Category: Education

Sometime in 2019, I actively volunteered for the Slum2School foundation.

As a volunteer in the literacy development team, part of my role was organising a weekend book club for the kids at Makoko—kids who already attended primary school in the community.

It wasn’t much; we got the kids together on a Saturday to read fun stories and rewarded them with refreshments. What was meant to be a relaxing and fun activity was a hectic English language class because the kids couldn’t read. There’s a difference between stringing words in a sentence together and reading to understand.

Some Takeaways

• Funding is key to solving the problem of access and quality that currently plagues the low-cost k-12 education space.
• While there is a massive opportunity for investment in the low-cost k-12 space, with over 300 million students requiring education over the next 30 years, the kind of capital necessary for funding schools here is patient capital.
• Impact investment, which acts as a hybrid of commercial investment and aid, is ideal to fund low-cost k-12 schools. Several models are already being implemented worldwide that we can adopt in Nigeria.

These primary school kids could barely pronounce the words, didn’t understand most of the words they pronounced, and didn’t understand them well enough to have conversations about them.

Yet they progress from one class to another, and end up in Universities. This is why I advocate for more resources and attention committed to the foundational parts of the education value chain.

Foundational skills like literacy and numeracy are the requisite skills upon which people build more complex skills required in their lives. In a conversation with Stears Business, Dr. Ifueko Thomas, an educational consultant and former Director of Corona Teachers’ College, echoed this, saying, “We’ll continue to have the issues we have in  secondary schools and universities if we don’t pay attention to early years education.”

If Chinedu does not understand the sentence, “Hannah could not feed her dog,” he’ll struggle to write an application letter and have valuable conversations at school, work, and anywhere else. If you’re reading this, you probably don’t struggle with reading and comprehension like Chinedu and his friends from Makoko, but you’re a select few—many Nigerians struggle with basic literary skills.

Nigerians are not alone here. A research study reviewed different household surveys and found that after five years of schooling, less than 50% of the students in five out of eight sub-Saharan African countries were able to read. In Nigeria, 58% of children who go to school neither learn how to read nor solve maths problems.

The low quality of education stems from poor funding. When the funding is inadequate and inconsistent, it will fail to generate the desired outcome. And that’s the theme of funding education in Africa: inadequate and inconsistent.

In a previous article, I called for more investment in k-12 education in Nigeria because the current system leaves most of the weight of funding on the federal government. Although we haven’t scrutinised how the money allocated is spent, centralising the financing of primary education on one arm of the government (due to the inadequacies of others) is very dangerous.

Therefore, foundational education needs more funding: private funding.

Public returns

Education isn’t your typical investment, especially at the basic (primary to secondary) level. Education is a merit good, a commodity that should be provided based on its perceived benefit to individuals or society, not just on people’s willingness to pay for it. After the United Nations declaration of rights, all 192 member countries agreed that everyone has the right to basic education. So, governments are at least partly responsible for providing basic education.

When the government fails to provide this at the requisite quality, the private sector picks up the slack.

But even within the private education system, there is significant inequality, with low pay primary schools having dilapidated infrastructure and poor quality of teachers compared to other schools. These are neighbourhood schools that are not registered and operate without the knowledge of the government. In Lagos, 74% of primary schools fall under this category.

It is no surprise that many of the teachers in these schools are unqualified to teach—these are the teachers who tutor children like Chinedu in Makoko.

Therefore, greater investment is needed in basic education. Thankfully, the returns can be relatively high, as we will less later on. These returns are often two-fold: financial and socio-economic.

Financial returns are the benefits enjoyed by the investors and the individual who goes through the education process. On the one hand, the investor takes home more earnings, and on the other, the student stands a chance to earn more (economic mobility). The socio-economic benefits comprise the growth the country gains from having a more productive population and the social returns, which are the benefits a society enjoys from having an educated population like less crime, more productivity, a healthier population, and so on (these are known as the positive externalities of education).

The financial returns might be challenging to estimate because that depends mainly on the investment structure and the investor’s goal. Thankfully, a report by Caerus capital, Oxford Analytica, and Parthenon-EY gives a robust picture of the business of education in Africa.

In Sub-Saharan Africa, the most significant investment opportunity is in low-cost k-12 education, based on potential impact and size of financial returns. The K-12 education system has the largest enrolment rate in Nigeria; the public k-12 education system serves about 28 million students in Nigeria, compared to 8.7 million in the private sector.

So, it’s no surprise that the investment opportunity in low-cost K-12 is around $2.5 billion.

Drilling further, the most promising education investment opportunities in Africa are within the mid-priced/premium k-12 education segments, which have the potential to generate margins as high as 30%, estimated as the difference between the cost of provision and the revenue generated. The returns are undoubtedly high.

Also, about one billion students will require education (at all levels) in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) within the next three decades. Putting this in context, that is equivalent to 13% of the global population or five Nigerias.

The long-term demand is huge.

The value of investment education in Brazil, China, India, and SSA has grown 50x from 2001 to 2015, although SSA only contributed less than 10% to the mix. Out of the one billion students who would require education, low-cost k-12 education has a market size of approximately 135 million students; Nigeria alone makes up 30% of that market.

So, there’s a massive market for investment in education at every point of learning. And the low-cost k-12 education level, which is our focus for this article, and the segment which serves kids like Chinedu in Makoko, makes up a significant chunk of the education market.

Given the rate and diversity of returns on k-12 investment, the next step is to identify the kind of capital this education segment requires and then find the best investor to meet that need.

Many companies have begun to reap the benefits of k-12 investments. For instance, the International Finance Corporation (IFC), the private sector investment arm of the World Bank, invested in Corona schools in Lagos and Funtaj Schools in Abuja.

There are two critical issues k-12 education faces in Nigeria: access and quality. Many children, particularly in rural areas, have minimal school spaces in Nigeria, and it is estimated that about 36% more students are out of school in rural areas than in urban areas (nearly half of the Nigerian population live in rural areas). Likewise, 98% of the children in the wealthiest quintile are bound to finish primary school compared to 20% of the poorest.

When the schools are available in rural areas, they are dilapidated, preventing students from learning adequately.

Quality is another issue that has been emphasised throughout this article. Going to school is not enough; without quality education, access to school is almost useless. Again, this is a problem for Nigeria. A survey of 8-9-year-olds in Sokoto revealed that many could not read a single word primarily because their schools aren’t good and they don’t have the right teachers.

This explains why funding in k-12 education is spent on two things: infrastructure and operations. The infrastructure spending cuts across everything from building the actual schools to maintaining them. Meanwhile, operational expenses here are everything from teachers’ salaries to training and more. Spending on these two areas is supposed to guarantee a minimum standard across schools.

By building more schools, we solve the problem of access. Meanwhile, maintaining the infrastructure and spending on operations improves the quality.

Operational funding typically makes up a large chunk of public primary schools’ budgets across Africa. Across Africa, salaries account for as high as 96% of primary school spending, which might explain why many schools have such terrible infrastructure.

To fund these two areas (infrastructure and operations), we need patient capital, a consistent and stable investment that can be sustained for a couple of years without expecting immediate returns. Although schools are capable of churning out significant returns, it might take some time for such returns to be realised.

Finding the money

Looking at the combination of the kind of financing that education requires and the type of returns it can give its investors, we can then decide what kind of investment is best suited for k-12 education in Nigeria. The ideal financing mechanism for k-12 education would be patient capital seeking a mix of socio-economic and financial returns.

Such financing can come from government funding, aid, commercial investment, or impact investment.

Let’s start with government funding. As we’ve argued before, government funding alone is an insufficient and unsustainable way to fund education, especially in Nigeria. Although basic education is the responsibility of all tiers of government, they all, directly and indirectly, depend on revenue from the federal government. Where that is lacking, education suffers.

Then we have aid.

Aid is philanthropic funding from multilateral organisations like the World Bank, the IMF, and so on. Otherwise known as Official Development Assistance (ODA), aid is one of the primary ways countries fund their basic education.

In Nigeria, aid is a crucial source of education financing, with an average of $55 million annual aid going to primary education in Nigeria between 2010-2013. Despite an almost equal split in education funding through aid, analysis shows that aid is more impactful on education when the money is spent on infrastructure and teacher training.

Therefore, aid has helped improve education outcomes in Africa, especially the enrollment rate.

However, research shows that it has not improved the quality of education. Aid also causes an unhealthy dependency on donors, which is terrible because it is largely unsustainable. For instance, the Africa Development Bank recorded that the share of aid in government education budgets in countries like Burkina Faso, Mali, and Zambia was higher than 25%, which leaves such countries vulnerable if the donors decide to pull their funding.

This dependence on aid is not something Nigeria is immune to; we’ve written about how it had hampered the growth and independence of the health sector by preventing Nigeria from weaning off the aid when the time was right.

Furthermore, aid does not always achieve allocative efficiency. For instance, the poorest countries receive less aid than more prosperous countries, even though the former need it more.

For low-cost k-12, aid would not be a dependable source of funding because household funding would be unable to make up for the shortfall when the donors withdraw their funds.

After aid and government spending, the third funding option is commercial investment.

The commercial investment comprises Private Equity (PE) and Venture Capital (VC) investments, which focus more on financial returns than impact, making it difficult to invest in low-cost k-12 education. Their desire for significant returns on investment informs why they invest in high-growth areas like education technology and mid-priced/premium k-12 education that generate about 30% returns on investments worth as much as $30 million.

In Nigeria, mid-priced/premium k-12 schools generated a tuition revenue of as much as $72 million from 2015-2016, with an annual growth rate of about 10%—appealing to commercial investors. Low-cost k-12 education cannot generate such revenue for investors because most students in this category are poor. Therefore, the investors would have to target a large number of students before they can reap the returns for their investment.

For instance, Bridge Academies, which targets low-income students in Edo state, is not expected to break even until it enrolls at least 500,000 students. This might deter commercial investors, especially if they are mainly focused on profitability.

The right investment for impact

The final investment option for low-cost k-12 schools is impact investment.

Impact investment is a perfect intersection between investing for financial returns and investing for impact or humanitarian needs. It’s a form of patient capital (investment horizon is usually 5-10 years) where the investors are concerned with the financial gain they obtain from their investment and the social impact on the economy.

The good thing about impact investment is that unlike commercial investments like PE and VC, financial gain is not the only motivation for investment, which may exclude the classes of consumers who cannot give the company that financial gain they seek. However, it is a step further away from aid as it is more concerned with sustainability. The investors don’t see it as a charity, and their desire for financial gain motivates them to see the investment through.

Impact investment at the low k-12 level can take different forms, although the focus is low-income families. On the one hand, schools can be set up to receive stipends from the students for many services. An example is Omega schools in Ghana, where students must pay a daily fee of 0.65 Ghanian Cedis (approximately ₦40) for tuition, lunch, workbooks, and more.

Another model could be where the organisation partners with the government to provide learning to its students. This is usually adopted where the government funds most of the basic education and funding efficiency—that is, the act of putting the money to the best use, is lacking.

Bridge academies adopt this model such that it receives funding from donors and the government to provide education to the students of low-cost k-12 schools at little to no cost to students. They also offer other services like teacher training and technology for managing the schools owned by the government, for which the government pays. So far, Bridge has over 500 schools with more than 100,000 students.

Then there’s a model where the school provides education to students of various income classes while providing financial aid to the students in need. Aga Khan does this by delivering k-12 education to students of all income classes but provides needs-based discounts and financial assistance to the students from low-income families.

These case studies of impact investment in different African countries provide evidence that it can be applied to the Nigerian low-cost k-12 education system. There is, and will always be, a massive demand for education due to Africa’s population. This is why there have been considerable investments in several aspects of education, particularly edtech and tertiary education. Briter Bridges estimates that from 2021 till date, the Nigerian edtech space has raised over $220 million, about 10% of the total amount raised in the tech ecosystem by companies operating in Nigeria.

However, without heavy investment in foundational education like k-12, more would need to be done to reap the returns at the other stages of education.

This story was initially published by Stearsng

Head, Department of Psychology, University of Ibadan (UI),  Prof. Adebayo Adejumo, has underscored the need for proper research to boost effective policymaking.

According to him, research is a scientific process which helps to formulate solutions to problems based on facts.

He was the guest speaker during the inaugural meeting of Oyo State Youth Parliament,last week in Ibadan.

Adejumo  urged the youth leaders to ensure adherence to proper research methodologies to formulate sustainable policies. He also assured the parliament of his assistance  in the areas of research to formulate policies to aid development.

He said: ” Research is a scientific process which helps to formulate solutions to problems based on facts.

As youth leaders, ensure  you adhere to proper research methodologies to formulate sustainable policies for national development.”

In their separate presentations,  Head of Department of Management and Accounting Leadcity University, Ibadan, Tina Akinbo, and Nigerian actor, Wale Ojo urged them to maintain good communication and inter-personal relationship skills that will help them to manage people and offer value in their constituencies.

Earlier, Oyo State  Commissioner for Youth and Sports, Seun Fakorede, hailed  members of the youth assembly for their efforts towards youth and education.

He urged them to remain  focused, diligent and result-oriented.

Speaker of the Oyo State Youth Parliament, Israel Fawole, urged members of the parliament to remain committed youth empowerment and educational development.

Experts in the education sector have identified access to digital tools and resources as the key to facilitating and encouraging young girls to take interest in STEM-related fields.

This was the summary of the conversations at the March edition of EdTech Mondays, an initiative of the MasterCard Foundation in partnership with Co-Creation Hub.

The virtual roundtable moderated by Joyce Daniel, a social engineering practitioner, featured experts in education and technology spaces, including Ada Nduka Oyom, the founder of She Code Africa; Dr. Adefunke Ekine, the deputy director, Research and External Linkages, Tai Solarin University of Education, and Judith Okonkwo, a technology evangelist and the founder of Imisi 3D.

At the roundtable with the theme “Celebrating African Women in Education and Technology”, Ekine said the low number of young girls in engineering and technology-related field was due to the challenge of direct access to digital tools and resources.

She noted that the problem was further aggravated by the abysmal quality of teaching noticeable in foundational subjects such as Mathematics. She added that teaching in Nigeria was more abstract than functional. The Associate Professor of education explained that there was the need to adopt a storytelling approach to elicit interest in girl-child participation in STEM-related courses.

Oyom, an advocate of female representation in STEM education, noted that young girls must be optimistic that anything was achievable if they set their minds to achieve it.

Citing examples of the success stories of She Code Africa on STEM education, she stressed the need for stakeholders to make resources and tools available and expose young girls to other opportunities.

Okonkwo said the global aspiration of gender parity was realizable if stakeholders focussed on providing access to the girl-child, regardless of social status. She urged women in the technology space to remain focussed regardless of the challenges they might be going through, noting that success awaited them in their chosen careers.

The Onitsha Business School (OBS), Anambra State, has restated its commitment to making youths globally employable.

Its Governing Council Chairman, Prof. Olusegun Sogbesan, stated this in Onitsha at the 7th anniversary and graduation of the school, where BBA, MBA/MSc and DBA/PhD certificates were presented to 13 graduates.

He said the school had mentored over 300 apprentices and planned to empower another set of 200.

He said: “OBS is committed to making her graduates/students creative-thinkers, leaders, managers, professionals and super resourceful entrepreneurs.

“Our programmes are duly accredited by the relevant professional institutions and university bodies in Nigeria and Europe.

“We’ve been doing a lot of things secretly. We’ve produced chartered accountants and several others and we’re planning to take more than 200 unemployed graduates out of the streets.”

Congratulating the graduates, Sogbesan described them as being fully equipped with the knowledge and skills required to make a positive impact in their various organisations and communities.

According to him, their solution-based research projects strategy have constantly provided solutions to identified challenges of the society in the last seven years of establishing the school.

He admonished them to make a big difference, be a light-bearer and solution providers in confronting the enormous challenges bedevilling society.

The keynote speaker, Mr. Francis Oluwole Kudayah, highlighted some challenges facing the education sector in Nigeria, just as he regretted its current state.

Sylvanus Izebhokhae, the Registrar, said the school had produced 62 chartered accountants, 15 associates of Chartered Institutes of Bankers of Nigeria, over 300 associates and full members of Strategic Management of Nigeria.

He added: “This is the second graduation ceremony we’re holding in our seven years of existence. The first was in 2018, where we presented four MBA certificates to our graduates from Rome Business School, two PhD from European Global School (EGS) University and 30 Strategic Masterclass graduates.”

Vice-Chancellor, Babcock University, Ilishan-Remo, Ogun State, Prof. Ademola Tayo has urged graduands of the institution to broaden their horizon and sharpen their skills to get prepared for the future.

The VC spoke last week at the institution’s Career Fair held on campus.

Tayo noted that it was intended to prepare them for the challenges ahead in the real world, stressing the need for them to develop the skills required to cope.

He also noted that it would enable them to meet with intending employers, and as such, they may secure employment.

“The Career Fair has impacted the majority of students of this institution. It is to prepare them for the challenges ahead in the real, bigger world. They need the necessary skill sets to face it. They should make best use of this opportunity,” he said.

The VC told the students to count themselves lucky to be at this year’s event because the coronavirus pandemic stopped it two years ago.

The keynote speaker, Zambia Ambassador to Nigeria, Dr. Solomon Samuel Jere, who stressed the importance of virtuous and morally upright life, urged the graduates not to involve in cybercrime, popularly known as “yahoo yahoo”.

“Come and experience the real world; don’t join yahoo boys. Don’t rush for money. All ways seem right, but the end is death, so says the Bible,” he said.

He said the place of prayer in the life of humans cannot be overemphasised, hence, he told them to be careful and prayerful.

“There are many challenges out there. Please, be careful and prayerful. You can only mend your punctures in life by being close to Christ.

“God has something for you. You have to open your eyes. It is not a coincidence you are here or graduating. Seek the face of God in all things,” he said.

He also advised them to place premium on hard work, commitment and diligence.

Some companies at the event included Guaranty Trust Company Holding, (GTCO), Nestle, Jumia, among others.

The Lagos State Government has restated its commitment to improving the reading culture among pupils.

Special Adviser  on Education Mr. Tokunbo Wahab spoke  at the Lagos Reads Inter-school Quiz competition, organised by the Lagos State Library Board.

He  said the competition was aimed at reviving and improving reading culture of Lagosians.

The competition took place among selected public secondary schools in the six  Education Districts in Lagos State.

Baptist Senior Secondary School, Mushin, won the first prize, Ikeja Senior Secondary School came second and Gbaja Senior Secondary School placed third.

The quiz  covered Physics, Chemistry, Biology, Government, Economics, Literature in English, English, Mathematics and current affairs.

Wahab said Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu had continued to invest in  developing and upgrading public library infrastructure  to equip  youths with requisite knowledge for  development.

He said: “As we speak, Mr. Governor has given approval for the renovation and digitalisation of all public Secondary Schools libraries so as to encourage public secondary students to read and have access to computer education without any hindrance.

“As of  today, a total of 243 public libraries across the three senatorial districts in the state have been well-rehabilitated and equipped with functional ICT facilities by the Office of the Special Adviser on Education in the last two and half years of this administration. The project, which is still on-going, will cover all the public secondary schools in the state before the end of this administration.”

The special adviser also noted that the state government had rehabilitated Divisional Libraries across all the five administrative divisions of the state to improve reading habit among people.

Wahab hailed the Library Board for its  support for the state in implementing sustainable programmes that would reawaken  consciousness for knowledge update through reading.

Director, Library Services of the Library Board, Mr A.A Oyadipe , urged pupils  to continue to read and study  in the libraries provided by government in their various schools.

“Reading is an important activity that promotes academic excellence in our schools and the Lagos State Library Board is committed to ensuring that the reading culture in Lagos State continues to be improved,” he said.

The stage is set for the first Cruxlearning Maths Reality TV Contest in Africa, where the top 18 students across the continent will compete for $10,000 worth of university scholarships and bragging rights as Africa’s Math champion.

The competition began on Sunday April 3, and will end on May 1.

Cruxlearning Mathematics Contest Africa (CLMCA) is a pan African Maths Contest, where over 10,000 Year 11 (SS 2) students from 24 African countries started the race through online qualifying exams, from where the top 18 were shortlisted for the stage two – The Reality TV Quiz Show.

CLMCA is designed to demystify Mathematics, identify and reward outstanding students across the continent for their brilliance in mathematics and social skills. These top 18 are expected to participate in different daily activities and face evictions.

According to Mrs. Ogugua Dopamu, the General Manager of JustMedia, CLMCA is a creation of many years of working within the educational space in Africa.

‘’We have seen many students in the nooks and crannies of Africa who are waiting for the right opportunity to showcase their innate skills. To develop Africa, we will need to harness these best brains and many others to start thinking of solutions to the myriad of challenges experienced in Africa and the world at large.

“On this lofty initiative, we will be giving these 18 Mathletes a platform to support their dreams, to encourage others to see Maths in everyday activities, breaking the myth associated with it, thereby promoting maths education. Over the 29-day period, these Top 18 mathletes will hang out at the “Mathslounge” with weekly eviction shows (a Quiz contest) every Sunday during the four weeks transmission,” Mrs. Dopamu said.

Cruxlearning Mathematics Contest Africa will be available daily to millions of viewers across the world @CruxlearningTV social media channels (YouTube, Facebook & Instagram) and DSTV Africa Magic Family Channel 154; AIT Network; TVC, Lagos; BCOS (Ibadan); Joy PrimeTV (Ghana); TV10 (Rwanda) and Urban TV (Uganda) from Sunday April 3   , 2022.

CLMCA is supported by Cruxlearning; a safe and convenient e-learning platform that offers teaching and continuous evaluation for primary and secondary school students; Credit Wallet; Chanelle Microfinance Bank; Amazing Day instant cereal from Flour Mills of Nigeria Plc and African Institute for Mathematical Sciences (AIMS), Rwanda.