Ni Hao! What Africa Can Learn from Smart Chinese Kids

So my latest adventures have brought me to China: the weird and wonderful home of the rising sun, the Tiger Mom, the Tiger Wife (hello Wendi Deng!) and Confucius. Highlights? Well, I’ve hardly had time to play but I did take an opportunity to marvel at the scale and ingenuity of the Great Wall, be awed by the grandeur of the Imperial Gardens and of course, stuff my face with Beijing’s finest food.



Like Ethiopia, eating in China is an exciting experience bar one recent incident where I indulged in one too many bowls of delicious mutton stew. After proudly patting myself on the back for my fine culinary tastes, I was casually informed that the meal I just had was in fact turtle soup. Operative word: TURTLE. Yes, of the amphibious reptile variety. Trauma! Zanele makes safe food plans: the universe chuckles.



Turtlegate aside, I have had some remarkable experiences out here. The most enriching being my chat in a beauty salon (yes, I know, très cliché) with a 16 year old girl named Echo. In exchange for letting her play with my hair (‘it’s very buuutiful Miss!’), Echo allowed me to pick her brain about life for a teenage girl in China. She’s smart, she’s fired up, she’s ‘Asia Rising’. My former Dean, Kishore Mahbubani is onto something here...



This got me thinking about the value of education in emerging economies. It’s a no-brainer, Chinese kids are super smart. Question is why? How? It's an emerging economy with developmental constraints after all. What can Africans learn from them? Well, with its demanding parents, boundlessly ambitious students, and test-obsessed culture, China's schooling is bound to be the most rigorous in the world.



That said, let's not forget that while China has no problem producing mid-level accountants, computer programmers and technocrats, it has a dire lack of entrepreneurs and innovators needed to run a 21st century global economy. It's ironic that just as the world is appreciating the strengths of China's education system, the Chinese are waking up to its weaknesses. These are two sides of the same coin: Chinese schools are very good at preparing their students for standardized tests. For that reason, they fail to prepare them for the ‘outside world’ and the knowledge economy. McKinsey apparently agrees with me:

http://www.mckinseyquarterly.com/Public_Sector/Education/Chinas_looming_talent_shortage_1685

Nevertheless, there’s no denying that China’s education is miles ahead of other developing nations. It’s hardly comparable with statistics from my own country’s education system which is frankly quite shocking. For example, despite 5.4% of GDP being allocated to education, almost half of South African students repeat a year during Grades 10-12. The picture is no better on the rest of the continent: dropout rates are high, teacher training inputs low, bureaucracy is crippling and accountability is non-existent.



How can this pattern be reversed? Sadly, I think the answer is simply: it can’t. Certainly not through small-scale, reactive but well-intentioned reforms. Africa has a schooling crisis. Period. A tragic systemic failing that only political intervention asserting government authority over schools can really make a difference.



Now don’t get me wrong: African education systems have started producing excellent scholars and professionals. Equally, our societies have long produced successful entrepreneurs and business-oriented people who against all odds (including minimal or total lack of formal education) have made smashing successes of their lives. Therefore formal education based on rigorous, soul-sapping testing is not the answer for the continent. What is? Perhaps more business focused education models that incentivise high performance and productivity in schools? Idealistic? Maybe. Costly? For sure. But I still vote yes.

Africa's Turn: Green Revolution, here we come!

She runs a farm, raises and home schools her kids, cooks, is an avid photographer but best of all, she blogs about her experiences to 23 million followers. Her name is the Pioneer Woman and ladies and gentlemen, I want to be her when I grow up!



Why Zanele, you ask? Well, apart from the 23 million strong following, revenue of a million US dollars, a creative site, a cook book and a movie deal, this woman makes a living from being on a farm.Yes, A FARM! Nevertheless, her story is the making of a Harvard Business School case study for at heart it is a story of a successful business woman.

Her story resonates with me simply because I too want to own my own farm one day. Don’t get me wrong, this is not so that I can pursue a charming Pollyanna type lifestyle in the countryside. No sir. I’m a city girl with a deep love for creature comforts that only a metropolis can offer. That said, I genuinely believe that Africa needs an agricultural revolution. I want to be part of a movement that develops commercially viable, socially responsible value chains of high nutrition food for local and regional marketplaces.



Many African countries have seen farmers been forced to migrate to cities as a result of it becoming increasingly difficult to survive on farms. The picture on the ground is grim: farmers are often trapped into inefficient technologies, poor cereal yields and shrinking farm sizes. What’s worse is many of these farmers do not find work in the cities thus perpetuating the poverty cycle and Africa’s dependence on concessionary food imports.



So what’s the solution? Well, whilst I’m no specialist on this topic and I certainly welcome debate, I believe the solution is fairly simple. Simple because it’s a solution that has been tried and tested in other regions of the world. Many Asian economies in the 60s wanted to industrialize quickly but also faced severe food shortages and slow agricultural growth. What was done? Well, the governments simply made use of their large agricultural workforce and viewed agricultural growth as a key step along the path to industrialization.



I was shocked to learn during my trip to Vietnam in 2010 that an overwhelming 70% of the country’s economy is still based on agriculture. Two thirds! What they do right: they support farm credit systems, they subsidise inputs, they intervene in markets to stabilise prices. Most importantly, they ensure that their interventions help both small and large farms.



Action plan for African governments? In a nutshell: improve technologies, increase public investment in agri-research, support food grain markets and improve market access for small scale farmers.

Oh, and get more city snobs like you and me into the countryside. Get us blogging, exchanging innovative ideas and investing skills and time in agricultural development. Let’s all be the Pioneer People! Idealistic? Of course, but aren’t all revolutionary ideas?

A Little Taste of Addis Ababa

I adore Ethiopia. Adore it!



Now you may think that I’m ill-qualified to make such an emphatic statement, considering I have not spent long in the country. But as Malcolm Gladwell (of Blink fame) would attest, there is more to first impressions than superficialities—gut reactions more often than not accurately convey the same impressions about substance and character that individuals hold about people, places, and things over the long-term. Plain English – the place rocks, my gut told me soon as I landed!




Highlights? The delightfully friendly people, the country’s rich cultural history and diversity (did you know that Ethiopia was the only country not colonised by a major power in the scramble for Africa?) and of course, the food. My word, the FOOD! A mixture of African, European and Arabic influences makes eating local food an experience of note. Even the air is a potpourri of spicy stews (wots), incense, coffee, sweets and well, smog (Addis is a large city, after all).




Lowlights? Naturally in any emerging economy, the difference between rich and poor is a thorny issue and Ethiopia is unfortunately no different. The juxtaposition of wealthy government officials and homeless individuals in Addis is apparent. What I found particularly disturbing was the visible lack of housing available for Addis' population. Staggering statistic: 70% of people in Addis either do not have a home or are living in sub-standard housing. In other words, every two in three individuals you meet in the city barely have a home to go to.




This got me thinking about a solution to housing the world’s poor using simple business principles. Surely there’s a business model that allows for housing to be developed on a large scale at a low cost to the end user that is financially sustainable? Never, I hear you say? Well, it turns out there’s a world out there of people who are asking exactly the same questions. Check this link out:

www.300house.com


Enter Vijay Govindarajan and his AMAZING blog 300house.com. Basic concept: an abode that is more than a shack that is made up of materials that can withstand hostile conditions. Basic idea: if Tata can produce a car for $2000 and GE can sell an electrocardiogram for $400 and Phillips can produce a cheap and environmentally sound cooking stove, then why can’t durable houses for the poor be produced and sold at an affordable rate? Will it work? Who knows. Land rights for one remain a problem but it's certainly worth a try.

Anyway, getting back to the point of this post: Addis is a GREAT city. Go visit!