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“If you are born into a low-income family, what are the chances that you will rise higher regardless of your background?”
The above is the opening, searching question that encapsulates the latest World Bank report on the thorny issue of income inequality around the world entitled: “Fair Progress? Economic Mobility across Generations Around the World” published on May 9, 2018. The 300 page long report (openknowledge.worldbank.org) is dense, some people might find it rather opaque and lacking in relevance, but that would be the wrong conclusion to draw from this important, once in a generation, piece of high quality research. Having taken time to read it for professional reasons, I wondered how the contents might be turned into a useful, interesting, everyday conversation via this medium. The choice of title for this conversation bears the hallmarks of both mythology and populism because it is how we tend to see the issue of economic mobility in Africa. We are an extremely fatalistic lot: First, it is that the trajectory of our economic fortune and/or misfortune in life is entirely out of human’s hand. Allah decides, God decides everything, no human agency. Clearly, the professionals at the World Bank feel slightly different. Data, to them, speak volumes. And, what are the sources of economic data? Well, human activities; deliberate, accidental, intentional as well as unintentional. This is not to deny the importance of theological explanation, but to say that theology belongs in the celestial realm; data analysis belongs in the touch, feel, smell the coffee here, and now, real world. That is also where we are at with this conversation here.
So, how does one get out of poverty and economic deprivation? Is it possible to imbibe the populist “rags to riches” mythology and actually live it out, as many people have actually done, in fact? Remember former Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan? A man who grew up “with no shoes” on his feet, but kept running into luck after luck until he made it into the Presidential Villa in this country? Or, former President Shehu Shagari, an average school teacher, who ended up punching above his weight as a civilian President of Nigeria from 1979 to 1983? Or, Chief Obafemi Awolowo, who struggled through early life, but made huge economic fortunes for himself before dabbling into politics and nation-building? He remains the iconic figure of the 20th century as a public servant generally for the country as a whole, but more specifically, for the South-Western part of the country. On his demise, he left behind a pair of old shoes which politicians of all hues in the South-West of Nigeria have tried in vain to step into. That is to say, these public figures moved from being born poor to becoming financially comfortable or even very rich by dint of hard work, desire and determination alone. There are loads of similar examples in the world of business and commerce, but the question is; are people’s life chances (social mobility) a matter of choice and desire, or are they more to do with family background and “connections” in modern Africa?
According to the World Bank report, “ability to move up the economic ladder matters for reducing poverty and inequality and can help boost economic growth”. In other words, poverty is not an act of God as many of us in Africa are wont to believe. Allah has not decreed that the lot of anyone is to remain poor for life, neither has God created beautiful rewards in heaven waiting for wretched of the earth. The researchers draw on global database of intergenerational mobility, covering 96 per cent of the world’s population, spanning 50 years. It is a quite hefty, data-driven stuff. Perhaps, the most heartrending point in the report is the not-too-surprising revelation that “trends in mobility in the developing world have stalled since the 1960s, making it harder to harness human potential for generating greater, and more widely shared, prosperity”.
As I said earlier, the first and most important realisation to have in Africa is that mobility from one level of prosperity to another is not an article of faith; it requires deliberate planning through effective public policy. In the immediate post-independent Nigeria, social mobility had very little to do with family background and connections as such. There was a level playing field for everyone. A farmer’s son or daughter had as much a chance to attend a higher institution as the sons and daughters of the rich and the well-heeled. Private universities were unheard as of the time, there was sufficient investment in hospitals and schools across the board for everyone and anyone to take advantage of. This was particularly so in the defunct Western Region of Nigeria, which, against vociferous opposition, embarked upon the policy of universal free education for all. It was an audacious policy which accelerated the economic prospect of its citizens compared to the northern part of the country where there was no such policy.
Moreover, the healthy rivalry between the three main ethnic groups: Hausa, Igbo and Yoruba helped to focus minds on public service delivery, but it created an imbalance in the appointments to key positions within the federal civil service. Whilst the southern part of Nigeria could produce a number of highly trained technocrats in most areas of public service, the northern part with a much greater population lagged behind their compatriots in the South. Education had not been seen as a tool for social advancement in the North in the way it had been conceived in the South. That, itself, produced its own snags in form of ethnic imbalance in key government departments especially at senior levels. This was then the basis for the subsequent introduction of the “federal character” principle in the recruitment and appointment of civil servants into the top echelons of government bureaucracy in this country. The need to maintain “balance” in key areas of appointment ushered in the introduction of ethnically-based quota system and an end to meritocracy in favour of ethnic “harmony” by allowing appointments to key positions in the federal administration to reflect the geographical population of each region. For whatever positive impact this was meant to achieve, it has been blunted by the apparent skewing of the playing field in favour of one region over the other in the name of “federal character”. Mobility thus became first, a matter of ethnicity and regional affiliation, then, it became a matter of who you know, not what you know.
This is not only a Nigerian problem though. Similar public policy errors are replicated across the continent in the aftermath of independence, and has been perpetuated with vigour since. According to the World Bank report, “across regions, the prospects of relative mobility are the lowest among children in Africa and South Asia”. Education (formal and informal) holds the tool for economic advancement for most people. In this wise, the finding that although “average educational attainment has increased across generations, but the gap between advanced and developing economies has persisted” is one that ought to concern policymakers across the continent.
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