Higher or tertiary education has been emphasised as a major development milestone on the basis of its contribution to competitiveness among the active middle-aged men and women. This is as regards capacity building and professional training in line with the MDGs and its ability to foster technological advancement and improving the countries' maximisation of economic output.
This emphasis was pronounced in the World Bank's 2000 warning, "Without more and better higher education, developing countries will find it increasingly difficult to benefit from the global knowledge-based economy." A number of African countries including South Africa, Madagascar, Ethiopia and Nigeria have taken the warning seriously and engaged efforts at ensuring quality in institutions of higher learning by apportioning a reasonable amount of the budget to the sector.
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