Training and Education

The ability of a society to acquire and commercialise knowledge is critical for economic growth and consequentially improved living standards. Knowledge is the most important single factor in economic development. Most would agree a deficit of knowledge and learning is killing Africa - and not too softly. Despite a proliferation of schools and colleges, the lack of true learning and creativity has held the African captive to underdevelopment.

This project is all about the transfer of technology - and knowledge needed to support it. There are other factors of industrial development, such as the entrepreneurial spirit, the ability to innovate, the ability to work hard and the ability to learn, but Africans have all these abilities - one only need walk down the main street of Lóme, or any provincial or capital city almost anywhere on the continent to see it - the tyre changing aid in the local repair shop fabricated from pieces of scrap metal and welded with a jury rigged welding system hooked up to a car battery is one simple example. In context - such things demonstrate an innovative capability on a par with anything seen in the west.

It has been said most African countries higher education systems seem to have been established primarily to train administrators for the postcolonial governments and time has not really changed this focus, so they turn out graduates who are just producing what they were taught in school, instead of producing new things. This then leaves Africa with millions of graduates who are failures as far as life and service is concerned. A Master's degree holder moves with little or no creativity and thousands of poorly educated people only wait for opportunities to work where others have worked. Few are involved in the creation of new things - the outdated education they received then just gives birth to confusion

Possibly true - but I think it does rather miss an important point. Western education systems were not directly responsible for the West's industrialisation. Sure - nobody without some education is likely to have created any sort of industry, but "business" schools and universities did not turn out graduates who rushed out and started productive companies that led to industrialisation - more they exist to teach people specific skills needed to work for industries that are already there.

Henry Ford was a farm boy with a little education and an aptitude for things mechanical. That was enough to get him a job first as a machine shop apprentice, and then later with the Edison Company where he very quickly worked his way to the position of Chief Engineer. The founder of the Edison Company itself had but 3 months of formal education - he learnt his 3 R's from his mother, she also succeeded in teaching him how to teach himself - obviously successfully.

Nikola Tesla, the inventor of the AC power system which proved so much superior to Edison's, was very well educated - a graduate engineer with a lot of experience - however his invention was successfully commercialised not by himself, but by George Westinghouse - another machine shop apprentice who had used his skill to develop a braking system for railway trains, and a successful business from it. Another who had just high school - but received a solid education in mathematics and physics from the army - founded the European Siemens Electric Company. The Hewlett Packard Company was founded and run by two graduate engineers.

Inventions show the same mix - of the two men credited separately with the commutated electric motor - one was a blacksmith and the other a journeyman bookbinder. The much-improved AC induction motor came later from Tesla - an engineering graduate. Of the two key inventers in steam engines - one was an ironmonger the other an instrument maker.

All these companies rely on well-educated personnel to function - but they were actually not all created as business entities by higher education. Expecting therefore African graduates to produce "new things" is perhaps a little unreasonable. Engineering graduates tend to improve things and solve problems with existing things - if an engineering graduate has no industry to join after graduating - there is no rule that says he should be able to create one.

It is however equally true that no society can expect to develop and grow its industry without higher education and engineering graduates - so the question becomes simply one of how does industrialisation start.

Borrowing, and paraphrasing, an observation from one Jeremy Weate

The more you look at Africa - the more you realize that technological interventions or money pumped in by donors will do little to transform anything, unless there is a primary focus on business processes… Africans enjoy the benefits of cars, laptops, mobile phones and other modern technology, but live in a society which does not understand the discipline and rigour it takes to produce such technology. This creates an alienated culture where technology and modern industrial processes are seen as a mystery. No one seems to be able to create value-added manufacturing processes; no one seems to stem the tide of an import economy, turning it into an export economy. So few technological interventions (in any sector) meet with any kind of success.

Truly intellectually curious, technologically innovative and self-sustaining societies cannot be built off a bedrock of reactive thinking coupled with disinterest and indolence. The challenge is to disrupt these ossified ways of thought and catalyse the forces of creativity.

That is a true enough observation and makes the key point - "a primary focus on business process" - accept that - then the problem just becomes one of defining precisely what business process actually is. What is the process whereby innovators and opportunists can create value added manufacturing processes.... and how does a society learn the discipline and rigour involved in producing technology-based product and economic growth.

And, perhaps most importantly, can this happen without introducing "Taylorism" which in its purest form imposes the skills of the few on "unquestioning masses" in order to eventually benefit everybody.

The Master and Apprentice

The Role of Women