Key Sectors for Awakening

Education is of fundamental importance in nation-building efforts. At the Tokyo International Conference on African Development, the then Japanese Prime Minister Hosokawa said in his keynote speech: ‘Development starts with "man" and ends with "man"… and the future is in the hands of the younger generation.’ The relationship between the level of people’s education and their socio-economic welfare is obvious. In most industrialized countries, primary school enrolment rate is almost 100 per cent and the illiteracy rate is usually less than 5 per cent.1 In sub-Saharan African countries, population is doubling every 25 years or so. The African continent has the world’s highest birth rate (at 43 per 1000) and highest death rate (at 14 per 1000), with the world’s shortest life expectancy at birth (53 years).2 These statistics indicate serious problems, but the reverse of the coin is that half of the population is under 15 years old, and these are the people who will bear the future of the country.3 This is why sub-Saharan countries have been exerting strenuous efforts to improve education since independence. As a result, some improvements have been achieved, including a considerable increase in the adult literacy rate which in 1990 had reached the levels shown in Table 3.1.4.