Finance Minister Trevor Manuel has called for a more concerted international effort to put the financing of education and training on a better footing and to ensure education and training opportunities become more equitably distributed across the world.
Addressing the 25th anniversary meeting of the Institute of International Finance (IIF) in Washington on Sunday, he raised concerns about global coordination in the arena of skills, careers, human capital formation and how these issues impacted on development prospects of poor countries.
”Global inequality of wealth and opportunity is clearly bound up with global inequality of human capital — the distribution of knowledge, skills and institutional capacity,” Manuel said.
”National leaders look in despair at the outflow of their talented and educated people to opportunities in other countries — this is all too-easily a self-reinforcing deteriorating spiral.”
People left because the outlook for their own countries looked unfavourable, and the outflow itself reduced the prospects for growth and development.
From the perspective of the South, it seemed developed Western countries, who in their quest to save and minimise costs and maximise returns, were producing too few engineers, doctors and nurses to even meet their own demands.
Thus the developed world plundered developing countries for the skills they had failed to create, and made it more difficult or impossible for developing countries to reduce poverty and attain their development goals.
The developing countries had emerged in recent years as the biggest suppliers of qualified professionals to the advanced countries as a whole, he said.
These migrant professionals, strongly needed in developing countries, contributed to larger disparities between rich and poor countries.
Africa, with its serious shortages of manpower, was the biggest loser, having lost 60 000 professionals (doctors, university lecturers, engineers, surveyors, etc) between 1985 and 1990 and an average of 20 000 annually until the mid-1990s.
On average, 10,4% of skilled migration was from Africa.
”So there are challenges for national education and training systems, and it seems clear that better international coordination is needed in this arena.”
This was not just about planning and financing investment in skills, but also about curricula and learning technologies and what went on in the classroom.
”We know that in South Africa, for example, we are not making sufficient progress in maths and science in our schools, and we need to find ways of using technology and better teaching methods if we are going to meet this critical need effectively.”
Education and training were investments for the long term, and their returns were not easily measured or securitised.
It was no surprise that the associated financing arrangements were comparatively primitive.
”Alongside the enormous efforts that go into structuring financial arrangements for business investment and capital projects, perhaps it is time for more concerted efforts — across countries and involving private- and public-sector stakeholders — to put the financing of education and training on a better footing.”
This was partly about more resources, channelled in the right ways.
”It is also about recognising that we have a shared interest, not just in the quantum of educational output but also in its distribution.
”We have a shared interest in ensuring that education and training opportunities become more equitably distributed across the world, and that the mobilisation of skilled capacity is more fairly distributed between nations,” Manuel said. — Sapa