Resurrecting Zimbabwe's Educational System

"Zimbabwe's educational system is, in essence, 'dualized': there is the private-schooling system that caters for 5% of Zimbabwe's students—who are typically from extremely affluent backgrounds; and then, there is the public-schooling system that caters for 95% of Zimbabwe's students—who are typically from low-to-middle-income backgrounds. Curiously, the Zimbabwean private-schooling system 'programs' its students for a life of mediocrity at the very least; and contrastingly, the public-schooling system 'programs' its students for a life of mediocrity at the very best. Hence, evidently, educational inequity is one of the nation's greatest injustices."

— My Abstract Description of Zimbabwe's Educational System

Background facts:

• Since the beginning of 2009, half of Zimbabwe's children of school-going age have not attended school.
• Over 50% of Zimbabwe's schools are currently closed.
• Zimbabwe's public school exams still remain uncorrected; the results of which, were due during the last month.
• According to United Nations statistics, school attendance in Zimbabwe fell by 20% in 2008.
• Zimbabwe's teachers are currently being paid USD100 per month, and have refused to resume conducting lessons until their demand to be remunerated USD1 200 per month—in line with the South African average of teacher remuneration—is met.
• In February of 2009, teachers were paid the Zimbabwe-dollar equivalent of USD2.
• Half of Zimbabwe's 120 000-strong teaching force has left the Zimbabwean teaching profession.
• According to Senator David Coltart, the country's Education Minister, the Zimbabwean educational system requires an immediate financial injection of USD400 million. So far, the Zimbabwean Ministry of Finance has only been able to provide one-hundredth (USD4 million) of the required financial injection.
• Public schools spent an average of just USD0.18 per student last year, down from an average of about USD6 per student in 1991.
• The average class size in Zimbabwe's public-schooling system currently stands at 50 students per class.
• Public schools (which are run by the Zimbabwean government) in Zimbabwe typically charge between USD50-and-USD150 per student per term (1 Zimbabwean term ~ 3 months).

Please Note: Statistics are according to Karin Brulliard's (a Washington Post Foreign Correspondent) March 1, 2009 article titled As Once-Admired Schools Wither, Zimbabwe's Young Are Left Idle.

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Since 1998, Zimbabwe's educational system has been unraveling in tandem with the country's beleaguered economy. Shockingly, an educational system that burgeoned forth an adult literacy rate that is currently hovering over 90%—the second highest in Africa—is now in a pitiful state of decay. Currently, Zimbabwe's educational system is generally characterized by; a mass exodus of proficient teachers to neighboring countries in search of more fecund pastures (brain-drain), and an acute-shortage of material resources that aid the delivery of educational services.

According to the 1992 Economics Nobel laureate, Dr. Gary Becker (of the University of Chicago), the human capital value of any random person ranges between USD500 000 and USD5 000 000. Therefore, the exodus of an estimated 60 000 skilled teachers from Zimbabwe's educational system translates to a loss of between USD30 billion and USD300 billion of value from the Zimbabwean educational system's human capital balance sheet. To put it into perspective, Zimbabwe's GDP for 2007 (According to the C.I.A. World Factbook), stood at USD6.186 billion, hence, the human capital leakage in Zimbabwe's teaching profession translates to between 4.85 and 48.5 times Zimbabwe's 2007 GDP. Evidently, it is of paramount importance for the Zimbabwean government to implement measures to arrest, and reverse, the tremendous loss of value from the Zimbabwean educational system's human capital balance sheet.

Refreshingly, the new Zimbabwean Education Minister, Senator David Coltart, recently announced a USD400 million plan that will see Zimbabwean teachers being remunerated along the lines of the South African average remuneration of teachers. When fully implemented, the plan will help to eradicate, albeit in a small way, the financial push-factors that motivate Zimbabwean teachers to relocate to neighboring countries. However, functionaries in Zimbabwe's educational sector also need to focus their attention on attracting an increasing proportion of Zimbabwe's graduates to the teaching profession.

I'll address how they can achieve this in the remainder of this script.

...Attracting Human Resources to The Educational Sector

Economists, from different walks of life, concur that a decade of persistent economic free-falling has left Zimbabwe with virtually non-existent; industrial, service and agricultural sectors. During the said period of economic decline, the Zimbabwean educational sector has been steadily churning-out a stream of graduates from its institutions of higher learning. Hence, this implies that Zimbabwe currently has multiple batches of graduates from its institutions of higher learning, and a shrinking spectrum of opportunities to offer them. Or, otherwise stated: Zimbabwe's economy cannot absorb its tertiary educational sector's graduates.

Whilst this is extremely unfortunate indeed, the new Zimbabwean government (of national unity) can channel Zimbabwe's plethora of multiple-batches-of-graduates-with-no-jobs into plentiful teaching opportunities available in its primary and secondary educational sub-sectors, thereby helping to reduce the Zimbabwean educational sector's present human capital deficit.

Interestingly, this can be achieved by creating a movement modeled on the Teach for America initiative, that will enlist Zimbabwe's most promising future leaders (recent graduates and skilled professionals), to commit to teach for a minimum of two years in Zimbabwe's (urban and rural) primary and secondary schools. Additionally, the Ministry of Education can invest in the training and professional development necessary to guarantee the new recruits' success as teachers. For the process to be smooth-flowing, an innovative and attractive cocktail of incentives can be employed (e.g. tax holidays, free health care, subsidized housing, hefty grants) to induce the flow of graduates into the teaching profession.

To conclude, it is my sincere hope that the changes I suggested will be implemented to expedite the recovery of Zimbabwe's educational sector.

Zimbabwe: Creating Prosperity

"Zimbabwe's current socio-economic state is anomalous; never before have I encountered a country that simultaneously tells, through its economic indicators, conflicting tales of shocking abject-poverty and exponential-wealth-creation. Indeed, Zimbabwe's current socio-economic state is like a bitter-sweet broth, which leaves one in a state of sensory bewilderment upon sampling it."

— My Abstract Description of Zimbabwe

The monumental 11th of February, 2009, swearing-in ceremony of Zimbabwean Prime Minister, Mr. Morgan R. Tsvangirayi, and Deputy Prime Ministers; Professor Arthur O.G. Mutambara and Ms. Thokozani Khupe, was the culmination of a protracted political settlement; which was fraught with mistrust, false-starts and endless bickering.

Now that the much-awaited all-inclusive government has been formed; and a government of national unity is presently at the helm of Zimbabwe, the conundrum sapping minds of Zimbabweans and members of the wider global community alike, is: 'Will this new political and administrative dispensation bring about Political Stability; Economic Growth; and, Social Progression in the Southern African Country?' In other words, 'Does the new administrative establishment have the mettle to tackle Zimbabwe's problems?'

Evidently, the answer to that question depends on a confluence of various unique forces; and, it is too difficult to forecast this 'confluence of various unique forces' accurately. Therefore, it would be too unwise to answer that question conclusively at this juncture, that is, before the new administrative establishment has fully settled. Thus, the most accurate thing I can say is that Zimbabwe's future is uncertain; aggrandizement and decay, have an equal probability of precipitating. Interestingly, this macro-economic sentiment is averred by the negligible level of activity on the Zimbabwean Stock Exchange since it re-opened less than a week ago; indicating the investment community is neither bullish nor bearish about the future of Zimbabwe, i.e., they are adopting a 'wait and see' stance, as they are of the opinion that anything can happen in Zimbabwe, at anytime.

Hence, when analyzing Zimbabwe from an investment perspective, it is important to de-emphasize the investment picture portrayed by traditional metrics like the inflation rate, the unemployment rate, and the savings-to-incomes ratio; because they usually fail to capture the true economic dynamics of Zimbabwe. For instance, whilst the C.P.I.-inflation rate of Zimbabwean dollar quoted prices is anything north of 400 million per cent per annum; people in Zimbabwe largely transact in the U.S. Dollar and the South African Rand, and Rand/U.S.- dollar prices of fast moving consumer goods, and the entire spectrum of services, are currently falling precipitously, e.g. 10 kgs of maize-meal (corn flour) was retailing at around USD8.00 in December, but now, it is retailing at USD5.00, which translates to a price change of -37.5% in less than a quarter: That is generally the trend being followed by prices of goods and services in Zimbabwe.

To avoid the pitfalls of using traditional metrics, I'll use a conceptual model developed by Mr. Michael Milken, to assess Zimbabwe's current Political, Economic, Technological and Social stamina; with the express aim of making policy recommendations that will help Zimbabwe to navigate out of the turbulent seas of underdevelopment (The recommendations will also help Zimbabwe to attract investors).

In his essay titled Creating Value, Michael Milken states that the level of prosperity in any society depends on the leveraging effect of financial technology on the sum of human capital, social capital and real assets.

Mathematically this can be expressed as:

Where:

P stands for prosperity
Ft stands for financial technology
HC stands for human capital
SC stands for social capital
RA stands for real assets

I'll proceed by discussing just two of the critical components of Milken's Prosperity Formula within the context of 'Developing Zimbabwe':

1) Financial Technology: In the text titled Introduction to Financial Technology, by Roy Freedman, the description of 'Financial Technology' is as follows: Financial technology is concerned with building systems that model, value, and process financial products such as bonds, stocks, contracts, and money. One of the elements of Roy's description of 'Financial Technology' is bonds: Zimbabwe currently lacks a public bond market, and its public equity markets are poorly developed. It is widely understood that a viable and robust bond-market improves the efficacy of financial intermediation in an economy, and serves as a useful buffer to prevent, or minimize a future crisis. Hence, the absence of a public bond market in Zimbabwe, affects the efficiency with which financial resources are allocated throughout the Zimbabwean economy; making the economy less resilient in the wake of a cyclical downturn in the business cycle. Therefore, until, and unless Zimbabwe has a public bond market, it will never register a full recovery. Thus, it would be prudent for the Zimbabwean government to build a liquid, public bond market; with an acceptable level of liberalization, to signal its commitment to economic stability to the investment community. Furthermore, when investors are making capital allocation decisions, one of their primary concerns is liquidity; as liquidity generally has a positive correlation to operational flexibility. Zimbabwe's public equity markets currently offer investors negligible liquidity. Therefore, liquidity in the public equity markets of Zimbabwe has to be bolstered, to enable equity securities to trade close to their fundamental prices (removing pricing inefficiencies); and, this can be achieved by allowing, within reason, speculative transactions like; short-selling and regulated trades of share-options contracts (as they generally have liquidity-increasing effect in securities markets).

2) Human Capital: Is the largest, most-priced asset of any economy, and can simply be defined as 'The ability and productivity of people'. Zimbabwe has a population of approximately 12 to 15 million people. Currently, between 3 and 5 million (over 25% of the Zimbabwean population) of the youngest, healthiest and most skilled niche of Zimbabwe's population; resides in the diaspora. Thus, implying that the majority of Zimbabwe's human capital is currently in foreign lands; appreciating in value and accumulating knowledge and skills that have the potential of effecting a miraculous transformation in Zimbabwe. Evidently, it is critical for the new government to acknowledge that the Zimbabwean economy will never improve without regaining the skills it lost over the last 12 years. Therefore, it is of paramount importance for the Zimbabwean government to be proactive, by concocting a basket of incentives, e.g. tax holidays, hefty relocation grants and competitive wages; to woo back the lost skills, including entrepreneurs, specialist doctors, nurses, teachers and artisans that are scattered across the globe. The progression of the Zimbabwean economy would be exponential if the Zimbabwean government succeeds in repatriating those lost skills. Otherwise stated: Repatriation of lost skills is a precursor to exponential economic development. Therefore, I say to the Zimbabwean government: "Focus on wooing-back the skills you lost; find innovative ways of employing them; create an enabling environment for them, and Zimbabwe's problems will vanish immediately. Success is a function of people, not vice versa"

To conclude, it is my sincere hope that the new government of Zimbabwe heeds my advice; because the prosperity of Zimbabwe may be unlocked by doing so.