Education, a panacea to poverty in Nigeria
By Halima Abdulkadiri
Increased access to education can contribute to reducing poverty.
Acquired basic skills such as reading, writing, and numeracy, have a documented positive effect on marginalized populations’ incomes. It increases the rate of return on the economy.
A newly published paper by UNESCO shows that education is critical to escape chronic poverty and prevent the transmission of poverty between generations.
The rate of return is higher in low-income countries than in high-income countries.
Primary education has a higher rate of return than secondary education. Education also enables those in paid formal employment to earn higher wages: One year of education is associated with a 10% increase in wages.
Education also changes structures in food security.
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A study from 1980 that still is influential, analyzed the effects of primary education on agricultural production in 13 countries. It found that the average annual gain in production associated with four years of schooling was 8.7% (Lockheed, Jamison, and Lau, 1980). Education becomes a catalytic force contributing to the turn of the tide of eliminating extreme poverty in a sustainable way.
It is therefore important to invest in education that provides children and youth with relevant theoretical and practical skills.
Let me end by quickly highlighting some of the issues this government has indicated will be high on their education for development agenda:
“Mind the gap”: Design activities/programmes to reach the most marginalized girls
Despite tremendous success in getting children into school since 2000, almost 60 million children are still out of school and the decline in out-of-school children has stagnated.
The children still not in school are the most marginalized and “suffer” from multiple marginalization factors (poverty, rural, ethnic/religious/language minorities, being a girl et cetera) As we move forward to the next generation development goals, targeting interventions to reach excluded populations is necessary.
However, a million jobs need to be created by 2023.
Education in entrepreneurship and business management is important to encourage and enable young people to develop their own businesses. Relevant technical and vocational training is important to support this purpose.
An education that promotes agricultural knowledge, innovation, and efficiency, can contribute to increased productivity in this sector.
With a more focused geographical target, Norwegian development aid and other investments can better build on the strengths of the various interventions to find synergies that bring development to a higher level.
We look forward to cooperating with a broad range of partners in making this government’s high ambitions for education a success, and to making sure we interlink with the other areas of the sustainable development agenda.
