GLOBAL DEVELOPMENT STUDIES
GLOBAL
DEVELOPMENT STUDIES
Copyright © 1998 International Development Options
All Rights Reserved
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Volume One Winter 1997-Spring 1998 Numbers 1-2.
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AFRICA's DIPLOMA DISEASE: DIAGNOSIS OF OUT-OF-SEQUENCE EDUCATION
Fidel Ezeala-Harrison
Associate Professor of Economics
University of New Brunswick
Saint John, New Brunswick
Canada E2L 4L5
Published online: December 15, 2016
ABSTRACT
After nearly 40 years of rapid pursuits of educational expansion in most African countries, only cultural alienation and massive unemployment and underemployment of the educated seem to be all that have been achieved. Now that the "diploma disease" has become a major development policy bottleneck in Africa, the question has arisen as to whether the process of formal education as an instrument of socio-economic development has not, indeed, failed in Africa. This article examines the underlying structural factors to this problem: the nature of pedagogy, instruction, and curriculum. It assesses their suitability within the socioeconomic milieu of the African society and offers short-term and long-term policy suggestions.