Ebook: Accelerating Catch-up : Tertiary Education for Growth in Sub-Saharan Africa

Sub-Saharan Africa has recently enjoyed a surge in economic growth due to the rising prices of its commodities and natural resources. To sustain this growth in the face of intensifying global competition, African countries may wish to align their tertiary education and research systems more closely to national economic development based on a deepening of technological capabilities and local labor markets. This will require governments and societies to make strategic choices and targeted investments in specific types of training, specific disciplinary areas, and specific institutions. The success of this strategy will depend in large measure on greater financial efforts by governments and households, new public-private partnerships that tap into business resources, the innovation of radically different, lower cost ways of providing good quality tertiary education to growing numbers of students, and greater research and development.