Human Capital Development: The Case of Education as a Vehicle for Africa's Economic Transformation

The paper attempts to rekindle the debate of low human capital base as a bane of Africa’s economic transformation. It overviews human capital base in Africa and attempts to explain the reasons behind low human capital base in Africa and attributes developmental gap between Africa and the rest of the world to its relatively weak human capital base. Low public investment in education culminating in limited access to education, poorly motivated teachers and overstretched tools and facilities remain key challenges to Africa’s human capital development. The paper takes a walk through the theoretical consideration of economic transformation and the relevance of human capital development for economic transformation and sustainable development. A simple quantitative analysis to capture the relationship between economic transformation and human capital development suggests a significant correlation between education and structural transformation of an economy. The paper makes recommendation to the effect that Africa’s human capital base can be enhanced through improved public investment in education in the area of teacher motivation and provision of adequate teaching and learning materials. Measures to reduce pupil-teacher ratio and review of curricula to meet the development needs of countries are also essential in improving quality and relevance of education in Africa. It is also critical for Africa to encourage private sector participation in the provision of education, enhance effective collaboration between educational institutions and industry and adopt measures to reverse brain drain to enable Africa reap the benefit of education for development.