ABSTRACT

Over the two decades ending in 1980, primary enrollments doubled in Asia and Latin America, while in Africa they tripled. This pattern was reversed, however, after 1980, when growth rates of enrollment declined so much in Africa that they actually were lower than the rate of growth of the population.1 Over the 1980s, in about two-thirds of the countries of Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) educational expenditures per head were cut in real terms. In some cases the cuts were very large; for example, between 1981 and 1989, real expenditures per head on education fell by 67% in Nigeria and Zambia and 60% in Tanzania (Stewart, 1996). This decline in enrollments was an effect of the general economic recession that hit the African countries in the 1980s. The economic recession was mostly caused by worsening terms of trade which again gave rise to mounting

1Both the gross and the net enrollment ratios for Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) taken as a whole fell through the 1980s. Most available data suggest that this decline continued at least through 1992, such that by that year, scarcely more than half of the primary school-age population of SSA were actually attending school (Colclough, 1997). The net enrollment ratio (NER) takes account of the age structure of those enrolled by excluding all those children who are older or younger than the officially eligible age group. The gross enrollment ratio (GER) expresses total enrollment at a given level of schooling-irrespective of the age of the students-as a percentage of the population which, according to national regulations, is of an age to attend that level.