The power of technical and vocational skills: Increasing girls’ participation in formal agriculture education in Afghanistan
In March 2021, I visited an agriculture and veterinary institute (AVI) in northern Balkh province in Afghanistan. With state-of-the-art educational infrastructure and labs, the institute is built on about 250 acres of land in the outskirts of Mazar e Sharif. The AVI is separated from the surrounding villages by the walls of an old castle. Beyond the walls, you see women and girls working in the agricultural fields. However, inside the walls—contrary to expectations—very few girls are pursuing formal agriculture education within the institute. The question is, why? Why have we been unable to fill these empty classrooms with students from outside the walls of the institute?
In the informal sector, women and girls from all socioeconomic and religious backgrounds actively participate in agricultural activities. Indeed, a 2017 study found that 70 percent of rural women are directly or indirectly involved in agriculture. They learn and transfer agricultural skills through informal processes with family and friends.
According to a 2018 report by the World Bank, 40 percent of the total labor force is employed in agriculture, and in rural areas more than half of the workforce is busy in the sector. Agriculture is considered the backbone of the Afghan economy, and women the backbone of agriculture, through unpaid labor. The Afghanistan Growth Agenda identified agriculture as one of the top growth sectors in the country, and the National Comprehensive Agriculture Development Priority Program prioritized an aggressive policy goal strengthening women’s role in growing and increasing food production at the household and commercial levels to ensure food security.
While national policies are calling for equal access to education, the question remains why girls’ participation in formal agriculture education remains low, particularly in rural communities.
The National Strategy on Women in Agriculture recognized formal agriculture education and women’s skill development as essential to inclusive agricultural development and called for the enhancement of vocational and skills training for women and girls. While national policies are calling for equal access to education, the question remains why girls’ participation in formal agriculture education remains low, particularly in rural communities. There are several key challenges that require further research.
Challenges
1. Low participation of girls in agricultural education
The Technical Vocational Education and Training (TVET) Authority of Afghanistan manages about 380 technical and vocational high schools and institutes across the country, of which about half are dedicated to agricultural education—or at least teaching agriculture as a trade. However, in 2020, of the 20,000 students studying agriculture in TVET programs, only around 3,000 are girls, and most of them are studying in urban areas. Of the 34 provinces nationwide, nine have less than 50 girls enrolled in agriculture schools and institutes; in another nine, there are no girls enrolled in formal agriculture education at all.
2. Perceptions of agricultural education
Agricultural education is perceived by society as second-class education. As one female teacher at an agriculture institute commented, “When I heard that through Kankor [the national higher education entrance] exam I got [accepted] to the agriculture faculty, I cried for one week. I wanted to become a doctor.” In my survey as a part of the Echidna Global Scholars program, of the 82 female students already studying at the agriculture faculty at Balkh University, only 12 respondents selected agriculture as their top choice. Further, of the 55 female students already studying at the AVI in Balkh, only 21 selected agriculture faculty as their top choice in Kankor. Since they could not get to the four-year undergraduate program, they are now pursuing a two-year degree program at the AVI. My survey indicates that female students are more inclined toward law and political sciences and medical sciences instead of agriculture. In some instances, even agriculture faculty professors questioned female students on why they were not studying something else instead of agriculture.
3. Lack of female teachers
Female teachers account for 4 percent of the total teachers in agriculture. Of the 1,248 teachers in agricultural schools and institutes in the country, only 54 are female, half of them hired on short-term contracts. The lower number of female students in agricultural education results in a lack of female teachers to serve as role models, resulting in a vicious cycle in which the small number of female teachers leads to a lack of interest among female graduates in teaching agriculture as a career, which attracts fewer female students, and so on.
4. Lack of financial resources
The TVET Authority would require substantial additional funding to increase and expand TVET and agricultural education for girls, yet it is unclear where this funding would come from. The current TVET Strategy (2019-2024) outlines the establishment of eight special TVET schools for girls, but no reference is made as to how or where these schools would be built, and the strategy does not mention how such construction would be financed nor where the funds would come from for their operation.
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As an Echidna Global Scholar, I will investigate pathways that could potentially address some of these daunting challenges, reviewing policies that currently support or hinder girls’ participation in formal agriculture education. I hope that my work at the Center for Universal Education will contribute to girls’ greater participation in TVET—particularly in formal agriculture education in Afghanistan—so that technical and vocational skills can help unleash their potential and enable them to more effectively participate in the national growth and economic development of the country.
Is West Africa ready for a single currency?
Since the early 2000s, the 15-member Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) has been pursuing a common currency agenda, centered on the “eco,” with the intention of reducing barriers to doing business across the region and increasing trade overall. While the implementation of the new currency has been postponed due to hurdles in macroeconomic convergence across the countries and the disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, among other challenges, many policymakers remain keen to forge ahead, with implementation now tentatively set for 2027.
As the region considers steps toward this goal, Brookings scholars Eswar Prasad and Vera Songwe have written an ambitious book on the regional integration agenda in West Africa and the role for a single currency in which they consider important questions concerning how ECOWAS could achieve greater trade and financial integration, with or without a currency union, as well as the ramifications of the agenda for the African continent. Three key contributions emerge from the book.
First, this book by Prasad and Songwe stands out for the methodical thoroughness of the analysis. The authors outline the factors that conventional theory sees as critical for an “optimal currency area” (OCA), originally conceived by Robert Mundell in his 1961 article, “A theory of optimum currency areas.” The authors compare these factors to the data and essentially conclude that “ECOWAS is not equal to an OCA.” As we have learned from Ashoka Mody’s 2018 book, “Euro Tragedy: A drama in nine acts,” Europe also did not meet the ideal conditions for OCA when the European Union (EU) embarked on its monetary union experiment. Drawing on a broad array of theoretical literature and applied policy analysis, Prasad and Songwe outline both the potential benefits and the significant costs of monetary integration. The book highlights how differences in economic structure and macroeconomic convergence can and might deter the ECOWAS common currency project and how a strong institutional framework is necessary, especially in terms of regional financial market development and unified legislation.
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Second, linked to the previous point, the book provides an academic framework in which all factors considered critical for the stability of a currency union (especially under macroeconomic stress) are identified and compared to econometric data as well as the institutional and policy realities in West Africa. These are the “hard factors” in the book. Notably, according to the authors, these hard factors do not yet support a transition to a single currency for West Africa. Policymakers might act regardless. They did so in the eurozone, which did not meet the criteria for an optimal currency area at the time of the implementation of the euro. “Soft factors” in the form of a regional vision extending far beyond the realms of monetary policy were used to cover over some of the concerns and hard gaps (correctly) identified during the run-up for monetary union. But these same soft factors subsequently proved to be the ultimate counterweight to the centrifugal forces unleashed by crisis and member state divergence (see Y. Varoufakis’ 2017 book, “Adults in the room”).
In that way, the book reiterates the importance of these soft factors when it highlights Nigeria’s monumental importance as an anchor, representing greater than 60 percent of the gross domestic product of ECOWAS, and compares that to Germany’s role as the eurozone’s main anchor. Germany—and specifically its export-oriented economy—derived benefits from the single currency but the country as a whole had to sacrifice its cherished conservative monetary policy and provide subsidies to weaker members of the euro area. This result appears to be not just the consequence of a cold cost-benefit analysis but also a commitment to Europe, which is broadly popular across the political center of gravity in the country, allowing for enough elasticity in what was perceived to be a rules-based project.
As we argued elsewhere (in “An evaluation of the single currency agenda in the ECOWAS region”):
“[T]he euro lessons show that even with robust institutions and strong political commitment, sustaining a single currency remains a challenge. These challenges are likely to be much more difficult to surmount in West Africa where the pre-conditions for success, including strong political will and robust institutions, are evidently absent. Let us also be clear that the euro was never just about monetary policy and trade. It was shaped by a vision of a united Europe. And this does not appear to be an entirely fruitless effort, especially in the eyes of Europeans coming of age in the new millennium.”
There are several areas where the book could provide a deeper analysis. First, the book is relatively silent on the geopolitics surrounding the currency reform. The book could discuss further the competing visions and perspectives of the anglophone bloc, led by Nigeria, and the francophone bloc, led by Côte d’Ivoire, as there appear to be two contrasting visions of the currency. For example, in January 2020, Nigeria criticized the December 2019 decision of French President Emmanuel Macron, Ivoirian President Alassane Ouattara, and the eight-member West African Economic and Monetary Union to replace the CFA franc (which is pegged to the euro) with the eco, saying that it conflicted with the ECOWAS broader vision of a single currency across all 15 West African countries. There also seem to be competing economic philosophies between the anglophone and francophone blocs, with Ghana, perhaps, as a potential bridge.
Second, the book leaves some questions unanswered. What is Nigeria’s perspective on the umbrella ECOWAS initiatives? What trade-offs and shared visions for the region can be identified? Fringe political movements in Europe may not threaten the single currency directly but their ascendance toward the center of political power could threaten the policy elasticity on which the euro’s survival, through all its recent upheavals, relied. How does the West African political landscape compare?
One issue in this context is the asymmetry between different interest groups: Owners of businesses with cross-border activities may derive benefits from a rule-based monetary union. Poor farmers may prefer a central bank with a domestic mandate to fund monetary stimulus. Nigeria’s multitier exchange rate mechanism highlights these policy dilemmas. Aside from the convergence of member states, which is analyzed by Prasad and Songwe, do we need to focus more on convergence criteria between different interest groups inside single countries, specifically inside Nigeria?
Third, the book highlights the various gaps without ranking them. Do the authors, nonetheless, have a view on policy priorities preceding a transition? How strong is the evidence that West Africa will derive benefits from a single currency? Most of the book focuses on impediments to a successful transition to and subsequent stability of a currency union. The benefits, such as growth of intra-regional trade and development of cross-border supply chains, are of a more general nature. Are there lessons from the West African Economic and Monetary Union or even from countries (e.g., the U.K.) that have chosen to stay out of currency unions among their main trading partners? Do we have to be conscious of the inherent dilemma that, although we have a good idea of what it takes to successfully transition (i.e., the outlined hard factors and maybe some of the soft factors), we cannot equate that to the quantifiable expectations of the benefits of a monetary union and their accrual over time? Are there specific risks to a transition in the context of West Africa? We know that potential benefits of economic integration are a consequence of transacting seamlessly in a single currency and eliminating exchange rate volatility. Are there potential risks such as portfolio flow volatility or trade deficits?
Fourth, when we talk about West Africa’s currency union, are we ultimately talking about promoting industrial growth and integration into the global supply chain? Asian economies grew into their dominant position along global supply chains without a currency union while their experiment with pegged currencies caused a temporary setback during the Asian Financial Crisis of 1997-1998. (See “Common currency? Well, region must first build trust and grow investment” in The East African.)
Against this background, one may argue that it was not monetary policy stability and integration that drove development. Do policymakers need to think about a future both inside and outside the framework discussed here?
Finally, let us not underestimate the importance of visionary leadership. In the EU, German Chancellors Helmet Kohl and Gerhard Schroder and France’s Jean Monnet were visionaries motivated by the quest for an integrated Europe—a Europe with no more wars. In West Africa, Presidents Yakubu Gowon (Nigeria) and Gnassingbe Eyadema (Togo) built trust and ensured the successful launch of the Treaty of Lagos that established ECOWAS on May 28, 1975. The primary motivation of these two visionary leaders was a united West Africa—not a conglomeration of anglophone, francophone, or lusophone blocs.
In sum, Prasad and Songwe have written a thoughtful book that explores many aspects of the common currency project in West Africa. The book can serve as a call to action for policymakers to seriously consider the hard questions posed by the authors.
Unlocking constraints to industries without smokestacks to catalyze job creation for youth in Kenya
Unlike in much of the developed world, the promise of manufacturing to spur economic growth and jobs in Africa has remained elusive, with most of the continent’s economies facing deindustrialization. This trend is characterized by declining share of manufacturing in gross domestic product (GDP) and wage employment. All is, however, not lost considering emerging structural shifts, with services and other non-manufacturing industries promising economic transformations. These promising nonmanufacturing industries, termed “industries without smokestacks” (IWOSS), demonstrate key features of manufacturing such as high productivity, agglomeration, and job opportunities. The IWOSS sectors are diverse, cutting across financial services, horticulture, information and communication technology (ICT), tourism, transit trade, and wholesale trade. As part of a broader research project, the Brookings Institution’s Africa Growth Initiative partnered with the Kenya Institute for Public Policy Research and Analysis (KIPPRA) to assess which of these IWOSS might be best poised to unlock jobs in Kenya.
Right now, the country faces significant labor-market challenges in the form of unemployment, time-related underemployment, and inactivity—all of which are more severe for the youth and women. Between 2009 and 2019, the country’s population grew by an average of 2.2 percent annually, but the labor force expanded by an even higher rate of 3.1 percent per annum over the same period, rising from 15.8 million people to 20.7 million people. Unemployment is high: In 2016, the overall unemployment rate of the working-age group (15 to 64 years) was estimated at 7.4 percent, that of women was 9.6 percent, and that of the youth (15 to 24 years) was 17.7 percent. Time-related underemployment was estimated at 20.4 percent for the working-age population, and 26 percent and 35.9 percent for the women and youth, respectively. In addition, despite Kenya’s long prioritization of industrialization as an avenue for mass employment creation and economic growth, the manufacturing sector contribution to GDP has declined from 11.3 percent in 2010 to 7.5 percent in 2019. The formal sector wage employment contribution of manufacturing has also remained stagnant, averaging 13.0 percent over the last two decades.
Can support to horticulture, ICT, and tourism help address Kenya’s youth unemployment problem?
To examine the potential of IWOSS more closely, the KIPPRA team chose three IWOSS with strong sectoral growth performance, contribution to GDP, and strong export performance—horticulture, ICT, and tourism—and found that all three sectors demonstrate above-average output growth and projected that they can be significant sources of wage employment for youth up to the year 2030. At the aggregate level across all IWOSS, labor-output productivity is twice that of manufacturing and 1.7 times that of other non-IWOSS. Except for construction, the industrial sectors performed below average with respect to output growth over the two decades up to 2018.
Within IWOSS, we also found that ICT, tourism, and trade have the highest potential for wage-employment growth resulting from respective GDP growth of these sectors (Table 1). However, horticulture is characterized by nonwage employment in the form of family labor.
Table 1. Changes in formal employment and its share in IWOSS and non-IWOSS, 2001-2018
Note: Manufacturing excludes agro-processing.Source: Authors’ calculations based on data from KNBS (Various), Statistical Abstract.
The projections to the year 2030 reveal that there will be wider sex disparities in wage employment if the prevailing growth trends persist and no policy interventions are put in place. Male youth (15 to 24 years) will dominate manufacturing, construction, and trade, with their respective numbers projected to be 1.5, 13.8, and 1.2 times higher than females. In ICT, there will be 3 times more males than females if present growth trends persist. The projections also reveal that there will be more females in horticulture (1.3 times more) and tourism (1.1 times more) relative to males.
Constraints to growth for horticulture, ICT, and tourism
Importantly, for these sectors to meet—or even surpass—their job-creation potential, a number of constraints must be addressed. The study identified both crosscutting and sector-specific constraints affecting the output and employment growth of the three IWOSS sectors. The crosscutting constraints relate to investment climate, which encompasses infrastructure, the business and regulatory environment, and skills gaps.
Infrastructure
The high cost of electricity and the lack of a reliable power supply to firms pose challenges not only across firms in the IWOSS sectors but also across the entire economy as these obstacles hurt firm-level competitiveness and deter investment. The cost of road and railway transport in Kenya is generally higher than in its comparator set of countries. Not only that, but many firms are grappling with poor infrastructure of feeder roads, which leads to large post-harvest losses in the horticultural sector estimated at 42 percent. While Kenya’s ICT infrastructure is among the best in Africa, the relatively high cost of mobile broadband services and the large digital divide between urban and rural areas still hinder the sector’s expansion. These constraints are related to weak competition in Kenya’s ICT sector. Importantly, there is limited (but increasing) interoperability between mobile-payment operators, which affects the ability of smaller players to grow, thus potentially creating an inefficient market with one or a few large players.
Business and regulatory environment
While Kenya was ranked third in Africa in the 2020 World Bank Doing Business Report on account of ease of getting credit and to some extent getting connected to electricity, the regulatory business environment remains complex, especially with regard to starting a business, cross-border trade, and getting construction permits. These constraints hamper the country’s ability to improve its competitiveness, attract investments, and create more jobs and improvements, and will require deeper and broader reforms.
Persistent skills gaps
Skills gaps and mismatches resulting from low educational attainment levels relative to a typical middle-income country also persist in Kenya. About 43 percent of the working-age population have only a primary education (of eight years) as their highest education level, yet the IWOSS sectors heavily depend on post-primary level skills. Further, education quality is characterized by inadequate skills and gaps in required skills even among tertiary graduates.
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Skills gap analyses across the three IWOSS sectors reveal that horticulture has skills deficits for occupations requiring post-primary education and skills surpluses for occupations that require at least some secondary education. Tourism has skills deficits for all skill levels, particularly those related to external communications, product quality, value packaging, and quality management.
While over the last decade IWOSS sectors such as horticulture had relatively strong export performance relative to aggregate exports, there are still significant cross-border constraints related to inadequate skills among customs officials, lack of an integrated quality system, limited coordination among exporters, insufficient systems to handle food-safety compliance, and inadequate capacity to trace horticultural commodities. Further, ICT faces additional challenges related to a weak framework to identify and nurture innovations.
Policy recommendations
The relatively high productivity across IWOSS sectors presents a case for policy support to enhance growth and employment opportunities. However, IWOSS are not currently meeting their potential, and a number of policy changes are necessary to help them grow and absorb labor. Thus, the government and other stakeholders should:
Enhance investments in infrastructure including trunk roads as well as feeder roads and a host of supportive facilities such as cold rooms for horticulture produce.
Address regulatory bottlenecks through a continuous process of monitoring and evaluation as well as by conducting regulatory impact assessments. For example, an improved policy and regulatory framework on net-metering and wheeling systems would enhance entrants into alternative sources of energy and off-grid systems. Better regulations would also open up markets for more players and hence enhance the role of ICT as an enabler.
Expand the creation of wage jobs rather than informal jobs in the growing sectors. Reducing barriers to formalization linked to complex regulations, high taxes, and other aspects of cumbersome investment climate is essential.
Focus education and training systems to produce skills demanded by the market compared to academic credentials. This can be achieved by strengthening partnerships for skills development and enhancing programs that combine on-the-job and in-class training.
Monitor and forecast skills needs to ensure the youth are equipped for available jobs, and then develop skills of the youth to meet the increasing demand for more educational qualifications. Skills development should take into account basic skills and social skills needed in specific sectors.
For horticulture, the following are the priority interventions:
Ameliorate the possible effects of the dynamic nontariff trade barriers (NTTBs) by supporting continuous skills transfer and extension services support to local producers, including small-scale farmers.
Enhance further investments in supportive infrastructure—the feeder roads and cold chain infrastructure such as “cold” collection centers and pack houses.
Open up more options for transport—especially maritime transport of exports—by investing in a dedicated maritime line to key export destinations.
Mold the preference of youth toward agricultural training to attract more youth to higher productivity jobs within the sector.
For ICT, a key intervention would be to put in place a policy framework that enhances competitive markets to improve affordability/access to services by the last-mile users. Fast-tracking an all-encompassing policy for e-commerce will open up further investments in the sector. On skills and capacity development, there is a need to promote private-sector-led, skills-development initiatives in high-level ICT skills such as programming. In ICT, best-practice models can be adopted by Kenya to enhance the benefits of ICT services. These include:
Encourage sharing of communication infrastructure (e.g., masts) by encouraging cross-sector consultations for infrastructure developments.
Create planning databases containing detailed information of infrastructure available for sharing.
Enhance interoperability through moral suasion.
For tourism, policies for supporting growth in the sector include:
Enhance access to reliable electricity and transport infrastructure to reduce operational costs and enhance competitiveness.
Reform the regulatory and tax regime, with a focus on eliminating multiple taxation and clarifying the unclear tax regime.
Promote the development of specialized training institutions for crucial high-level and diverse skills. Examples of these skills are film production, decisionmaking and problem-solving, food technology, information technology, and leadership.
How teacher expectations empower student learning
In primary school, we were both lucky to have teachers who thought we were brilliant: Ms. Darrow believed Sameer was an excellent student despite average grades, and Ms. Lewis made Niharika feel like she could survive anything. Looking back, neither of us knows why they thought this way, but we’re certain that they both truly felt this way, and their feelings made us believe it as well. Our time with these teachers made us believe in our ability to take on academic challenges, building a base of confidence that we would draw on throughout our lives.
We experienced firsthand that what a teacher expects from a student can have a powerful effect. But we also know that there are many students who never have a teacher who believes in them. There is a strong perception among teachers and other stakeholders that students from disadvantaged economic and social backgrounds cannot learn as well. These beliefs adversely impact what teachers do in the classroom and in turn how much students learn and grow. It’s precisely these students from disadvantaged backgrounds who have been hit hardest by COVID-19 and who need the most help. To bridge this growing inequality in learning, we must design support for teachers to nurture the belief that all students can learn.
The problem: The belief that all students can learn is not universal
We recently surveyed school leaders and teachers from India, Kenya, Malaysia, and Indonesia and found that only 48 percent of teachers in our sample believed that all students can learn, regardless of familial background or educational experience. This confirms a comprehensive World Bank survey of 16,000 teachers from eight low- and middle-income Latin American, African, and Asian countries, which found that a substantial portion of teachers believe they can’t help students who start out below grade level or come from troubled homes (Figure 1).
Figure 1. Teacher beliefs on their students’ learning abilities
Source: World Bank, 2018.
Teachers underestimate the abilities of their students because of social attitudes and community prejudices. In low-income countries, the high social gap between teachers and students may reduce teacher empathy and motivation to work with their students.
Further, because school leaders and government officials rarely track teaching practices and student progress, teachers don’t internalize their responsibility toward ensuring all students are learning.
All of the above coupled with persistently low levels of prior student performance may reinforce teacher beliefs that not all students can learn.
Why the problem matters: There is a vicious cycle of low expectations
What teachers expect students to learn influences outcomes for their students. In a famous psychology experiment from 65 years ago, Rosenthal and Jacobsen (1968) falsely told teachers that selected students were identified by a test to be “late bloomers” and would learn great amounts over the course of the years when in fact the researchers had selected students at random. A year later, the students identified as “late bloomers” had learned more than their peers because the teachers increased their support to these students.
Since this experiment, many other psychology studies have been done to replicate and understand the impact of teacher expectations on student achievement. In a landmark review of more than 30 years of research, Jussim and Harber (2005) find that while the original study may be overstating its results, teacher expectations do impact students, and this can be particularly strong for students from stigmatized groups. Rubie-Davies and colleagues (2006) found that teacher expectations of Maori students in New Zealand were lower than their peers, and can lead to lower outcomes. Recent research in economics to understand school effectiveness (here and here) in the United States find that schools that develop a culture that assumes all students can learn at high levels are best at raising the achievement of students from marginalized backgrounds.
Teacher expectations create a reinforcing cycle. Teacher beliefs about students’ growth potential shape those teachers’ actions, which then, in turn, impacts students’ growth, feeding back into teachers’ beliefs about students. In low- and middle-income countries, decades of underperformance of school systems have created a deeply ingrained belief that not all students can learn, which continues to limit the potential of these school systems to improve what they deliver to students (Figure 2).
Figure 2. The reinforcing cycle of teachers’ beliefs on student outcomes
Source: Katie Wright, 2017.
How we can address the problem: Shift teacher expectations and behavior
Behavioral science has taught us that we must understand the mental models of key actors in a system to shift its outcomes. Sectors like health have extensively relied on learnings from behavioral science to improve health outcomes. In education, we must similarly research, develop, and test behavioral approaches to improving teacher performance. We suggest three broad categories of interventions for school systems to explore.
1. Develop leaders that build a culture of high expectations in the system
In a Global School Leader survey, we find that in schools where leaders do believe that students can learn, 54 percent of teachers also share this belief, compared with 37 percent of teachers that hold high expectations when the school leader does not. This reinforces studies that suggest that school leaders can increase teacher responsibility for student learning through organizational structures and discourse that help challenge existing beliefs. School systems should invest in understanding how they can grow and empower leaders to create an environment where the primary focus is on improving learning outcomes.
2. Explicitly discuss the power of teacher expectations
Pre-service and in-service teacher training must address the power of teacher expectations directly. Teachers can be supported to develop a growth mindset so that they view the problem of low student-learning levels as something they can change. Highlighting positive case studies that illustrate challenges that teachers and students face on a regular basis and ways they can overcome them can encourage teachers to reflect on the link between their classroom practices and the impact on students. Experiential training models can help teachers experience firsthand how their empathy for and expectations of students can drive learning.
3. Improving practices can shift beliefs
Beliefs can be deep rooted and hard to shift, but when teachers succeed in the classroom, that can also shift their beliefs on what students can achieve. Encouraging teachers to adopt classroom tools and effective pedagogical practices could help improve students’ learning levels, which could, in turn, shift teachers’ beliefs on student abilities.
Ensuring that all students have teachers like Ms. Darrow and Ms. Lewis with high expectations for their students’ success will require a totally fresh perception of students’ intelligence and ability. Until current practices address teacher expectations head-on and shift the “soft bigotry of low expectations” into the tangible empowerment of high expectations, students won’t reach their full growth potential.
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How government donors engage with the Sustainable Development Goals
In 2015, 193 nations signed on to Agenda 2030 setting forth the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The predecessor Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) were a narrower set of eight objectives targeted specifically at enhancing economic and social progress in lower- and middle-income countries—with first-order implications for focusing donor development assistance. In contrast, the 17 SDGs are universal—they cover a broader scope of economic, social, environmental, and political elements of development. They are designed for all countries of the world—in recognition that “sustainable development” is an ongoing process in all countries, no matter their level of economic development.
In a new report, I review how 20 of the largest donor countries encompass the SDGs in their international development cooperation policies and programs. They have all committed to the SDGs. All, except for the United States, have in various ways built them into policies guiding their own development and their international development programs. Referencing publications and web pages, the report captures how each country proposes or reports incorporating the SDGs at three levels—strategy/policy, programs, and reporting on outputs and results for their investments in international development. All countries surveyed, except the U.S., have produced at least one Voluntary National Review (VNR), the formal mechanism for countries to share their progress. Although principally aimed at reporting on national progress on the SDGs, some VNRs also cover international development cooperation.
‘Sustainable development’ is an ongoing process in all countries, no matter their level of economic development.
This stocktaking is based on how each country presents its engagement with the SDGs and does not assess the extent to which those policies and plans are translated into practice. There is no single common way donors incorporate the SDGs in their international development policies and programs. Efforts range from expression of support at a very general level to embedding the global goals in policies and strategies or building strategies around the goals. Some countries address commitments to the SDGs in a comprehensive manner with a single strategy covering both domestic activities and development cooperation, although distinguishing separate priorities for each. At the program level, a few donors tie each program, and even budget levels, to the relevant goals but many use the SDGs only as a general reference point. A few donors report against the SDGs. In actuality, country action can range from grand policy pronouncements that are little more than “SDG-washing” to pragmatically designing programs around specific SDGs, reporting results against SDGs, and independently auditing implementation.
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Some incorporate reporting on their international work in their VNRs, others restrict the VNR just to their national SDG program. Some use Agenda 2030 as the principal frame for their international development work, others embed the SDGs, or particular goals, in their international policies and programs.
Some approaches are unique to one or a few countries. Canada incorporates the SDGs in its Feminist International Assistance Policy. Denmark sorts countries into one of three categories and links each category to specific SDGs. Several donors have websites that report programs and results for each SDG, and several connect their development finance to the SDGs. Finland connects theories of change to specific SDGs. Some countries engage in public consultations in setting their SDG commitments. Several countries have outreach programs to educate their populace on development cooperation and the SDGs. Japan has posted videos that explain its international engagement on the SDGs. Spain has a policy of undertaking an SDG analysis of the global impact of proposed legislative initiatives.
Some countries, including Germany, Finland, New Zealand, Sweden, and Australia, evidence high-level political ownership of the SDGs in establishing a central government mechanism for policy coherence on Agenda 2030. Several countries follow the SDG principle of “leave no one behind” and employ some or all of the “five Ps”—People, Planet, Prosperity, Peace, and Partnership.
As Agenda 2030 is the international development currency of this decade, incorporating the SDGs in U.S. development cooperation policy would be an important step in the Biden-Harris administration commitment to reengage the U.S. with the world community.
For the most part, the MDGs lived in the realm of internationalists, specifically with practitioners of international development, international organizations, and international NGOs. The SDGs, in contrast, are truly universal, not just in scope but also in application. Their use extends from the international, to the national, to the local. By 2020, 168 countries had written VNRs, with another 43 VNRs expected in 2021.While the U.S. government has not issued a national VNR, New York pioneered the Voluntary Local Review (VLR), an innovation based on the VNR where local governments assess their progress on the SDGs. Several other American cities have also completed VLRs, including Los Angeles and Pittsburgh; and Hawaii completed the first-ever statewide VLR. New York has since signed up more than 300 cities worldwide to do the same, and universities have adopted a unique SDG framework to assess their contribution to economic, social, and environmental progress. As of 2018, 78 percent of S&P 500 companies had issued recent sustainability reports, many of which make reference to specific SDGs.
The SDGs have become so ubiquitous that they serve as a common language. Reference SDG 5, and many people know you are talking about gender equality. For an individual looking to make a responsible investment or a government looking to attract responsible corporate actors, if a corporation has a commitment—better yet a specific target—on SDG 8 on decent work and growth or SDG 7 on affordable and clean energy, it might well be worth a look.
The catalyst for this report is the opportunity for the Biden administration to incorporate the SDGs in its development strategies and programs. While the U.S. was an active partner in the development and initial commitment to the SDGs, over the past four years U.S. development policies have referenced the SDGs but not embraced them. Candidate Biden committed to the SDGs, and the administration reportedly is deliberating on how it might incorporate the SDGs in its development cooperation.
As Agenda 2030 is the international development currency of this decade, incorporating the SDGs in U.S. development cooperation policy would be an important step in the Biden-Harris administration commitment to reengage the U.S. with the world community. More specifically, it would align U.S. development policies and agencies—in particular, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC), Development Finance Corporation (DFC), U.S. Trade and Development Agency (USTDA), and U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA)—with their donor counterparts and partner-country national strategies. It would facilitate U.S. development agencies in setting common goals and targets with other development actors, and it would provide benchmarks for tracking and measuring the results of U.S. development cooperation.
Knowing how other donors have done so should be a useful guide for how the U.S. might best do likewise.
Slums, sprawl, and skyscrapers
These three words are probably the most used in popular and policy discussions of city development. The squalor of slums, unsustainability of sprawl and sterility of skyscrapers are the proverbial Achilles heel of community leaders and urban planners. They call for livable neighborhoods with a vibrant mix of homes, shops, offices, and local amenities.
In a recent report, “Pancakes to Pyramids: City Form to Promote Sustainable Growth,” we examine how cities across the world have grown over the past quarter century and explain why some are stuck with slums, while others have expanded and some have built impressive skylines. Our priors have been shaped by our experiences living in cities, and we set out to examine if empirical regularities were consistent with these priors.
3 priors, 1 question
One of us recalls riding Mumbai’s crowded suburban rails during the early 1990s, passing the large slums of Dharavi where people lived cheek by jowl with little access to taps and toilets at home. While India’s economy was opening up to new investment, authorities responsible for Mumbai were slow to lay in the infrastructure and streamline the regulations that made it easier for newcomers to live and set up businesses. To be sure, Mumbai’s skyline has peaked over the past three decades, with redevelopment comprising a quarter of all real estate development over the last 10 years. Redevelopment of the city responded to economic demand. However, there is a long path ahead, to ensure that the slums of Dharavi transform into livable neighborhoods.
Around the same time, another one of us was growing up in Anyang, 15 kilometers from Seoul, and recalls catching frogs in rice fields with his friends. He recalls that “going to Seoul was a big deal—an annual event.” However, very soon, Seoul expanded into Anyang to accommodate its growing economy and population, building outward and upward. Rice fields gave way to skyscrapers, keeping in step in Korea’s rapid economic growth (See Figure 1).
Figure 1. Building outward and upward in Anyang, South Korea
The third among us grew up in a single-family home in a dormitory village of about 1,000 people around the city of Caen, one of the rainiest parts of France. She moved to Paris as a young adult, a city that she had always dreamt of living in. Her dreams were shattered as she realized that, as a student, she could not afford the cozy apartment under the roofs of the left bank district. She ended up living in the “Red Belt” suburbs of Paris with its Lenin stadiums and high towers and concentrated poverty that share some of the most expensive land in Europe with expensive single family homes. However, the metro system allowed her to enjoy the human density and amenities of Paris.
Our experiences living in cities highlighted that the way a city grew reflected broader processes of economic development. If a country was poor and its economy stagnant, cities were crowded and squalid. As a country’s economy expanded, cities became home to more people and businesses who demanded better homes, offices, infrastructure, and open spaces. Cities accommodated changes in demand by redeveloping their existing structures, by expanding into the periphery, and by building taller. However, regulations could stymie the supply of structures and push poorer people into farther locations. But decent transport systems could keep them connected to opportunities. A growing economy interacting with urban regulations and transport systems shaped how a city grew. The question is: Was our experience shared across cities?
Floor space—the final product of urbanization
To answer this question, we carried out an empirical exercise to examine how floor space has evolved across cities and what factors contribute to floor area growth. We focused on floor space available in the city rather than its land area as floor space makes the difference between a city being livable or being crowded. As noted urbanist Alain Bertaud puts it, the final product of urbanization is floor space.
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We answered this question in two parts. First, we estimated how the built-up area of a city has changed over the past 25 years, from 1990-2015. Second, we identified how city building heights look across the world. To get a handle on built-up area growth, we examine data from 9,500 cities from the Global Human Settlement Urban Center Database. Details on measurement are provided in the report and our working paper.
We find that livable floor space hinges on city growth along three margins:
Horizontal spread—extending beyond the city’s previously built-up area.
Infill development—closing gaps between existing structures.
Vertical layering—raising the skyline of the existing built-up area.
As cities grow in productivity and in population, they add floor space by expanding outward, inward, upward, or—more usually—along all three margins to varying degrees. We use the terms pancakes and pyramids as shorthand for two broadly different tendencies in the physical manifestation of city growth:
Cities with low productivity and income levels and dysfunctional policy environments generally grow as pancakes—flat and spreading slowly. Low economic demand for land and floor space keeps land prices low and structures close to the ground, especially at the urban edge. Given slow expansion, growth in population density is often accommodated by crowding, starkly visible in the slums of developing country cities.
Cities with higher productivity and responsive policies may evolve from pancakes into pyramids—their horizontal expansion persists, yet it is accompanied by infill development and vertical layering. A rising demand for floor space in economically productive cities and a rise in housing investment and consumption, leads developers to fill vacant or underused land at and within the city edge with new structures. The same demand for floor space drives expansion not just horizontally in two dimensions, but also in the third—the vertical. Structures are built taller, on average, and at the urban core, they are built much taller, forming sharply peaked skylines.
The inevitability of sprawl, but with a silver lining
We find that horizontal growth is inevitable for most developing country cities. In low-income and lower-middle-income countries, 90 percent of urban built-up area expansion occurs as horizontal growth (Figure 2). But there is a silver lining: in high-income and upper-middle-income country cities, a larger share of new built-up area is provided through infill development. A city in a high-income country that increases its built-up area by 100 m2 will add about 35 m2 through infill development and 65 m2 through horizontal spread. But a similar city in a low-income country will add 90 m2 through horizontal spread and only 10 m2 from infill.
Figure 2. Horizontal growth is inevitable for most developing country cities
Source: Pancakes to Pyramids: City Form to Promote Sustainable Growth
We also find that economic productivity and rising incomes are indispensable for vertical layering because building high is capital-intensive. A city that grows in population, but not productivity and incomes, will not generate enough economic demand for new floor space for its spatial expansion to keep pace with population growth. For example, if the population increased by 10 percent but incomes stay constant, the city’s total floor space increases by 6 percent. This 6 percent increase is too small to allow a newly added population the same amount of floor space per person as before: Each inhabitant’s residential and work space will shrink, eventually making the city less livable. Our estimations indicate:
The elasticity of total floor space to population is 0.60. If a city’s population increases by 10 percent (holding income constant), its total floor space increases by 6 percent because of built-up area increase (3.5 percent) and vertical layering (2.5 percent) (Figure 3).
Elasticity of total floor space to income: 0.29. If the city’s income increases by 10 percent (holding population constant), its total floor space increases by 2.9 percent through a combination of built-up area expansion (1 percent) and vertical layering (1.9 percent).
Figure 3. Horizontal growth is inevitable for most developing country cities
Source: Pancakes to Pyramids: City Form to Promote Sustainable Growth
Increasing incomes and economic productivity are together necessary for a rise in floor space per person through vertical layering and pyramidal growth. Our research shows that the growth of cities and the availability of floor space reflect market forces that support productivity and economic growth. The finding echoes the World Bank’s 2009 World Development Report on Economic Geography: “Many policymakers perceive cities as constructs of the state—to be managed and manipulated to serve some social objective. In reality, cities and towns, just like firms and farms, are creatures of the market”.
Slums, sprawl, and skyscrapers reflect market conditions but are generally distorted by poor regulation and inadequate infrastructure. The movement out of slums toward livable cities is critical for developing countries, but this is unlikely to happen without structural transformations and economic growth.
A structured learning approach to support scaling: Guidelines for how to do this in practice
You don’t have to look far to find mentions of “adaptive learning” or “multistakeholder collaboration” in the global education sector. Donors typically ask for the programs they fund to be adaptive and collaborative, implementers try to embrace flexible and inclusive approaches, and researchers tinker to learn about the most effective ways to do these things. But what do they look like in practice?
A new way of working
To address this question, the Center for Universal Education (CUE) at the Brookings Institution, in collaboration with local institutions around the world, set out to develop an innovative participatory research approach: the Real-time Scaling Labs (RTSLs). An RTSL is a process to document, learn from, and support scaling efforts by bringing together “non-usual suspects” over a multiyear period to plan for the scaling process, discuss and reflect on key challenges or opportunities as they arise, and implement course corrections based on data and insights.
The scaling labs are structured spaces for key stakeholders to roll up their sleeves and dive into the complex, messy business of scaling—adding texture to the idea of an adaptive, multistakeholder learning process. It involves linking people and sectors within countries that might not be used to working together to explore collective solutions to shared challenges. Labs can be established and led by a variety of institutions—NGOs, government ministries, or private-sector enterprises could all take this on—and the beauty of the labs is that they can be tailored to different contexts in ways that make sense for the people working there. Though there are common features across the labs and a general set of steps to take, many of the important details are best left to the good instincts of those on the ground.
Applying an RTSL to support marginalized girls in Tanzania
Since 2018, CUE has partnered with CAMFED Tanzania to implement an RTSL to expand and deepen the impact of CAMFED’s Learner Guide Program, an initiative that promotes life-skills development and creates pathways to employment and further education for marginalized girls transitioning from secondary school. Lab members include representatives from the Ministry of Education, Science, and Technology (MoEST) and the President’s Office-Regional Administration and Local Government (PO-RALG)—the two main bodies responsible for education service delivery in Tanzania. Beyond government, the RTSL has also brought together civil-society representatives, teachers and school leaders, and members of CAMFED’s National Advisory Council to explore how core elements of the Learner Guide Program could be integrated within the existing government system.
Over a three-year period, the lab has been shaped into a structure well-suited for the Tanzanian context. Subcommittees were formed among smaller groups of lab members so that they could draw on their individual expertise to investigate thematic issues related to the Learner Guide scaling process. These groups of experts have analyzed how key components of the program, such as the “My Better World” life skills materials, or microloans provided to Learner Guides, could be adapted or integrated within the existing government system. Lab members have contributed to the development of costed scaling strategies that help the Tanzanian government and CAMFED understand how and why program costs could shift if leadership of the program is transferred to the government. CAMFED Tanzania is currently working with their colleagues in Zambia and Zimbabwe to adapt and implement RTSLs in those countries too.
In addition to the Tanzania RTSL, CUE and local partner institutions have implemented RTSLs to support the scaling of education initiatives in other countries: Botswana, Cote d’Ivoire, Jordan (two labs), and the Philippines. These experiences have surfaced valuable insights about key scaling principles and how they manifest in different contexts. Through this work, CUE has analyzed how the RTSL has added value to the scaling process—and where it could be strengthened—and has used these insights and experiences to develop “Real-time Scaling Lab Guidelines” that others can use to implement their own RTSL.
Using the guidelines
While education actors should adapt the RTSL to meet their needs, CUE recommends following these key steps from the guidelines to implement an RTSL:
Clarify the problem to be addressed. The institution(s) initiating the RTSL should begin by identifying an evidence-based education initiative in the process of scaling as the focus of lab activities and research. While the lab supports and documents the process of scaling a particular initiative, the goal of the lab is to sustainably address a problem in the local context. This early stage of the lab process also involves conducting background research to gain a nuanced understanding of the country context, government priorities, and key stakeholders to involve.
Determine lab structure and identify key personnel. Labs can be established as a standalone structure or integrated within an existing one (such as a ministry working group or standing committee). Regardless of where the lab is “housed,” a manager should be identified to provide overall leadership of the process, and a researcher tasked with documenting the scaling journey. This documentation will serve as the basis for the group’s adaptive learning process. Finally, lab members are identified – the number can vary based on the initiative and context, but the lab group should include diverse actors representing different sectors who are involved with the initiative.
Develop and refine scaling strategy. Under the leadership of the manager and researcher, lab members articulate a shared scaling goal, develop a scaling strategy, and then put the strategy into practice, collecting and analyzing data and information as the process moves along. In the spirit of continuous improvement, lab members should test adaptations to the scaling model or approach, and make strategic decisions based on emerging insights.
Reflect and learn through periodic gatherings. A central feature of the lab process is regularly coming together to openly discuss and reflect on the scaling process—what is going well and what could be improved—and proposing adjustments in the scaling strategy that address challenges and take advantage of windows of opportunity. The COVID-19 pandemic has reinforced the need for flexible adaptation that responds to changing environments. It has also ushered in new ways of collaborating and working together. While the exact structure and rhythm of these gatherings can differ, the ongoing examination of the scaling process based on new data and changes in the broader environment is essential.
CUE hopes this guidance can support other education actors working to bring about large-scale, sustainable impact in education systems. While concepts such as adaptive learning seem straightforward, they can be tricky to apply. The experiences of the RTSLs have offered an effective way to bring folks together for iterative, collective learning. We welcome readers’ questions, feedback, and reflections.
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What constrained firm investments in digital technologies during the pandemic?
While firms during COVID-19 accelerated the adoption of digital technologies, this adoption can operate through different pathways: expansion of digital platforms or investments in new digital technologies. In this blog, we analyze if there are specific barriers limiting some of these pathways, and specifically what barriers may have limited businesses investments in new in digital technologies in response to the pandemic. Did they lack awareness about the potential benefits of digitization? Did they lack complementary managerial capabilities to exploit digital technologies? Were they restricted in their access to finance? Did the uncertainty of future scenarios increase their perception of risk? Specifically, we explore how access to finance is important for investments in digitization by small and medium firms and how heavy debt can lower investments in the presence of high uncertainty. When the outlook becomes uncertain, government support is essential to smooth concerns about the future of business, sustain demand, and reduce volatility. Such interventions can be key to sustain a productivity-driven recovery built on the effective adoption of digital technologies.
In our previous blog we showed that during the pandemic firms turned to digital, but this expansion of digital technology can be done through alternative pathways. Firms can either expand the use of information communication technologies (ICT) that they already own and expand the use of platforms or invest in new technologies. These two alternatives differ in their potential impact on productivity but also in terms of fixed costs and financing needs. New investments require firms to incur significant fixed costs, while expanding the use of pre-owned technology or the use of digital platforms does require limited investments. In the three European countries analyzed (Romania, Poland, and Bulgaria) we find find that investment in new digital technologies is much less common than expansion in the use of digital platforms, and this pattern is driven by the choices of smaller businesses. In fact, while smaller firms are able to expand the use of pre-owned digital technologies and digital platforms just as larger firms do (left panel, Figure 1), they are three times less likely to invest in new digital technologies (right panel, Figure 1). Why is that?
Figure 1. Expansion of usage of existing digital technology vs. new investments by firms’ size
COVID-19 affected firms’ access to external financing, but it also hit their cash flows. The drops in sales hurt firms’ liquidity and constrained the availability of internal resources to finance the reboot and invest in digital (right panel in Figure 2). But firms adapted and exploited alternative coping strategies. For example, the more sales were affected the more firms redirected their production toward new products (product innovation—left panel in Figure 2).
Figure 2. Product innovation vs. investment in digital technologies
The unprecedented circumstances brought on by COVID-19 raised uncertainty to historically unseen levels. Overall, firms that experienced higher uncertainty were less willing to invest in digital technologies compared to firms whose future revenues appeared more secure (left panel, Figure 3). However, uncertainty lowered the willingness to invest in digital and was particularly strong among financially distressed firms falling into arrears (right panel, Figure 3), suggesting that a mix between financial constraints and uncertainty may be a key reason for limiting investments in new digital technologies.
Figure 3. Investment in digital technologies, uncertainty in sales, and fear of falling into arrears
Public support played a key role in influencing firms’ responses to the pandemic and, in particular, their choice to invest in digital technologies. The help firms received from the state counteracted the negative effects of uncertainty on investment. Firms that received assistance not only invested more often in general, but they did so even when future outcomes were more uncertain. This result is cause for some optimism as it suggests that governments can play a crucial role in smoothing the risks that firms bear and in supporting their recovery by, for example, enhancing their likelihood to invest in digital technologies. We will discuss how public support for firms was rolled out and how it helped firms in our future blogs.
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Education in emergency in Nigeria: Creating gender equitable policies so all girls have an uninterrupted right to learn
Even under what some may describe as normal conditions, girls in Nigeria face a distinctive set of barriers to formal education at all levels. Nearly 2 out of 3 (about 6.34 million) of the country’s 10.19 million out-of-school children in the country are girls. Prior to the outbreak of COVID-19, violence, child, early, and forced marriages (CEFM), lack of schools, inadequate infrastructure, unsafe environments, limitations in teacher training, and systemic gender biases impeded girls’ participation and learning in formal schooling across Nigeria.
With the outbreak of the pandemic and the subsequent closure of schools, the country has not only suffered direct losses from its impact, but also an ever-worsening spate of insecurity and violence across the country, including attacks on school children—especially girls. For instance, at the start of 2020, 935 schools in Northeast Nigeria were closed as a result of attacks and conflict. Indeed, schools are among the worst institutional casualties of complex disasters, as is evident from the COVID-19 pandemic, the Boko Haram insurgency, and several attacks on communities in Nigeria, which have all compounded the problems many girls face in consistently accessing schooling. This calls for improved responses for education during emergencies in Nigeria.
Schools are among the worst institutional casualties of complex disasters, as is evident from the COVID-19 pandemic, the Boko Haram insurgency, and several attacks on communities in Nigeria, which have all compounded the problems many girls face in consistently accessing schooling.
In response to the forced closure of schools, the Oyo state government launched an “education-in-emergency” intervention called “School on Air” to serve as an alternative way of learning for students during the school closures. Students were expected to participate in remote classes by watching recorded subject lessons on the TV or listening to radio broadcasts. However, initial reports have found gender disparities in student participation in remote learning interventions during COVID-19, with household duties preventing girls from having sufficient learning time. Equally important are concerns about how factors such as loss of jobs and family income during COVID-19, teenage pregnancies, child labor, and CEFM might prevent girls from returning to complete their education even after the reopening of schools.
How can policy and practices be designed to ensure that girls and young women are not left behind in times of emergency? This is the question I will take up in my research as an Echidna Global Scholar at Brookings.
Ensuring all Nigerian girls exercise their right to learn, continuously
Having lost my father at age 13, I experienced firsthand how the loss of a family’s primary means of economic support could potentially threaten a girl’s education or lead to an early or forced marriage. I was fortunate that my mother—a formally educated woman herself—was committed to ensuring that my three siblings and I completed our primary-, secondary-, and even university-level education.
Now, having gained formal education and its privileges, I am committed to ensuring that girls across Nigeria are equally able to exercise their same right to learn. No girl’s right or desire for formal education should ever be denied for any reason. For over 15 years, I have worked to advance children’s and especially girls’ education rights, as well as improve public schooling standards. To break cycles of educational and social exclusion for girls—and their children—MAYEIN, an organization I founded in 2012, has campaigned for girls’ education in communities across southwest Nigeria and has established “Girls without Borders,” a network of school-based clubs designed to teach girls their basic rights and provide them with leadership training.
Through my research as an Echidna Global Scholar, I hope to expand my impact and assist both Nigeria’s federal and the Oyo state governments, respectively, in formulating policy solutions for education during emergencies that are gender equitable and just—ensuring that no girl goes without an education, even in times of emergency.
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Measuring internet poverty
For the majority of the world, it is impossible to think of life without the internet. Think about life and work during COVID-19 when internet connectivity and digitalization were among the most necessary aspects of daily life. The internet allows us to stay entertained, informed, and, most importantly, connected. The internet is now a basic necessity like food, clothes, shelter, or electricity.
However, not everyone is connected. Many people either pay too much or don’t receive the bandwidth to use the internet effectively. People who can’t afford a minimum package of connectivity are the poor of the 21st century.
This is why World Data Lab (WDL) has developed a global measurement framework of internet poverty to measure the number of people left behind in the internet revolution. People who can’t afford a basic package of connectivity—set at 1.5 gigabytes (GB) per month at a minimum download speed of 3 megabits per second (Mbps) (equivalent to 6 seconds to load a standard web page)—are internet-poor. This is an analog to the extreme poverty line, currently at $1.90 (2011 PPP), which represents a basket of minimum basic needs (mostly of food, clothes, and shelter).
Globally, internet access is rising. Every second, five to six people join the group of internet users (broadly seven are added and one person dies). Today, an estimated 4.5 billion people are connected compared to only half a billion people 20 years ago. As the price of internet access declined sharply, more people started to use it—similar to the rise of mobile phones 20 years ago.
To reduce internet poverty, incomes need to rise, or internet prices must decline. The price of the internet also declines if the quality and quantity improve. Remember when the last iPhone was presented, the previous version became cheaper even though it was performing just as well.
Internet prices for every country are now available from Cable and the International Telecommunication Union (ITU). The cost of the average mobile internet package is $0.50 per day. However, quality varies across countries. Using our model of how prices vary with quality, we obtained the price of a standardized quality of internet use in each country. Setting a standard of 1.5 GB per month with 3 Mbps would allow an individual to browse web pages, check emails, and conduct some basic online shopping for 40 minutes a day. It is our equivalent of the “basic needs” of accessing the internet—enough to do the minimum, but not enough to watch videos or conduct other tasks such as accessing databases that demand higher bandwidth. How many people can afford such a basic internet package?
We assume affordability if it would represent 10 percent or less of a person’s spending. This is in line with recent World Bank estimates for West Africa where only around 20-25 percent of the population can afford mobile internet.
Figure 1. Internet poverty framework
Source: World Data Lab
Based on this definition, World Data Lab estimates that there are around 1.1 billion people living in internet poverty today. This is a lower-bound estimate as it assumes that everyone in a country actually has access to the internet if they are willing to pay, in the same way that poverty headcounts assume that everyone has access to food if they have the money to pay for it.
Focusing on internet affordability, we find that almost anyone living in a rich country can afford to use the internet—even if the price might be rather high. By contrast, the price plays a crucial role in poor countries. At least in the short term, people in developing regions depend on an affordable pricing scheme for them to be able to access the internet.
In particular, our results show that poor countries with cheap internet (below $15 per month), are able to connect a much larger proportion of the population than poor countries with expensive internet. Only 13 percent of the population in poor countries with cheap internet live in internet poverty. Conversely, poor countries with expensive internet have 67 percent of their population in internet poverty. Of the 4 billion people who live in countries with average per capita spending of below $11 per day, 3.4 billion have access to cheap internet by our definition. Only 7.5 percent, around 588 million people, live in poor countries with expensive internet. This group of people must be the focus for eliminating internet poverty.
While there are large differences in incomes around the world, there are also substantial differences in the price for a minimum package of internet. These price differences are independent of per capita incomes. In the U.S., people pay almost double for the same internet package as in the Philippines. Malawi has about the same per capita income as Mozambique but pays on average three times as much for a basic internet package. Among emerging economies, India stands out as a poor country with low internet prices—thus an internet poverty rate of around 8 percent. By contrast, Malawi, Venezuela, and Madagascar have the highest prices in the world even though they are among the poorest countries in the world, suggesting issues with economic growth and internet supply (see Figure 2).
Figure 2. Internet affordability in 2021
Source: World Data Lab estimates
As we have seen over the last year, internet connectivity should be a staple in everyone’s life. While the COVID-19 shock will make it difficult to end extreme poverty by 2030, it is still possible to end internet poverty. If every country encouraged competition and innovation so that prices would decline to the levels of India, then internet poverty would already today decline by more than half.