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This is an archived USAID document retained on this web site as a matter of public record.
Remarks of Vivian Lowery Derryck
"Human Capacity Development at the End of the Millennium"
Assistant Administrator, Bureau for Africa
August 18, 1999
Washington, DC
Thank you for your invitation. I appreciate the opportunity to share some thoughts on human capacity development at the end of the millennium. I believe that education is the linchpin of sustainable development, so I'm delighted to have opportunity to test some ideas with you fellow true believers and I look forward to your reactions.This morning, I will highlight four global trends, suggest some ways that they impact on education and share Africa Bureau strategies for dealing with them. My examples will come largely from Africa, but I think they have resonance for the rest of the developing world.
All of our human capacity development activities will occur in a rapidly changing world, a world shaped by four megatrends: globalization; the growth of civil society; growing social and economic inequities; and unprecedented demographic trends.
Globalization is the new watchword, and it means unprecedented, accelerated change that has literally led to one world. Globalization is based in technological change that has led to explosive growth of information and communications. It has brought us borderless societies that are redefining the meaning of the nation-state. Nation-states are no longer able to control the flow of information or financial transactions. Globalization is relentless, fast, and devastating to those not ready for it.
Globalization demands literacy, numeracy and technical ability. Globalization has spawned a new technological literacy. Technology that supports knowledge-building and knowledge exchange is developing exponentially, but is available primarily to the privileged. Ninety-one percent of the world's Internet users are in the USA, which has twice the number of computers as the rest of the world combined.
Globalization has changed the way we think about human capacity development.
Peter Drucker, in a landmark November 1994 article in the Atlantic Monthly, discussed the shift from an industrialized society to a knowledge society. Only knowledge societies can compete in the globalized world. Education will become the center of the knowledge society and the school its key institution.
Drucker described the rise of the knowledge worker, a person who uses his or her education -- literacy, numeracy, the ability to conceptualize and analyze - as an integral part of his/her work. He maintained that one-third or more of the U.S. workforce by next year (2000) will be knowledge workers.
This new, globalized, technology-driven world is also competitive and Drucker noted that the new competitiveness requires extensive formal education and an ability to acquire and apply theoretical and analytical knowledge.
Drucker was describing five years ago, the reality of today.
It is arguable that in the next hundred years the capacity to generate and utilize knowledge will supercede military and economic prowess as the central strategic doctrine informing national strategies.
A knowledge-based society will require a fundamental reassessment of our systems of education and training and what we propose for our overseas partners. We are challenged to re-examine conventional thinking about education and training, to build on recent advances in our understanding of learning processes, and to effectively incorporate the use of information technology, or IT.
IT presents both opportunities and threats. Properly used, technology enables countries to leapfrog generations of communication hardware and software. But lacking access, lesser-developed countries can fall further and further behind.
IT is an integral part of globalization - but will it promote equity?
The Africa Bureau has wrestled with this question for the past five years. On the one hand, in the African context, IT is often seen as a luxury development tool in settings of dire poverty, particularly educational settings such as schools without roofs, latrines, teachers or textbooks. Personnel and financial resources for training IT users, maintaining equipment and developing culturally appropriate applications often are lacking.
On the other hand, IT is a way to achieve income redistribution of wealth and promote human capacity-building worldwide. Information and communications technologies (ICTs), specifically computer-based technology, provide school systems with incredibly flexible tools that allow underdeveloped regions to break their isolation with the rest of the world. Both donors and host-country institutions are working together to reduce the costs of IT.
USAID has grappled with the IT question and developed an innovative program that promotes Internet connectivity continent-wide. USAID's Leland Initiative is helping ensure that Africa is a player in the global information revolution. A major part of the Leland Initiative is school-to-school partnerships, including the use of Internet in the classroom. Leland also fosters links with U.S. schools and institutional partners such as Sister Cities, GLOBE, and National Geographic "Kids Network."
In Ghana, Benin and Paraguay, USAID-funded community learning centers provide communication via e-mail, access to information through the Internet, and valuable word processing and computer skills training to working women, students and illiterate rural dwellers.
USAID-funded computer-assisted teacher training activities in Morocco, Namibia and Guatemala will improve in-service and pre-service teacher training by allowing teachers to communicate with their colleagues across the country and access information where textbooks are scarce and very expensive to replace.
The Internet also hosts web-sites where teachers will develop content and pedagogical materials specific to their own needs and in their own languages.
In short, IT can cut both ways. For instance, although the Internet is truly a gateway, 80 percent of its material is in English, a language that only 10 percent of the world's population reads.
The second megatrend for the new century is the growth of civil society and the expansion of citizen rights. The burgeoning of civil society means that ordinary citizens feel that they have a right to participate in their own governance. The emphasis on civil society and civic participation presupposes a population able to independently absorb and assess information and make informed governance decisions.
However, strong, robust citizen participation with transparency requires literacy. Effective advocacy for social change requires literacy. Similarly human rights monitoring requires the ability to read and analyze information.
President Alpha Konare of Mali stated the relationship between democracy and education succinctly. In a meeting with President Clinton when the two men were discussing Mali's development needs, President Konare observed, "You can't have democracy if you can't read." Out of that statement grew the Education for Development and Democracy Initiative, or EDDI.
EDDI will foster partnerships between U.S. and African civic groups and PTAs. USAID will accomplish this by linking 100 or more civic education and democracy organizations to the Internet, and through it to partnerships with U.S. and international groups. Through EDDI, we will establish university linkages between U.S. and African universities by bringing Internet to 100 African universities and facilitating the establishment of sustainable partnerships. We aim to bring Internet to 1,000 primary and secondary schools as well.
The third major issue is growing income and social inequality.
The gap between the rich and the poor, between nations and within nations, is growing at an alarming rate. In 1960, the 20 percent of the world's people in the richest countries had 30 times the income of the poorest 20 percent. By 1995 the richest had 82 times as much income.1 In 1998, the differential has grown to 86%. The three richest people in the world have assets that exceed the combined GDP of the 48 least developed countries. The 15 richest persons have assets that exceed the total GDP of sub-Saharan Africa.
This accelerated pace of inequality represents perhaps the greatest global challenge of our generation, and the generations to come. The inequity goes beyond income to access to basic services and to education. The global response to these inequalities should be robust programs in economic growth. But these programs cannot succeed without an educated labor force that allows Africa to compete and compete globally.
So we've come full circle. These three megatrends - globalization with its knowledge society and IT challenges, burgeoning civil society and its demands for informed, literate civic participation, and growing social and economic inequities -- will play major roles in shaping development interventions in the next century.
Three demographic trends will also inform HCD initiatives worldwide, but particularly in Africa: 1) the rapidly increasing population of youth within the developing world, 2) the growing numbers of HIV/AIDS victims, and 3) the continuing feminization of poverty with concomitant female adult illiteracy.
The youth bulge is a global phenomenon. In 1999 we are living with the biggest generation of young people, age 15 to 24, that the world has ever known. At 1.05 billion, this age group represents nearly one of every five people in the world. Eighty-four percent of these young people live in developing countries.2 The numbers have significance for formal schooling, employment and unemployment, child soldiers in armed conflict and response mechanisms to address HIV/AIDS.
It is estimated that a quarter of the 96 million pupils who entered school for the first time in 1995 are likely to abandon their schooling before grade 5. In terms of employment, the picture is also grim. By 2015, two billion people between the ages of 15-24 will be out or work; half of these will be from developing countries. ILO reports that unemployment among 16 to 24 year olds is the highest among all demographic groups, twice as high as national averages.
According to UNICEF, on any given day, an estimated 250,000 children under 18 are involved in armed conflicts, whether on the front line or as messengers, drivers or in other jobs. There are an estimated 300,000 child soldiers currently engaged in active fighting around the world. The Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers believes that 120,000 children under 18 years of age are currently participating in armed conflicts across Africa; and some are as young as 7 or 8 years old.
Poor, poorly educated, unemployed young people are a recipe for disaster, but there are innovative ways to address this problem. A first step is to view youth as assets rather than as problems -- turning the paradigm of "youth at risk" to "youth at work."
Several innovations can occur at the primary school level. Curricular reform which addresses literacy, numeracy, problem-solving, civic education and conflict resolution is the starting point. Incorporation of parents into school management in order to value education is another necessity. One of the important innovations of the Education for Democracy and Development Initiative, EDDI, builds on our knowledge of the importance of parental involvement. We're fostering PTA and other education-oriented civil society organizations to focus on quality education with parental input.
Another important strategy is the sensitization of educators to the special needs of girls. One of the key concerns is school retention. This is particularly sensitive with girls who drop out to tend to younger siblings, so that brothers can attend in their stead. USAID has had some visible successes. For instance, the USAID/Malawi Girls' Attainment in Basic Literacy and Education (GABLE) project, which has almost doubled girls' enrollments in primary school.
There have been important innovations outside of the formal school setting. Apprenticeships and mentoring bring important non-formal strategies to the table. Centers for Life Skills offer technical training and national community service programs provide employment generation skills. For instance, in Cairo, in a UNESCO-supported program called "garbage villages," marginalized youth receive training in recycling of waste along with micro-enterprise, literacy and health skills.3 USAID is working with street children in Congo and Tanzania, and supporting mentoring programs and youth-generated businesses.
Currently, major international concern is focused on young men, adolescent and child soldiers. Countries in post-conflict are increasingly aware of the need to promptly re-integrate these young combatants. For instance, the Garoowe Youth Service Corps in Somalia is re-integrating youth soldiers into their communities through technical training and community service (1996). In Liberia, 15%, or 5,000 of the combatants during that country's civil war were child soldiers. USAID's War Affected Youth Support program, implemented by UNICEF, strives to provide for the reintegration into civil society of Liberian children, including demobilized child soldiers and displaced youth, through 22 centers that provide vocational training, literacy and counseling services. In still another program, the Africa Bureau is providing assistance to reintegrating child soldiers through USAID's Displaced Children and Orphans Fund.
Another demographic bombshell is HIV/AIDS which is particularly virulent in Africa. Although it's a global disease, Africa is hardest hit. AIDS is the leading cause of death on the continent. In the past decade, 12 million people in sub-Saharan Africa have died of AIDS - one quarter of them children - and each day AIDS buries another 5,500 men, women and children. In sub-Saharan Africa, more than 22 million adults and 1 million children are currently living with AIDS. Every day, 11,000 additional people are infected -- one every 8 seconds. By 2005, the daily death toll will reach 13,000 people.4
In nine sub-Saharan countries, one-fifth to one-third of all children under the age of 15 will be orphaned by the year 2000. With the death of parents, a rapidly increasing number of children (particularly girls) are now dropping out of school to act as substitute labor or as caregivers for their dying parents.5
The disease is having a major impact on education. In Malawi and Zambia, 30 percent of teachers are HIV-positive, and in Zambia, 1,500 teachers died of AIDS in 1998 alone.6 The disease demands new approaches to HCD, especially in formal education. These approaches could include:
- Changed roles for teachers and other education workers;
- Shorter semesters to make learning possible in a shorter period, especially for older students;
- Enabling schools to provide for basic needs of children deprived of nutrition and other basic care;
- Training unemployed youth and students as teachers;
- Training teachers to act as counselors. USAID's Environmental Education (EE) activity, implemented by the Rossing Foundation in Namibia, trained individuals to provide counseling, mentoring, and life skills;
- Using schools as community centers for HIV/AIDS education;
- Using radio for teacher retraining and other educational needs;
- Using youth as health educators; and
- Using youth as peer HIV/AIDS counselors and condom distributors, as is done in Congo coffee clubs.
Africans are beginning to take leadership in this crisis. For example, Ugandan President Museveni has required each ministry to "develop and implement a plan to reduce AIDS stigma and HIV transmission." Uganda's rate of infection has been cut in half, beating the continent's trend of increased infection.7
In South Africa, a "University of Natal Toolkit" has been developed to "assist advocates of HIV/AIDS within government sectors to plan sector-specific responses."8 Zambia has established a new focal point in the Ministry of Education to coordinate its responses to HIV/AIDS and has a new school health program to integrate classroom materials and interventions.
USAID missions are giving a very high priority to adolescent reproductive health programs. In part this is attributable to the HIV/AIDS epidemic, which disproportionately affects young girls. USAID/Zambia continues to target adolescents and young adults with peer education, radio shows, a youth newspaper, and football camps to reach males. These interventions resulted in declining HIV prevalence rates in the 15-19 year old group.
Most of these programs respond only to the reproductive health needs of adolescents, overlooking the multiple causes of unwanted pregnancies and unprotected sex leading to HIV/AIDS infection. The Africa Bureau's Office of Sustainable Development is starting to investigate how income generation and micro-credit for youth can be allied with reproductive health education, and particularly HIV/AIDS prevention.
The third demographic is the growing feminization of poverty. Women comprise 70 percent of the world's 1.3 billion poor. The feminization of poverty is at its historical high point. The number of rural women living in absolute poverty has risen by 50 percent over the last two decades, as opposed to 30 percent for men. In 1980, women performed two-thirds of the world's working hours, but earned only one tenth of the world's income and owned less than one-tenth of the world's property. Nineteen years later, the situation has not fundamentally changed.
One of the antidotes to women's poverty is women's education. Literate women have higher labor force participation rates, more yields per hectare, and lower crude birth rates. Literacy begets literacy as literate women have more children in school at age-grade appropriate levels.
While many programs focus on girls' education, I am concerned about the lack of attention to their mothers and their literacy. We need to emphasize women's non-formal education -- reaching the women without literacy and numeracy who face diminishing opportunities and longer life expectancy. Among the world's nearly one billion illiterate people, women outnumber men two to one. The impact of this dilemma on the development of women and their nations is well known: the higher a nation's female illiteracy rate, the higher its fertility and infant mortality rate.9
Successful programs offer models to increase women's access to non-formal programs and related literacy classes. We have a growing base on lessons learned. For instance, we know we can achieve success in literacy, numeracy, life-skills and problem solving for women if the program is provided in a location that is sensitive to the needs of women. This means that the training comes to the women, rather than the women coming to the training.
We know that Internet is empowering women as they partner with counterparts around the world through IT. Linking women from developing countries with those in developed countries as "sisters" and co-learners can help both groups reach their full potentials.
Linking poverty, economic empowerment and literacy, we also know that women gain increased bargaining power through group action. By strengthening women's business associations and coalitions, UNIFEM is helping to advocate for women's economic rights and for trade and other economic policies that benefit them. In Ghana, a Ministry of Rural Development program called Enhancing Opportunities for Women in Development, provides women's groups with credit facilities, training, access to appropriate technology and marketing.
One of the most well known economic empowerment programs is the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh, offering loans and business training to women in groups (tontines) for their cottage industries. With USAID's help, this model has been adapted to the Kenya context through the Kenyan Rural Enterprise Program (KREP) focused towards women micro-entrepreneurs.
Women have special poverty alleviation, education and training needs in conflict and post-conflict countries. In countries in crisis, women take on new roles while men are engaged in war. Women take on more arduous agricultural roles in the absence of men; they seek more low-paying, unskilled jobs. Often they, themselves perform combat operations, as in Lebanon, Sri Lanka and Eritrea.10
Women in post-conflict countries deal with issues of reconciliation and reconstruction. Recently, new programs have focused on the development of NGOs which deal primarily with women's post-crisis issues (food, water, shelter, safety, and medical services) but which include literacy, numeracy, post-traumatic stress and empowerment training.
For example, in Rwanda, the Duhozanye Association, founded first by 310 widows as a trauma group moved into supporting housing, education, and economic development projects.11 Medical Women in Bosnia first started as a health center for women and now supports a network of kindergartens and mobile clinics providing education for children and health care.
In short, women are more sensitized to the importance of literacy and the link between literacy and economic empowerment.
In conclusion, I've shared with you our Bureau's major concerns as we look forward to the next century. Globalization, expanding civil society, and social inequity present challenges that we're trying to address through innovative, cost-efficient programs. We're mindful of the youth bulge, the centrality of women and the vulnerability of an entire continent to the scourge of HIV/AIDS. But we believe that in the long-term, human capacity development through formal and non-formal education and training is the best development tool for developing world competitiveness in the new global era.
Thank you.
1 UNDP Human Development Report, 1998, p.28
[return to text]2 EFA Forum, Feb. 1, 1999 website
[return to text]3 EFA Forum, Feb. 1, 1999 website
[return to text]4 "Joining Forces for Life: Leadership and Investment in Fighting an Epidemic" White House Presidential Report, July 1999, p. 4
[return to text]5 Ibid., p.7
[return to text]6 Ibid, p.8
[return to text]7 Ibid., p. 12
[return to text]8 "HIV/AIDS and The Department of Education", a pamphlet developed for the June 28, 1999 Durban/SA Workshop on AIDS by ABT Associates and Heard, p. 1.
[return to text]9 WID WORKS, Vol. 1, No. 2, Winter 1996/97
[return to text]10 Kumar, Krishna et al. "Forging New Roles: The Emergence of Women's Organizations in Postconflict Societies" CDIE/USAID
[return to text]11 Ibid, p. 8.
[return to text]
This is an archived USAID document retained on this web site as a matter of public record.
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Last Updated on: July 12, 2001 |
