Lifelong Learning and Sub-Saharan Africa's Dream of Economic Emancipation

Abstract

Sub-Saharan Africa having remained economically poor throughout its more than sixty years of independence, and relying on the finding that the acquisition of a high level of digital and entrepreneurship skills tends to create wealth for nations in modern times, this study investigates the extent to which sub-Saharan Africa's higher education institutions may leverage the facilitation of the learning of digital technologies and entrepreneurship for Africa's economic emancipation through lifelong learning. The work carried out at the level of eight (8) lifelong learning outfits of eight (8) premier universities drawn from the four (4) regions of sub-Saharan Africa is scrutinised through the administration of a six (6)-item questionnaire with a view to establishing whether or not Africa's higher education institutions are currently facilitating the learning of digital technologies and entrepreneurship through lifelong learning to a level that may promote Africa’s economic emancipation. The findings of the current study are that sub-Saharan Africa i). possesses very few higher education institutions in comparison to the global average, ii). is yet to prioritise lifelong learning both nationally and at the higher education level and iii). is incapable to produce the needed population of digital and entrepreneurship graduates that may propel its economic emancipation as a result of its current level of neglect of lifelong learning.

Received: 22 May 2024 | Revised: 12 July 2024 | Accepted: 25 July 2024 

Conflicts of Interest

The author declares that he has no conflicts of interest to this work.

Data Availability Statement

The data used to support the findings of this study are available upon request to the corresponding author.

Author Contribution Statement

Idowu Biao: Conceptualization, Methodology, Validation, Formal analysis, Investigation, Resources, Data curation, Writing - original draft, Writing - review & editing, Visualization, Supervision, Project administration.