Africa on the move

News from Africa is most often grim. The never ending ethnic conflicts in Darfur, the mass killing in Rwanda, the children soldiers in Somalia, to cite a few, although have a shilling effect on our sense of justice and fairness, their frequency leave one to wonder if ever we will hear of good news coming out of Africa.

The African Executive, a magazine accessible online, has weekly features about development events in Africa. In its February 28th issue, two worthy news items were featured. The first, titled “Freedom: The way forward for Africa”, relays to their readers a very significant message that came out of the 2007 meeting of the Mont Pelerin Society hosted by Inter-Region Economic Network in Nairobi. The Society discourse focused on “The Institutional Framework for Freedom in Africa”. This is indeed good news. In my February 27 piece “Africa open for business: A Minister’s view on the role of African University in economic development”, I have made the point that we need to do more than to articulate the link between democracy or freedom and economic development. People in the developing world need to be shown that democracy is a “prerequisite” to economic development. The Mont Pelerin Society meeting in Nairobi is one such and effort. By facilitating exchange of ideas between African scholars, legislators and policy makers from Africa and other continents, they demonstrated that a prerequisite to understanding the link between freedom, political and economic is for the citizenry to be informed about the practice, the principles and the workings of a free society. Hopefully many more such meetings will advance the cause of freedom and economic progress in Africa.

The second news item is about education reform in Ghana. In my piece I have relayed what Minister Pare, the Minister of Education in Ouagadougou, have said about the need to reform the education system in Burkina Faso by linking the University to a house. The African University, in the words of Minister Pare, “was like a house with a roof which is not adapted to the house. To make the roof fit with the house, changes have to be made to the plans.” There is a reason to be optimistic about educational reform in Africa. The Ghanaian Minister of Education, Papa Owusu Ankomah has introduced a new education bill that link the education system to the economic development of Ghana. As reported in the African Executive under the heading “Rebranding our education system”, the Minister makes the case for “decentralization of education management and development” that “in the education planning and management, the respective Ghanaian communities should be involved in the sustainable development of Ghana.” Minister Papa Owusu Ankomah, like Minister Pare, has voiced the need to reform the education system in their respective countries. What is remarkable about this is that both ministers not only have articulated the link between education and economic development, but outlined steps to bring about changes that advance the cause of Africa’s progress.

Freedom and Education, let us hope will lead the way forward.