While immediate economic challenges are receiving the most attention globally, long-term economic planning remains crucial for stability in the midst of the global technological race for economic supremacy. To achieve this, demographic trajectory and quality education are two fundamental elements that need to be focused on.
Speaking of demographics, while India and China will account for half of global growth in 2023 according to the International Monetary Fund, last week's United Nations report projecting India to surpass China as the world's most populous country by mid-2023 attracted much attention. For instance, one particular tweet by Elon Musk, stating, "Demographics is destiny" also made headlines on some international media platforms.
However, the Chinese Foreign Ministry's response to this UN report highlights a very important aspect of economic planning: education!
Indeed, responding to the report's conclusion, the Chinese Foreign Ministry stated that while the demographic dividend of a country depends on the quantity of population, the quality of the population is more important, i.e., the scale of high-calibre workforce is more critical for a country's growth than the size of the population.
This focus on human capital also holds true for Mauritius!
Globally, if technology leadership is now a decisive element in whether the global economic power will stay strong in the West or rise in the East, a highly educated, tech-savvy population can make all the difference in this long-run race for economic power. For instance, in 2022, according to CGTN, China's fiscal spending on education remained above 4% of its GDP for 10 consecutive years. Moreover, colleges and universities across the country have tailored more than 30,000 courses and hired 174,000 teachers with professional backgrounds. Also, the gross enrolment rate of China's higher education hit 57.8% in 2021, compared with 30% in 2012.
In India, the Union Budget presented last February saw an increase of 16.5% in the budget allocation for school education making it a priority, as also commented by Foreign Minister S. Jaishankar in his book, The India Way: Strategies For an Uncertain World. For him, talent will remain the prerequisite of technology leads, and "if India is a reservoir that prepares skills before they flow into the world economy, making itself more relevant to the global knowledge economy clearly holds the key to India's future relationships."
This focus on education and training is also more remarkable in the West. In the UK, for instance, last week, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak reiterated his ambition to ensure that all pupils study maths up to the age of 18. "The country cannot afford to continue with poor numeracy which is costing the economy tens of billions a year and leaving people twice as likely to be unemployed as those with competent numeracy", he stated. According to The Guardian, though this policy might ignite debates, there is a consensus, however, that the key obstacle is the critical shortage of specialist maths teachers, among other subject specialists. As things stand, about one in eight maths lessons (12%) is taught by someone without a maths degree, and almost half of all secondary schools are having to use non-specialist teachers for maths.
In the United States, the Biden Administration also put equitable education high on the agenda and pledged to invest in high-quality early childhood education and address the national teacher shortage among other measures. Another example could be Estonia, where all school teachers have a master's degree, and kindergarten teachers have a first degree.
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In Mauritius, public investment in education represents approximately 3.2% of GDP, taking an expenditure estimate of Rs 18.3 billion for the 2022-2023 financial year and an estimated GDP value of Rs 569.9 billion for 2022. At the government level, there seems to be an acknowledgment of the crucial role of education and training for economic growth. For instance, post-Covid in 2020, the government implemented an Economic Recovery Programme where one of the key components was the National Training and Reskilling Scheme (NTRS), targeting some 9,000 unemployed persons who will be trained in fields including construction, manufacturing, logistics, ICT/BPO, Agro-industry, renewable energy, and circular economy for a duration of up to 6 months.
However, while there are more and more international tertiary institutions on the island as well as some technical-oriented institutions like Polytechnic Mauritius, the skill mismatch remains a major concern for recruiters on the island, reminding us of some of the medium and long-term measures announced in SAJ's vision 2030. As a medium-term measure, there was the "introduction of a proper manpower planning exercise in both the public and private sector to determine the future manpower requirements in specific fields". As well as one long-term measure specified "the need to transform the tertiary level of education into a worldclass quality education system to ensure that the education curricula and syllabi are more aligned with labour market requirements locally and overseas".
It is important to ensure that training and education are responsive to the changing demands of the job market and the economy. This includes promoting the acquisition of higher skills for the upper end of the labour market, particularly for new technologies and emerging sectors that are or can become important pillars of the Mauritian economy. There should be no compromise on the need to set up a clear roadmap and manpower plan for the education and training sector in Mauritius, the key to unlocking the crucial drivers for economic growth.
One critical area that requires attention, in addition to the revamping of public school infrastructure, is the level of education and teaching skills of teachers in public primary and secondary institutions, which has a direct correlation to their wages. In this context the various strikes in the US for instance, calling for better pay for teachers is a reminder that if we continue to pay teachers peanuts, it will be more and more difficult to attract committed and highly qualified Mauritians to this "noble" profession.
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Digital education should also be a priority focus, such that a rainy day could stay a normal school day as much as possible.
Of course, side by side the investment in human capital should be toned up as well, as one cannot seriously expect to contain the brain drain and limit the skill mismatch if our specialised professionals and both our skilled and less-skilled workers continue to be underpaid; we should not be surprised when we see our workers migrating to greener pastures, where they not only earn more but also acquire experience, more exposure, develop continuous learning and become more financially stable. So, the root causes of the brain drain need to be addressed including good governance and best practices of meritocracy and performance-based rewards both in the public and private sectors. Additionally, we must improve the working environment and work culture, including respecting working hours, promoting good leadership, and ensuring work-life balance.
So, finally the successful transformation of Mauritius to a strong, high-income, economy will have to go through the development of a skillsbased knowledge economy, but this is a huge arduous task, that requires a long-term vision and a commitment to its implementation - un vrai chantier !
