universal regulations to govern data usage. Nigeria has already enacted a data protection regulation and expanded the purview of its communication ministry to include the digital economy. While this institutional move is worth replicating in African countries that are yet to govern the use of data, each country must ensure strict enforcement and constant updating of the data protection regulation for it to serve its purpose.

Beyond the relationships that empirical papers try to establish between proximate determinants of education and learning outcomes, little is known about the mechanisms through which developing countries’ education systems transform inputs into learning outcomes. The Research on Improving Systems of Education (RISE) Nigeria team seeks to explore how these interactions occur and to influence both the investment in education inputs as well as learning outcomes. With 13.2 million out-of-school children and a 19 percent literacy rate among primary school completers age 18 to 37 (WBG 2018), Nigeria is an important case study for research on the political economy of basic education.

Several actors are involved in Nigeria’s basic education system. On the supply side, public institutions and agents are responsible for education policy and service delivery. The demand side includes students, parents and communities. The interactions between these actors—which are governed by resource constraints, social attitudes and norms, individual aspirations and incentives—produce not only the allocation of effort and resources but also the observed learning outcomes.

Figure 1: Political Economy Chart Flow in Nigeria

These actors can be further categorised under Donors, Government and Local Stakeholders. There is heterogeneity among local stakeholders, notably along income lines; wealthier families can exit the public education system in favour of private schools and are thus less reliant on education policy. These stakeholders’ engagement in the education sector remain interwoven, as each category of actors is indispensable to the others.

Table 1: Recurrent Actors in the Basic Education System of Nigeria

Generally, there is a disconnect between users of public services and the service providers in Nigeria. This dynamic may be due to the legacy of military rule, whose traits have lingered on till this day. Information asymmetry on the quality of education arises due to limited interaction among politicians, education policy makers, bureaucrats, practitioners, and the served public. This leads to inefficient resource allocation and poor outcomes. One way of addressing the disconnect between education stakeholders is through a process that generates a constructive dialogue, commitment to a set of shared targets and actions for achieving desired outcomes.

Such a process that bridges the supply and demand side of education is absent in many Nigerian states. Influenced by the different experiences of two Nigerian states (Ekiti and Oyo) in pursuing education reforms, the social contract component of the RISE Nigeria project seeks to study the political economy of education reform. Particularly, the study investigates how a process that brings together politicians and other education stakeholders to deliberate on education issues influences attitudes, behaviour, investment, and outcomes in education. The vehicle for formalizing this commitment is the social contract, which serves as a tool for stakeholders to seek accountability from each other.

The RISE Nigeria CRT is exogenously facilitating this process across five Nigerian states: Enugu, Oyo, Jigawa, Delta and Bauchi. The first phase of the study took advantage of the 2019 general elections cycle to initiate this process by conducting Education Awareness Workshops (EAWs) in select treatment states1. EAWs provided a platform for engagement and information exchange between stakeholders in the education sector and gubernatorial candidates. In addition, the EAWs provided a forum for research and information about education in the state to filter into the political process.

While each state has its unique challenges and policy directions, the issues identified and discussed by stakeholders touched on access, quality, finance, and equity. In the northern states, conservative social norms, insurgency, and severe school resource constraints (infrastructure and human) limit access to education, especially for girls. Stakeholders were enthusiastic about debating these issues and proffering context-appropriate solutions. Financing education and the debate about the role of private education featured prominently in the southern states and Kano. These initial engagements with key stakeholders indicated a willingness of actors to participate in discussions and paved the way for data collection leading up to the Political Economy Summits.

To prepare for each Summit, a data collection team researches the condition of schools in the Local Government Areas (LGAs) under consideration and administers tests to students to determine the current learning levels. The data collection team also carries out a power mapping activity to determine Summit attendance, and surveys stakeholders about policy preferences and hypothetical budget decisions.

To date, data collection activities have taken place in six Local Government Areas (LGAs) in Enugu and six LGAs in Oyo. Surveyed stakeholders considered the most pressing issues to be access to education, the quality of education, and the financial management of the education sector. Respondents also highlighted the need to improve infrastructure and to ensure professional development of teachers. The general conditions of the 60 schools surveyed in the three treated LGAs are quite concerning, particularly in terms of Water Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) facilities, and ventilation. The majority of surveyed classrooms had inadequate access to power supply. Finally, the standardized test results show a low level of performance of pupils in primary schools, with girls performing slightly higher than boys, on average, in four core subject areas.

At the Summits themselves, education stakeholders convene and agree upon social contracts. This study will examine the efficacy of the social contract process in influencing education systems change, as described by school governance and outcome improvements. The study gets at the heart of the political economy of education reform in Nigeria, identifying ways through which political economy considerations might be important for the successful implementation of systemic reforms. This project is ongoing. We look forward to the results and to advancing knowledge about how education systems can be improved.

This article was first published on RISE

Before the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic stalled learning for students in Nigeria, the nation’s education system was facing an epidemic of its own: a deeply inadequate and inequitable education system that taught far too little to only a few students. At the peak of the pandemic, almost 40 million students were affected by the nationwide school closures, but even prior to this, Nigeria suffered from the highest proportion of out-of-school children worldwide. And, for those that were enrolled, there is overwhelming evidence that learning levels were much lower than expected. With the current second wave of the virus, school holidays have been prolonged, suggesting a continued stall in learning for children.

In this brief, we highlight a simple and smart approach to recover the expected learning loss and revamp Nigeria’s education system, conveniently summarized in the acronym FACTS: Foundational learning, Assessment, Curriculum alignment, Technology and Special needs.

Pre-Pandemic Learning Levels

According to a 2015 National Education Data Survey (NEDS) which assessed literacy and numeracy levels, 46 percent of children enrolled in primary school could not identify words, read a single short sentence, or demonstrate basic comprehension in English or any of Nigeria’s three main native languages. In terms of numeracy, 35 percent were unable to add two single-digit numbers which summed to less than 10. In addition, there are huge variations along key demographic characteristics. According to the NEDS study, approximately 14 percent of the lowest wealth quintile showed minimum learning competencies in literacy and numeracy, compared to 82 percent and 84 percent of the highest quintile in literacy and numeracy respectively. Students in private primary schools achieved 74 percent and 84 percent literacy and numeracy competencies, while students in public schools achieved 44 percent and 56 percent, respectively.

Pandemic-Induced Learning Losses

Though schools have been allowed to reopen since September 2020, it is difficult to decipher the accrued learning loss induced by the school closures in Nigeria because there is no evidence that any assessments have been done either nationally or at state levels to determine how far behind students are. However, what we do know is that merely returning to schools and maintaining the pre-COVID status quo will not recoup the learning losses or avoid the associated lifetime and economic losses induced by the school closures. According to a  recent simulation exercise by Belafi and Kaffenberger, without any forms of remediation, a 6-month school closure, as was the case with Nigeria, will result in an average loss of 1.4 years worth of learning for the current cohort of primary school students. With some remediation, this learning loss only reduces slightly to 1 year. On the other hand, they also show that an intervention focused on long-term reorientation of the education system will lead to a learning gain of about 7 months, generating not only learning recovery but further gain.

This is further entrenched by the fact that schools across the country moved students on to the next school year upon resumption, despite students missing a full term and a half of the previous year. As evidence shows, students had different levels of access to remote learning during the school closures, signifying that students will be returning to school with differing levels of skills and knowledge.

The state of Nigeria’s pre-pandemic education, compounded by the impacts of the pandemic, calls for more than a resumption of normality. While a variety of approaches could be implemented to achieve this, it is crucial to draw on available evidence that aligns to the facts of Nigeria’s education system in designing such long-term reorientation plans. Below, we draw on the available evidence to highlight five crucial approaches required for an innovative learning system that is suited to achieving the dual goal of recovering and revamping the nation’s education system.

FACTS: Foundational learning, Assessment, Curriculum alignment, Technology and Special needs

F- Foundation learning

Foundational learning focuses on reading and comprehension (in the language of the learner’s immediate environment) and arithmetic, crucial to enabling students to learn in subsequent grades and preparing them for careers after school. Typical school schedules and curricula in Nigeria consist of foundational learning plus other school subjects. However, given the time and learning lost to COVID-19, at least the next two school calendars should place greater focus on foundational learning. Weakness in foundational learning is at the crux of Nigeria’s poor performance in education, as it serves as the gateway to knowledge acquisition in other subject areas. It is therefore essential that it be made the cornerstone of any strategy to address Nigerian education’s inadequacies in the immediate and longer term.

 A- Assessment

As schools reopen, there is a need to know how far behind students are and how fast they are recovering in all subjects. Assessments put the focus directly on learning, as it provides evidence of the skills and knowledge students have, which allows decision makers to make better evaluative judgments on how to support learning recovery and make advancement toward learning goals. A combination of frequent, low-stakes, formative assessments at the school level, and nationwide school surveys are crucial to provide feedback that inform swift, targeted, and locally-relevant responses must be prioritized. Conversely, high-stakes examinations at the end of the school term should be postponed until recovery from learning loss to prevent unjust penalties for vulnerable groups that have been disproportionately impacted.

C- Curriculum Alignment

School systems in Nigeria are mostly organized by grades, with teaching targeted at grade or age levels. However, the key to learning recovery in Nigeria is the alignment of teaching and instructional support to where students are in their learning trajectory. Teaching at  the skill-level of different learners has been shown to yield substantial learning gains, and a benefit of frequent school level assessments is that it provides the evidence that allows schools to adapt curricula to this proven approach in order to best help students recover learning losses. 

T- Technology

Advances in technology have sparked a paradigm shift in education by breaking down geographical barriers, expanding the quantity, and improving the quality of learning. However, while school closures induced by the pandemic have resulted in a surge in the development and uptake of educational technology around the world, geographic barriers have given way to digital barriers, with most schools and families unable to leverage technology for learning. Given Nigeria’s socio-economic disparities and poor infrastructure, educational technology will not work in isolation. With the onset of this second wave of the virus, it is imperative that policymakers begin to consider alternative learning options by working with research and development partners to pilot and rigorously test the effectiveness of blended learning approaches tailored to different regional contexts and aligned with different profiles of deprived learners and under-resourced learning environments. Innovative approaches to incorporate learning technologies that are cognizant of infrastructural disparities will be crucial to ensure a variety of learners can take advantage of mixed in-person and remote opportunities suited to their needs.

S-Special needs

Given inequalities in learning levels for students that experience various dimensions of poverty and exclusion, it is important to prioritize the learning needs of the most vulnerable and at-risk children as they are likely to require the most investment to recover from learning losses in the previous academic year, as well as additional non-academic support, including material and psycho-social, to ensure they are equipped to learn. Prioritizing the needs of vulnerable students is critical for Nigeria’s education system to make an inclusive and equitable recovery and build the foundation for future progress. A key way to achieve this is to work in tandem with organisations that are working locally to confront the nation’s most intractable local challenges. For example, Slum2School, an organisation that provides children in slums and remote communities in Lagos, Nigeria, to education. Last year, in the peak of the pandemic, the organization launched a digital platform that provides self-paced and collaborative learning modules delivered through interactive live sessions.

To address the poor learning levels pre-pandemic, and the learning losses induced by the pandemic, it is imperative to incorporate innovative measures to support and accelerate learning across schools in Nigeria. The role of education as a precursor to other Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) can not be denied, and unless the education system is strategically strengthened, progress on other goals/indicators will stagnate. The FACTS approach offers a basis upon which a results-driven, learning-oriented, inclusive and equitable strategy can be built.

This Article was first published on RISE

In November of 2020, Zambia became the first African country to renege on its debt service obligations since the COVID-19 pandemic began. Since then, official and private lenders as well as governments have become apprehensive about a looming solvency crisis in Africa. This heightened perception of risk is underpinned by the fact that like Zambia, most countries on the continent are commodity dependent and have borrowed considerably from lenders that are reluctant in providing debt service suspension. Worse still, they are also experiencing a reduction in external financing from foreign direct investment, remittances, and development aid.   

Energy production from non-renewable sources contributes significantly to total global greenhouse gas emissions. The emissions from the African continent are far less than from other regions. Yet, there is a worldwide consensus, through the Paris Agreement and the Agenda 2030, on the need to substantially increase the share of renewable energy and improve energy efficiency by 2030. Therefore, all countries that are signatories to the Paris Agreement are required to undertake a transition from fossil fuels such as oil and coal, towards renewable and environmentally friendly energy sources.

The main reason for this is environmental. But achieving reliable, sustainable and affordable energy is essential to reverse the vast energy supply shortages in Africa as well, such as catering to the growing population’s energy needs. Meeting the unmet energy demand can be a tool for economic growth, food security (by strengthening local agricultural resilience), and several other development outcomes.

Gaps and constraints to green energy development

Africa’s shift to green/renewable energy has been relatively sluggish compared to the global average. The slow adoption of green energy on the continent is attributed to many factors, among them:

• Lack of finance: The International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) estimates that Africa’s transition to green energy would require an annual investment of $70 billion over the next 15 years. African countries, which are mostly low-income economies, have limited financial resources to fund such assets at the required scale.
• Capacity deficits: The human and technical requirements of green energy production range from highly-skilled, technical elements (research and development, manufacturing), to medium and low skill elements (operation and maintenance). African countries face both a technical and human capacity constraint. Also, the appropriate technologies for exploiting available renewable energy sources are insufficient.
• Fossil fuel subsidies: Fossil fuels are subsidised in many African countries. Such policies encourage its continuous use. Also, some renewable energy sources like hydropower are shared resources. This situation could limit its use for energy generation, in particular when intense competition exists with other sectors or among countries.

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