Is There a Relationship Between National Competitiveness and Performance in Education in African Countries?Past Publications
The World Economic Forum has been producing the Global Competitiveness Index for several decades. The focus of this study was on the 2019 Global Competitiveness Index (GCI) report. The indicators in the 2019 GCI report were “organised into 12 ‘pillars’. These pillars are regarded as drivers or determinants of competitiveness, thus implies that each of the 12 pillars is statistically significantly associated with competitiveness. Focusing on pillar 6 that has education performance indicators, this study examined the relationship between national competitiveness scores and performance in some education indicators in African countries.
The data for this study consisted of the overall competitiveness scores for African countries contained in the 20129 GCI report as well as quantity and quality of education performance indicators obtained from UNESCO and the World Bank. Some issues were noted in the methodology of the 2019 GCI report. The results indicate that though the bi-variate analysis indicated that each of the education performance indicators was correlated with overall competitiveness scores in African countries in 2019, controlling for other education performance indicators, none of the education indicators was statistically significant. A major weakness in this study was the small sample size.
Author: Emeritus Professor Eric O Udjo (PhD, London) 2024
