Rwanda’s Minister of Education, Joseph Nsengimana, has called on African countries to prioritise investing in quality education, saying this was the only way out for the continent to boost productivity achieve prosperity.

"The quality of education on the continent must be improved. It a 'make or break' factor that shapes the future of learners,” he told The New Times in an exclusive interview on the sidelines of the Africa Foundational Learning Exchange (FLEX) 2024.

According to Nsengimana, some countries in Africa, including Rwanda have made considerable efforts to improve on the quality of education, with results seen especially in the higher education level.

"Increasingly, Africans are preferring to study in Africa where quality exists. At the higher education level, Rwanda has 10,000 Africans from different parts of the continent studying in the country without much effort to attract them,” said, adding that many more would come with more effort and investments in place.

While significant steps have been made towards access to education in many African countries, the quality of education remains critically low.

Quality learning, according to the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), requires a safe, friendly environment, qualified and motivated teachers and instruction in languages students understand.

Since the adoption of the UN Sustainable Development Goal on education that calls for inclusive, equitable and quality education for all, the net enrollment rates have significantly increased in many African countries, but that has not translated to good quality education.

The State of Global Learning Update by the World Bank shows that almost 90 per cent of children in Africa cannot read with comprehension by the age of 10, with the report citing challenges such as teachers lacking adequate skills and motivation as well as the lack of teaching and learning materials.

Poor quality education dragging progress

The poor quality of education has had a ripple effect on the labour market, with employers complaining of a mismatch between the skills acquired in schools and what is actually required in the job market.

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The lack of quality education on the continent has also driven many Africans to study abroad in search of higher quality learning.

In Rwanda, the teacher-student ratio has been a point of concern and a major reason for poor quality education.

A recent report by UNICEF indicates that the average student to trained teacher ratio is 57 to 1 in Rwanda, a challenge the organisation says is compounded by the introduction of English as the official medium of instruction at lower primary level, to match older classes.

"We need to have a classroom that has a reasonable size. If there are 80 to 90 children per classroom, it is virtually impossible to follow every one of them, and so, if we can reduce the size to 20 or 25 kids per classroom, we would increase the quality,” Nsengimana observed.

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To reduce overcrowding, the government built 22,500 classrooms between 2019 and 2021 and is increasing the number of teachers to eliminate the current double shifting system in the lower primary level.

"We are encouraging young people to go into teaching by reducing their fees at teacher training colleges, and giving them opportunities to further their studies at the university level by covering their student loans,” the minister said.

Teacher's salaries, too, have been increased by 88 per cent to enhance teacher motivation.

The UNICEF report states that Rwanda has made progress in continuous teacher professional development which has been institutionalized, to enhance teacher competencies, especially on effective pedagogies and digital skills.

The report also lauds the country for the 15.6 per cent budgetary allocation in the 2023/2024 FY which, for the first time, met the internationally recommended benchmark range of 15-20 per cent of public expenditure.

Rwanda is also putting efforts to improve foundational learning, which enhances the quality of education and learning outcomes in pre-primary and lower-primary grades and provides the essential building blocks for all other learning, knowledge and higher-order skills.