Challenges of an African education


Assignees moving to Africa often find the process uniquely challenging, owing to immigration complexities, security issues and cultural considerations. Those with school-age children face the added challenge of choosing a suitable education pathway. We look at the availability of international schooling in the region, and offer advice to help parents choose a school.


expected to become economic powerhouses of the future, the continent of Africa is coming into sharper focus in the world of global mobility as organisations across the world, in search of growth, look to it for new opportunities. The latest reports bear this out. EY’s 2016 Africa


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Attractiveness survey, Navigating Africa’s Current Uncertainties, found that, despite current uncertainties, the longer-term outlook for economic growth and investment in Africa remained positive.


“The next few years will be tough – partly, even


largely, as a result of a fragile global economy – but many African economies remain resilient, with two-thirds of sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries still growing at rates above the global average,” said the report.


Even though growth across the region is uneven and likely to remain slower in coming years, SSA will continue for the foreseeable future to be the world’s second-fastest-growing region, after emerging Asia. Kenya, Tanzania, Mozambique and Ivory Coast are among 17 economies in the region that are forecast by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to have grown in 2016. Larger SSA countries, such as Nigeria and Angola, have been particularly affected by lower oil prices, and growth in South Africa remains slow.


Foreign direct investment (FDI) projects increased by 7 per cent year on year, from 722 in 2014 to 771 in 2015. Africa is one of only two regions in the world to have seen growth in the number of FDI projects over the past year.


ith significant economic growth and one African country forming the ‘N’ in MINTs (Mexico, Indonesia, Nigeria and Turkey), the countries


SCHOOL CHOICE Luckily, international schooling has also seen something of a boom in the region. According to the latest figures from the International School Consultancy (ISC) Group, there are currently 792 English-medium international schools throughout Africa, between them teaching more than 339,000 students. ISC Research predicts that there will be more than 1,500 such schools by 2025. ISC names the leading African countries for English- medium international schools as Egypt, with 190, Nigeria, with 182, Kenya, with 57, and South Africa, with 51. The city with the best provision is Cairo, where there are 101. According to EY’s Relocating to Central Africa report, expatriate families often choose international schools because they can offer a higher rate of university placement and help with school applications if they return to their home country. It is likely that relocating assignees with accompanying school-age children will look for an international school offering either a curriculum that follows the same learning programme as their home country or an internationally transferable curriculum. The majority of international schools in Africa (66 per cent) offer the UK curriculum, 30 per cent the US curriculum, and only 9 per cent the IB Diploma Programme.


CULTURAL IMMERSION


This does not mean that families and children are completely isolated from life in their destination country. GEMS Cambridge International School, in Kampala, Uganda, opened its doors in 2013. Principal Neville Sherman explains that, while the school offers the English National Curriculum, pupils are encouraged to gain an appreciation of Ugandan culture.


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