Strengthening the demography of human capital formation: a focus on Africa

Project funding

Supported by the Yidan Prize project funds

Education theme

Policymaking and systemic change

Overview

Background

About the idea

More to explore

Demonstrating the long-term effects of investing in education in Africa and vulnerable coastal regions for sustainable development and better adaptive capacity to climate change.

Policymakers in Africa and vulnerable coastal regions need to prioritize investment in education to drive sustainable development and build resilience to climate change. Demographic modeling helps expand the evidence base on the long-term benefits of education, particularly in vulnerable communities.

Laureate(s)

Professor Wolfgang Lutz

Distinguished Emeritus Scholar, International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis

Background

Making education a priority now changes lives far into the future

Professor Wolfgang Lutz’s work as a statistician and demographer has helped us join the dots between the value of people’s knowledge, skills, and experience (that is, human capital) and education.

Using methods pioneered by Wolfgang and developed with his colleagues at the Wittgenstein Centre for Demography and Global Human Capital, we can put numbers to the equation — and show that investing in education in the short term has long-term benefits for sustainable development.

It’s important everywhere — but even more pressing in Africa and coastal Southeast Asia

By 2050, Africa will be home to more than a third of the world’s young people. But across the continent, education is not always a priority for local or national policymakers, especially female education — the single most important driver for sustainable well-being. Giving decision-makers access to demographic modeling methods offers them the opportunity to project how varying levels of investment in education will make a difference in their countries.

In low-lying coastal regions of Southeast Asia, the effects of climate change are already present — and becoming more intense. Research has established the vital role of education in adapting to climate change through the Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSPs). Working closely with research communities around risk and policy to embed modeling methods places education at the center of work to build resilience, reduce vulnerability, and adapt to unavoidable climate change.

About the idea

This three-part project starts with building our knowledge base

Wolfgang is applying his project funds across three inter-connected activities that shore up policymakers’ understanding of demography and make the tools for robust decision-making more widely accessible. With his team, he’ll collaborate with colleagues and institutions to share expertise and broaden the project’s reach.

As part of the project, Wolfgang and Dr Bilal Barakat will lead a team to create a comprehensive, policy-oriented summary of demographic and statistical methods that show how education drives human progress. Working with UNESCO’s Institute for Statistics (UIS) and Global Education Monitoring (GEM) Report, the summary will include methods for estimating better and more consistent education statistics for most African countries. This data will be used by the UN agencies, and feed into the Human Development Index and the official indicators for tracking our progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals.

It will also focus on areas where education investment is critical

In Africa, Wolfgang and his team will partner with the University of Cape Town to work with six young scholars — three pre-doctoral and three post-doctoral researchers. They’ll apply education modeling methods in training to individual countries to create alternative policy scenarios, demonstrating the long-term impact of different near-term education policies on health, economics, and environmental resilience. And they’ll take the output of that training to workshops with local policymakers.

There are also plans to publish a collection of alternative scenarios for all sub-Saharan African countries, as well as working towards a potential Centre for African Human Capital.

Working with Chulalongkorn University in Thailand, Wolfgang also plans to host a series of conferences and training workshops in Khao Lak and Bangkok with climate change experts and policymakers from across Southeast Asia. The aim is to raise further awareness of the role of education and its scientific evidence for reducing climate-related risks, particularly in vulnerable coastal regions.