How smart are teachers in developing countries?

Eric Hanushek, Marc Piopiunik, and Simon Wiederhold published some fascinating analysis in a 2014 NBER working paper (link) comparing the literacy and numeracy of teachers to the overall population (with a university degree) in a range of OECD countries. In the figures below, the grey bars show the gap between the 25th and 75th percentile of skill for all university-educated adults in each country, and the red marker in the middle shows the median skill level of teachers in that country. Perhaps unsurprisingly, teachers in Finland are the highest skilled internationally, but also within Finland they are drawn from relatively high in the distribution of adults. This fits with common narratives about teaching being a particularly well-regarded, and selective, profession in Finland.
 

As far as I'm aware, no such comparison exists for low- and lower-middle-income countries. Tessa Bold and coauthors present results on the tragically low absolute level of teachers in sub-Saharan Africa (link), and similarly Justin Sandefur presents data comparing the skill level of teachers in sub-Saharan Africa to students in OECD countries (link). But neither compare the level of skill of teachers in Africa to teachers in high-income countries, and to the skill of other adults in Africa.

So I made one*. The World Bank's STEP Skills surveys use the same literacy assessment as the OECD PIAAC survey that Hanushek et al used, so I replicated and extended their graph, adding on the countries from the STEP data in which it was possible to identify teachers and their literacy level - specifically Vietnam, Colombia, Armenia, Georgia, Ghana, Kenya, and Bolivia. 

The first point to note is how low the overall distribution in lower income countries is. The majority of adults (in urban areas) who have graduated from university fall into the Level 2 category, whereas in high income countries most fall into Level 3. The PIAAC guide (copied below) explains what these levels mean: Level 2 tasks “may require low-level inferences” whereas Level 3 tasks require “navigating complex texts”.

The second point to note from the figure is the remarkable regularity of average (median) teacher performance in each national distribution. There is some variation, but most teachers in high-income countries are roughly in the middle of the distribution of university educated adults. Teaching in lower-income countries tends to be more selective - the median teacher is much closer to the 75th percentile of adults in Colombia, Ghana, and Kenya.

These two facts, the low overall level of literacy skill amongst graduates in the lower middle income countries, and the position of teachers within the distribution, imply an upper bound on the ability of a more selective recruitment process to improve the average quality of teachers. If for example Ghana and Kenya managed to increase the selectivity of the teaching profession enough to raise average teacher skills to above the 75th percentile (something no other country has done), this level could still be well below Level 3 on the PIAAC scale.

Getting better teaching is critical for improving education in developing countries. This data highlights the scale of one aspect of the challenge. Education systems are going to have to figure out how to deliver for children with teachers who may be able to make "low-level inferences" but are unable to "navigate complex texts."

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*Thanks to Laura Moscoviz at the Education Partnerships Group for assistance with the graph!

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Does it help to be African to study Africa?

For sure there is tacit local knowledge, but how you define “local” matters. Ken Opalo writes:

"As a social scientist, my knowledge of Kenya is largely informed by my experience as a Nairobian. Over the years I have had to learn a lot about the rest of Kenya, in much the same way an Australian would. In doing so I incurred a lower cost than a hypothetical Australian would, for sure, but the cost was not zero. And who is to say that I would necessarily be able to articulate a research agenda on whatever subject in Malawi better than a Southern Californian? What proportion of Kenyans can locate Bangui on a map?"

The Emerging Middle Class in Africa

Apparently I missed this, but a book I contributed to back in 2012 along with colleagues at OPM was published by Routledge in October last year, edited by Mthuli Ncube and Charles Leyeka Lufumpa at the African Development Bank.

It's a snip on Amazon at only £27.99, or you can read it on Google Books here.

I'm not sure which is my favourite review;

"This book is uplifting, methodologically and intellectually sound, and rich in policy prescriptions. A must read for researchers, educators, policy makers, and global partners. As AERC (www.aercafrica.org) Executive Director, I am heartened by this policy and intellectually rich book"
-Lemma W. Senbet, Professor and Executive Director, African Economic Research Consortium and The William E. Mayer Chair Professor of Finance, University of Maryland, USA

or

"a timely topic, by genuine experts" -Paul Collier, University of Oxford, UK

Cheers Paul.

The political economy of why flights are so expensive in Africa

Andrea Goldstein of the OECD emails an old but very interesting paper (ungated here) in response to my post on the AfDB blog about African Airlines.

He makes two points and offers two recommendations

First, in the experience of OECD countries, "liberalisation delivers in terms of quantity, quality, and cost of air transport."

Second, what allowed liberalisation to take place was a political dynamic, driven by interest groups (trade associations and organised consumers) pushing for reform.

So what can or should the OECD do to support policy reform?

One, establish an international authority capable of enforcing safety standards (the ICAO is an obvious candidate).

Two, aid could be used to accelerate the restructuring and privatisation of African airlines.

Neither of these address the issue of opening the skies, which is down to African governments, and African consumers and trade groups to lobby for.

Why are flights in Africa so expensive?

Part of the reason is the lack of competition on so many routes, because countries restrict the rights of airlines from third countries to connect them with other countries - so called "fifth freedom" rights - despite an agreement to do this in 1999.

A comprehensive 2010 World Bank study led by Charles Schlumberger looked at a number of specific examples of what happened when routes have been liberalized in Africa. When the Nairobi-Johannesburg route was fully opened up in 2003, passenger volumes increased 69-fold. When the domestic South African market was liberalized, passenger volumes increased by 80 per cent. On average in the Southern African Development Community (SADC), routes that were liberalized saw fares drop by 18 per cent. The study estimates that full liberalization in the Southern African Development Community (SADC) region would increase passenger volumes by around 20 per cent.

More here (by me) on the AfDB Integrating Africa blog.

We don't need no education

I have a massive backlog of half-written draft blog posts that I'm going to try and start getting out the door, so, er, enjoy the early Christmas presents or something?!

OPM organised a workshop earlier this year in Oxford with JICA and Kobe University to discuss preparations for a session at the Tokyo Conference on International Development on Youth Employment in Africa. The absolute stand-out highlight for me was Francis Teal presenting his paper entitled “Education for Job Creation” in which he argued vehemently that spending money on education in Africa is a total waste of time if your goal is job creation.

I am very biased because Francis taught me how to do research, but.

Francis would probably hate the use of a trendy neologism, but what he is basically saying is that the binding constraint to good job creation is on the demand-side rather than the supply-side. Education in Africa might be often of poor quality, but dramatically improving the quality is unlikely to lead to jobs with improved incomes unless Africa can create better linkages to sources of demand. To do this it needs to connect better to the global economy. 

Here are a couple of pieces of illustrative evidence.

Chart 1: There is basically no correlation between the growth rates of aggregate levels of education, and aggregate levels of income

Chart 2: At the individual level, although there is a positive correlation between education and earnings, the more important point is the massive variation around the average. Until you get above 20 years, an education in Africa really doesn't guarantee anything at all

Interesting, provocative stuff, which sits uncomfortably with economists and education policy wonks with an interest in Africa. Perhaps I need to resign myself to education for the sake of education? Something vague about culture and philosophy and the intrinsic worth of education? Is there any better evidence for the benefits of education than this?

Slides are here: http://fsmevents.com/csae/session2/slides.pdf

and video from the CSAE conference here: http://fsmevents.com/csae/session2/

New Africa macroeconomics blogging

Greg Smith is blogging at Ndoronomics.com - sharp analysis on macroeconomics in Ghana and elsewhere. Self-recommending.

"God must be a white man"

An excellent, heart-felt lament in the Sudan Tribune from a man with what must be an incredibly difficult job, the Auditor General of South Sudan, Steven Wöndu.

Donors beware! The African big man eats without limit. He accumulates without consideration for the needs of others. ‘Enough’ does not exist in the dictionary. Africans in power do not want to consider the fundamental zero-sum concept that the more you scoop from the common pot, the less everyone else gets. They refuse to ponder the life or death consequences of misappropriating resources intended for interventions in maternal care, solid waste management, infant vaccination, and clean drinking water. They do not feel the danger of living in a massive mansion surrounded by tragic slums. In the rare event that an African big man visits a village, he would ‘donate’ a class room, or a clinic or a road that would never exist except in the government’s financial expenditure schedule of that year. The announcement of the fake donation is proof that the big men know the needs of their people. Why they choose not to do the right thing beats imagination. But then, they are modern African big men! 

We are very efficient in taxing our poorest people mercilessly. In Africa, a woman with three chicken eggs to sell because the baby has fever is taxed in the village market. Nobody knows the destination of Africa’s tax proceeds. We only know they do not go to municipal services. Municipal services my foot! In Africa, every upper class household is a municipality with a mayor, a generator, a bore well and a septic tank. In Africa top government officials proudly import 4-wheel drive SUVs duty free. 

In other parts of the world, corrupt officials risk prosecution, fines, imprisonment or even hanging. There is a judicial deterrent to graft. In Africa, impunity is the norm. In the best case scenarios, selective justice is applied. Only the ‘small fish’ see the jail house. Reports about major embezzlement in high places only warrant inconclusive investigations. That is why African corruption is not practiced discretely. There is no need to disguise sleaze. Conversely, scruples are equated to stupidity. That is why African auditors have no difficulty reaching adverse findings.

via Abhijeet Singh 

How to invest in Africa

Todd Moss and Ross Thuotte at CGD made the case a few weeks ago for investing in Africa (literally). 

The question for how best to do this popped into my head a few weeks ago at a conference on business in Africa. So what can you do? I have some very meagre savings, and interest rates are so low right now in the UK they may as well be stuffed under my mattress. Surely there is a way of tapping into the high growth in developing countries?

I asked the question on twitter and got these five responses:

‏@davidcshipley: There's plenty of options which will get you way more than 2% - EMD, AR strasts etc. (Not investment advice). for Africa specifically there are some frontier funds which directly focus there, plus EM Eqs which have some allocation 

@Scott_Gilmore:  Try http://myc4.com  

@StyledByAfrica: Check out @Homestrings about investing in Africa 

‏@tylercowen: Some contemporary African art is fairly liquid, it has a high bid-ask spread but one way to start... 

‏@RealClearAfrica:  http://investinginafrica.net/#cat-1

Anyone have any experience with any of this or any other tips?

Chart of the Day: What do Africans think their governments should be doing?

Afrobarometer asked over 33,000 Africans between 2010 and 2012 what the most important problem facing their country that government should address is. Here are their answers. With apologies for the tiny font, but it's worth reading down the full list (I left off a few of the country-specific responses at the bottom).

Data from: Benin 2012, Botswana 2012, Burkina Faso 2012, Burundi 2012, Cape Verde 2011, Ghana 2012, Kenya 2011, Lesotho 2012, Liberia 2012, Malawi 2012, Mali 2012, Mauritius 2012, Namibia 2012, Nigeria 2012, Sierra Leone 2012, South-Africa 2011, Tanzania 2012, Togo 2012, Uganda 2012, Zimbabwe 2012 (Base=33598; Weighted results)


I'm quite surprised by how high up water supply is, but less surprised by the top 3 of unemployment, the economy, and poverty. The public policy challenge is still, first and foremost, about broad-based inclusive economic growth. Interesting to compare this with Justin Sandefur's analysis of what African researchers care about (jobs).

The tragedy is that we don't really have a clue what policy instruments can create jobs. For most of sub-Saharan Africa the challenge is a lack of demand for labour. What is needed is a way of linking African workers with consumers who have money - who are mostly in rich countries. This link could come in 3 ways:

1: Trade. Africans stay where they are and export things to rich countries. This one looks difficult in most countries, which are uncompetitive with poor Asian countries in manufacturing, and don't yet have the skills or infrastructure for high-tech service exports. Gains to agricultural productivity holds some promise, but faces serious barriers to getting going.
2: Migration. The Africans come to rich countries. An economic no-brainer, and a political non-starter.
3: Tourism. The rich people go to Africa. Tourism? Really?

There will probably be marginal improvements in all 3 areas, but its hard to see where the really big shift that could get millions of Africans up to rich country poverty lines of around $12.50 per day over the next generation is going to come from.

The very easy to use online Afrobarometer data analysis tool is here.

[and before anyone says it, of course Africa is not a country, but actually the patterns look pretty similar when you look at the country-level data, I just couldn't figure out a good way of showing that data visually - very open to suggestion]

Seeing like a State vs Seeing like a Donor

In which Justin Sandefur takes Chris Blattman and Bill Gates to school.... he argues that African governments don't need GDP data or internationally comparable micro survey data, they need good quality administrative data.

This, rather than the need for more duplicative household surveys, is the big challenge facing African statistics. Right now governments face a trade-off between high quality survey data of limited relevance, and low quality administrative data that actually fits their needs. It doesn’t have to be this way. But to overcome the trade-offs donors are going to have to back off with their pet survey projects, and stats bureaus across Africa will need to exert some renewed independence, and stop serving as research consultancies for donors.

Zing!

The Routledge Handbook of African Politics

If you were looking for a definitive overview of African Politics, you could probably do worse than this new volume, edited by Nic Cheeseman, David Anderson, and Andrea Scheibler. 32 chapters covering the State, Identity, Conflict, Democracy, Development, and International Relations.

For more, here is Andi writing at Democracy in Africa:

The Handbook, published last month, is the product of a collaboration between 35 established and emerging Africanist academics. Three years in the making, the Handbook is arguably the most comprehensive overview of African politics currently available on the market and we hope it will become a standard reference book for students seeking to understand the development of, and transitions within, contemporary Africa. ... 

Self-recommending. (And a 20% discount here)

Higher Education in Africa

Ugandan journalist Daniel Kalinaki posted this exam from the Kampala International University on his twitter feed a couple of weeks ago, and it has been a bit stuck in my head. Is this really real? Is this normal? Their wikipedia page says that KIU is ranked 58th out of African universities. It's deeply sad if true.

The political economy of slums in Africa

This is a guest post by Sean Fox at the LSE

Popular accounts of life in African cities typically portray a Dickensian squalor in the tropics: unkempt masses struggling with poverty, disease and violence. While such accounts overlook the dynamic nature of African cities and the resilience of their residents, they do reflect an important truth. Sub-Saharan Africa has the highest rate of ‘slum incidence’ of any major world region, with over 60% of the region’s urban population—roughly 200 million people—living in settlements characterized by some combination of overcrowding, tenuous dwelling structures, and deficient access to adequate water and sanitation facilities. However, there is wide variation in slum incidence across countries within the region (see Table 1). Why do so many Africans live in slums, and what accounts for the wide variation in slum incidence across countries in the region? I address these questions in a recently published working paper.

Table 1 - Slum incidence by region and for selected African countries

	Slum population as % of urban population
	2000	2005	2010
Region
Developing Regions	39.3	35.7	32.7
Sub-Saharan Africa	65.0	63.0	61.7
Southern Asia	45.8	40.0	35.0
South-eastern Asia	39.6	34.2	31.0
Eastern Asia	37.4	33.0	28.2
Western Asia	20.6	25.8	24.6
Latin America & the Caribbean	29.2	25.5	23.5
Northern Africa	20.3	13.4	13.3
Selected African countries
Ethiopia	88.6	81.8
Tanzania	70.1	66.4
Nigeria	69.6	65.8
Ghana	52.1	45.4
South Africa	33.2	28.7
Zimbabwe	3.3	17.9
Source: UN-Habitat (2008)

Social scientists have traditionally portrayed slums as a natural and temporary by-product of economic modernization. But the scale and persistence of slum settlements in developing regions in recent decades presents a serious challenge to this notion. A variety of theories have been advanced to account for this apparent deviation from the assumed path of modernization. Put together they tell a fairly simple story: urban population growth in developing regions has outpaced economic and institutional modernization. I refer to this as the ‘disjointed modernization’ theory of slums and test it empirically using regression analysis. In support of this theory, I find that nearly 70% of cross-country variation in slum incidence can be accounted for by variation in urban population growth rates, measures of income and economic diversification and a measure of institutional quality.

However, identifying the contemporary correlates of slum incidence does not amount to a convincing causal explanation for the scale and diversity of the phenomenon. Why did the process of modernization become more disjointed in some countries than others? To answer this question I trace the origins of divergence in urban development trajectories back to the colonial era. Generally speaking, colonisers stimulated urban population growth but laid a poor foundation for urban economic development and effective urban governance. But colonial experiences varied widely across countries in Africa. Where economic and political interests were strong, towns and cities received significant investment and institutional development; where economic and political interests were relatively marginal, towns and cities received minimal investment and were left with ad-hoc governance structures. I demonstrate that this variation is correlated with contemporary slum incidence. For example, Figure 1 below plots slum incidence against a measure of ‘British indirect rule’—i.e. the number of court cases adjudicated by indigenous as opposed to colonial authorities. The figure shows that slum incidence in 2005 is closely correlated with the measure of British indirect rule (a proxy for institutional investment) in 1955, supporting the hypothesis that the colonial era represents a ‘critical juncture’ in the history of urban development in sub-Saharan Africa.

Figure 1. Colonial strategies of rule and slum incidence in 2005

Having identified the colonial origins of ‘disjointed’ modernization, I turn my attention to the mechanisms of path dependency that have served to perpetuate colonial patterns of urban investment and institutional development. Post-colonial African governments have had anywhere between 25 and 50 years to redress the failures of their colonial forebears. Why have they not done so? I offer two complementary explanations.

First, urban underdevelopment offers myriad opportunities for political and economic entrepreneurs. For example, politicians and bureaucrats often use the absence of formal property rights in urban areas to engage in ‘land racketeering’—i.e. offering squatters on ‘public’ land protection from eviction in return for political support or economic rents. Similarly, the absence of water infrastructure yields very lucrative opportunities for the private vendors who inevitably step in to fill the void. In other words, urban underdevelopment has proven very profitable for a range of actors in African cities, resulting in the emergence of a broad constellation of status quo interests opposed to investment and institutional reform.

Second, an anti-urbanization bias emerged in development discourse and practice in the late 1970s. Up to that point, towns and cities were seen as engines of prosperity and progressive social and political spaces. But a series of influential publications in the 1970s and 1980s portrayed urbanites as economic parasites feeding off the surplus produced by peasants in the countryside and exerting an undue influence in public affairs. Investing in urban development came to be seen as anti-developmental. As a result, governments across Africa implemented policies to restrict or discourage rural-urban migration and promote rural development. By 2007, 78% of African countries had policies in place to restrict migration; up from 49% in 1976. There was also a significant contraction in international development assistance for urban development projects. As Table 2 demonstrates, World Bank shelter lending in the region, which began in 1972, shrivelled to near insignificance by 2005.

Table 2. Trends in World Bank shelter lending in sub-Saharan Africa, 1971-2005

	1972-1981	1982-1991	1992-2005
Total shelter lending	$498 million	$409 million	$81 million
Equivalent per capita	$5.20	$2.74	$0.32
Notes: Shelter lending data from Buckley and Kalarickal (2006); per capita estimates based on total urban population in sub-Saharan Africa at the end of each period (i.e. 1981, 1991 and 2005) drawn from World Bank, World Development Indicators online database, accessed September 2012.

The proliferation of slums in sub-Saharan Africa in recent decades is de facto evidence of government failure to invest in urban development. But history is not destiny. As Africa’s urban population continues to grow, politicians are increasingly likely to find it in their inteest to address the basic needs of urban residents. And if they are committed to stimulating economic growth and diversification they will need to do so. Cities can serve as engines of economic development, but only if they have adequate infrastructure and their residents have safe, healthy and secure places to live. The international community could help facilitate this transformation by recognizing the urban potential and supporting (as opposed to discouraging) efforts to invest in urban development in the region.

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Fox, S. (2013) ‘The political economy of slums: Theory and evidence from sub-Saharan Africa’, Working paper series 2013, No. 13-146, Department of International Development, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Rwanda: The Trailer

This video is really great. Come and visit! Prepared for the Rwanda Tourism Board. Though why they decided to call it "Africa".... (they apparently changed the name to "Rwanda" - better!)


AFRICA from MAMMOTH on Vimeo.

What do Africans think about the UN?

There is an interesting paradox here: the people (e.g., Mozambicans) who know least about the UN give it the highest rating, whereas people who seem relatively well informed (e.g., South Africans) have far more mixed opinions.

I'm not sure that paradox is the word they are going for there.... from Afrobarometer. 

Dowden on DFID

Richard Dowden, Director of the Royal African Society on the new DFID Ministers. Interesting stuff.

How does it look from Africa? Two things matter for African presidents and ministers. They like to establish personal relationships and trust in face to face talks with the same people over a long period. Secondly they like to deal with people who know something about their country’s history. They do not like ministers who talk down to them (as Mitchell did) or those who just read a brief on the plane as they fly in (as Douglas Alexander did). 

The recent reshuffle ignores these aspects and casts doubt over how much this government cares about development and its relations with Africa.

... 

[Greening] talks of a line by line investigation to ensure value for money which sounds good, but is actually nonsense. How can someone with no experience of development, with an annual accounts mentality, judge the value of long term development projects?

... 

although the indications are not propitious for a dynamic team working creatively to help get Africa nearer to the MDG targets in the next three years, I will not write off any of these appointments. But they look more like internal political expediency than what Africa and the rest of the developing world needs right now.

Africa Express

What to say about Africa Express? I like Simon Ayre's take:

After five days of thinking about it, it’s time to write something about the Cardiff leg of the Africa Express tour that traveled across the country last week. But what do I write that hasn’t already been said? How do I put into words an experience that left me sat down staring into space for nearly forty minutes when I got home?  

I can’t. I’ve tried, I’ve deleted what I’ve written and tried again and again. I’ve given up and come back to it- I just can’t come up with anything that would do it justice.

Here's a five star review of the Manchester show, and a detailed review of the London show. Apparently Fatboy Slim called a Mali trip "like the greatest ever edition of Later ... with Jools." Which is close but not quite right. It's better than that. The London show was more like a live 5-hour mashup-style remix. Like Girl Talk played by 50 live musicians jamming.

In any case, thanks to Damon Albarn and Ian Birrell and all of the artists for making it all happen.

This audience-shot video gives a bit of a taste (HT: Matt).

Oxford University Africa Conference [Videos]

Think Africa Press have just posted a bunch of videos from the Oxford Africa Society conference a few weeks ago.

The highlight for me was a quote from Nigerian Central Bank Governor Sanusi Lamido Aminu Sanusi.

[paraphrased from memory]

If a politician tells you that they are going to create a job, throw them out of the window. Fix the roads, fix the power, fix the security, and the people will create their own jobs.

Gay rights and economic growth

Why are we obsessing with gay rights in the middle of an economic crisis?

Because gay rights are human rights. And if you really need a reason beyond that, Daron Acemoglu lays out in detail how the "rights revolution" over the last century has driven technological innovation that has delivered economic growth.

Alex Tabarraok highlights some more recent evidence that also supports this view (one of the authors, Charles Jones, literally wrote the book on economic growth);

Public and private discrimination diminish a person’s ability to individuate and develop, an ability that drives innovation and growth in the artistic, economic and scientific realms. In India the caste system binds many people to the lives of their ancestors regardless of desire, talent or will. In parts of the world half the population is subjugated and bound to a limited vision of their life, a vision which is not of their own making. Similar if less extreme forces have limited women and blacks in the United States. 

In a pathbreaking paper, The Allocation of Talent and U.S. Economic Growth, Jones, Hsieh, Hurst, and Klenow connect a micro allocation model to a macro growth model to estimate that the lifting of much discrimination in the United States since 1960 has had a large effect on economic growth: 

In 1960, 94 percent of doctors were white men, as were 96 percent of lawyers and 86 percent of managers. By 2008, these numbers had fallen to 63, 61, and 57 percent, respectively. Given that innate talent for these professions is unlikely to differ between men and women or between blacks and whites, the allocation of talent in 1960 suggests that a substantial pool of innately talented black men, black women, and white women were not pursuing their comparative advantage. This paper estimates the contribution to U.S. economic growth from the changing occupational allocation of white women, black men, and black women between 1960 and 2008. We find that the contribution is significant: 17 to 20 percent of growth over this period might be explained simply by the improved allocation of talent within the United States.

Up to a fifth of growth due simply to getting rid of pointless discrimination. Most of these economic opportunities have now been taken in the liberal west, but there are potentially huge economic gains across the developing world. How much is homophobia hurting African economies?