Elizabeth Elango Bintliff, the CEO of Junior Achievement Africa, on why quality education should be available and accessible at scale and what needs to change to fill the gaps in teaching.



JA Africa’s mission is bridging the gap between classroom education and the world of work for young Africans, reaching 250,000 students in 15 countries in Africa each year. It’s CEO, Elizabeth Elango Bintliff, tells us more about building the workforce of the future:



You’ve been working in the youth empowerment sector for a long time. What do you see as the challenges?



I think three things are critical for young Africans to be empowered: education, experience and exposure. Access to the internet is ‘solving’ for exposure, though to a limited extent. But we need to solve for experience and education. Of the three, education is key and education tends to be the domain of the government. Elite private schools are great, but often cost-prohibitive for the average student. We need to make quality education available and accessible at scale.



Conversely, what are the opportunities?



The digital and online space are great opportunities for Africa. We are seeing this now in the time of Covid-19 more than ever. Yes, access to computers is a challenge, but even more challenging is access to data. There is no shortage of online resources that teach entrepreneurial mindsets to young people. I think what governments need to be working towards, more than even buying and putting computers in schools, is making offline access to these resources possible. If we make them affordable to access, the private sector would be more inclined to solve the hardware needs.



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote">&#8220;Classrooms are still configured for desks to face the teacher who is the sole holder of knowledge, whereas the world of work operates on round tables and collaborative thinking. Small changes like that matter.&#8221;</blockquote>



How do we give young people in Africa greater access to these opportunities?



We need to overhaul the way we are teaching. We need not only change how teachers are trained but what they are teaching students. In many countries, the curricula are antiquated. But the approach to teaching is even more so. Rote learning; providing information to children to memorize and regurgitate is still the dominant approach. It gives students little space to think for themselves. Classrooms are still configured for desks to face the teacher who is the sole holder of knowledge, whereas the world of work operates on round tables and collaborative thinking. Small changes like that matter.



What is the role of government and the private sector?



The role of government is central to success in changing education. Government has the ability to make change happen at scale. But African governments have to make these changes not just at policy level but also in implementation. We know that governments don’t have the resources to do so, but at least they can coordinate the efforts of the private sector. The private sector is going to have the greatest need for skilled labor, and there is increasing willingness to make these investments in education, but the effort is fragmented. It needs coordination.



Who are the other stakeholders and what can they contribute?



Non-profit organizations like ours are working hard to fill the gaps in education. But those gaps are big and growing and the scale is limited. NGOs can develop and test hypotheses about doing things in new ways. But governments have to adopt and scale them. JA Africa is currently undertaking a continent-wide youth employability survey, along with global consultancy firm Oliver Wyman, based out of Johannesburg. The findings of that survey will be invaluable to the private sector and policy-makers.



In education, parents are often the most critical stakeholders. Parents have to embrace new pedagogies, even if they are unfamiliar to them. Parents fear entrepreneurship because it is uncertain. But nothing is certain. Large multinational companies are laying off their staff because of Covid-19. So young entrepreneurs [should be equipped to] be better off in times of uncertainty. Africa becoming the largest workforce in the world is a huge opportunity if young Africans are skilled enough to take advantage of it.

E Bintliff

How Teaching Must Change To Prepare Youth In The Covid-19 Era

Every time a woman earns R89 ($6), a man earns R100 ($7).
That’s right. Seventy years since women joined the workforce en masse, these inequalities are as real, though more insidious, than ever, and the repercussions of this disparity ripple across a woman’s entire lifetime. Payslips serve as benchmarks for future raises and these differences accumulate over time, into the difference it takes to pay back student loans and the amount it’s possible to save for retirement.
The wage gap is also maddeningly ubiquitous. Women in executive positions in South Africa earn 11% less than men, 13% less in management, and an enormous 21% less in professional roles, according to research and consultant firm Mercer.
This difference is set up from childhood.
“Girls are socialized differently,” says Anita Bosch, lead researcher at the Women in the Workplace Research Programme at the Faculty of Management at the University of Johannesburg (UJ). Girls aren’t encouraged to enjoy and be good at Maths and Science, and this, says Bosch, changes their possible career choices.
Donna Rachelson, the author of Play To Win: What Women Can Learn From Men In Business, says that socialization is even more subtle than simply what subjects are taken in school.
“Men learn that games are win or lose, and this attitude is taken into the workplace when it comes to salary negotiations,” says Rachelson.
Yolisa Phahle, the CEO of MNet, comes from the BBC in London, and says that in her international experience, many companies prohibit salary discussions amongst employees and it’s difficult to know where the differential comes in.
“I always felt that men earned more,” says Phahle, “But without the numbers it’s hard to prove, and hard to negotiate.”
Luckily for her, her husband was always a step or two above her on the career ladder, and she had a benchmark when it came to raise negotiations.
However, this is not the norm and asking for a raise is certainly a significant part of the problem.
“The assumption is if I do good work, it’ll be seen and I’ll be rewarded for it,” says Bosch. “But that’s not the case. Companies aren’t benevolent. If you need a raise, you must ask for it.”
Women tend to wait until they’re certain they deserve a promotion before approaching management, whereas men negotiate that raise long before.
“Demand more, don’t sit back and just say thank you,” says Lee-Anne Bac, a director of advisory services at Grant Thornton.
“Women are also penalized for their parental responsibilities,” she adds.
Leaving work early is frowned upon, and yet society expects women to bear the bulk of the burden of parenthood. This leads to what is called the ‘motherhood penalty’ and the ‘fatherhood bonus’.
Aside from career paths thrown offtrack by maternity leave, the possibility that a woman could fall pregnant and that her time could or is taken up by parental responsibilities takes a hefty toll on salaries and career trajectories. The opposite is true for men. Being perceived as the breadwinner gives married fathers a salary bump over their single colleagues. Bac says women need to challenge their organizations, and make their partners your true partner in all aspects.
“My husband and I both get home at 5.30PM, spend time with our child and continue work later that evening,” says Bac.
These inequalities are rooted in a patriarchal past, with a workplace built around men. But with an increasingly large female workforce, it’s essential that change takes place for a healthy economy.
No one thing is going to change the wage parity, and remember, as Rachelson says: “Don’t try to be like a man, just understand how the game is played.”

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