The emphasis is now on enhancing quality and increasing vocational training opportunities

One of the three key pillars of the Emerging Gabon strategy is Services Gabon, which addresses the development of a skilled labour force and aims to establish the country as a regional centre for financial services, tertiary education, health and environmentally sustainable development. To this end, efforts are now under way to increase the number of schools and training institutions, train and recruit more teachers, and produce reliable statistics on student performance.

Infrastructure

Gabon increased its investment budget in 2013 as part of its plan to overhaul public infrastructure across the board. Proposed investment in education in the budget was up 53% year-on-year to €138m. The National Agency for Public Works (Agence Nationale des Grands Travaux, ANGT) is responsible for implementing ministerial development plans and coordinating the numerous tasks. These include, for instance, the decentralisation of part of the Complexe Omar Bongo in Libreville, a vast site home to three technical high schools (lycée technique, LT): the Omar Bongo, Professional and Industrial LTs. As many as 7000 students study at the site, which has resulted in a number of issues. Facilities are overcrowded, and due to the proximity of buildings, student protests can spread from one school to another, according to Francois Boukangou, administrator at the Ministry of National Education and Technical and Professional Training (Ministère de l’Education Nationale et de l’ Enseignement Technique et Professionnel, MENETP). To address these issues, the Professional LT will be moved to Ntoum and the Industrial LT to Bikele. In cooperation with the ANGT, MENETP is also considering building new facilities in the industrial area of Nkok, where plots of land are available and companies with which students could intern are located.

Primary Education

School is compulsory until the age of 16 and access is free. The country is on track to achieve its Millennium Development Goal of universal access to education by 2015. In 2012 there were a total of 321,121 students in primary education, according to UNESCO, with a net primary school enrolment rate of 96%, although the quality of the system is affected by internal performance weaknesses, with relatively high drop-out and repetition (almost 40%) rates. An increasing number of primary school students, close to 50%, are attending private schools.

The reforms of the public education system are actively supported by multilateral and bilateral partners, first and foremost the French Development Agency (Agence Française de Développement, AFD) and UNESCO. Support from these partners focuses on infrastructure, with the broader aim of reducing the number of pupils per classroom from 70 to 35.

Secondary Schools

At age 11 children join secondary school for seven years; the first four are known as collège and the last three as lycée. Lycée Léon Mba, one of 12 secondary schools in Libreville, is one of the largest with around 6000 students (4000 students in collège and 2000 in lycée). According to Jean-Baptiste Obori, the school’s director, the removal of the competitive exam that was previously required to enter secondary school resulted in an influx of collège students into the system. As a result, there were as many as 100 students per classroom in sixième (the first year of collège) in the 2012/13 school year, and around 70 in 2013/14. The same reform – endorsed by the 2010 education conference – also removed the lycée entrance exam, known as the brevet d’etudes du in schools at this level remains at a reasonable 30-45.

The end of their time in lycée students take the baccalaureat exam required for university entrance. In 2009/10, 63% of the Lycée Leon Mba students passed this exam, according to Obori. The success rate increased to 80% in 2010/11 and 87% in 2011/12, before declining again to 80% in 2012/13, likely as a consequence of the reform.

Higher Education

Gabon’s tertiary education is dominated by the public sector, which has three main institutions: Omar Bongo University (Université Omar Bongo, UOB), the Masuku University of Science and Technology, and the University of Health Sciences. Three more are slated for construction in Oyem, Mouila and Port-Gentil specialising in key sectors such as natural resource management and the environment, tourism and business management. Obori sees most of his students register at UOB, but many choose to study abroad as well, traditionally in France but also in growing numbers in Ghana and South Africa.

English is increasingly spoken in Gabon, and according to Oboru, many students are sent to English-speaking countries by their families. Scholarships have been granted to students choosing to study in Johannesburg, helping to make this a more affordable option.

Public Universities

The budget for public universities is shrinking. For instance, UOB’s budget for 2013/14 was cut by CFA1bn (€1.5m) year-on-year. According to Guy Serge Bignoumba, university lecturer in geography at UOB, this is due to the number of strikes at public universities. Strikes at UOB were ongoing throughout April 2014 as a result of delays in handing out scholarships. Registration fees at UOB are as low as CFA9000 (€14) per year, but public universities are proposing to raise these to somewhere between CFA700,000 (€1050) and CFA1.5m (€2250) to compensate for budget shortages and to ensure students who are registered are actually committed to their studies. There is also a lack of parity between the various fees paid by students from the Economic and Monetary Community of Central Africa (Communauté Economique et Monétaire de l’Afrique Centrale, CEMAC). By way of comparison, registration fees in Chad are CFA50,000 (€75) per year.

Bignoumba hopes to see greater cooperation between UOB and private firms, citing the current deal with telecoms company Airtel as a model: under the arrangement, students pay their registration fees using mobile money via Airtel (which charges CFA500, €0.75), saving the university time and money.

Private Universities

The number of private universities has risen from five recognised by MENETP in 2012 to 22 today. The aim was for MENETP to reduce the number of students leaving the country by authorising them to spend their grants in private institutions. For Bignoumba, this raises the question of their certification and control by the state, and the issue of teachers from public universities joining the private sector, where wages tend to be higher.

The Continental University of Libreville (Université Continentale de Libreville, UCL) opened in 2000 and has around 100 students. According to Steeve Tony Etoughe, its director-general, UCL focuses on “blockrelease training and continuity between lycée and university, and acts as a continued education centre (where firms pay their employees’ fees), especially in the technical and wood-processing industries”. Most students spend one semester on the campus and one in a partner firm, “learning a real job, sparing as much theory as possible. We welcome the feed-back of the firms we work with so we can adapt to their needs.”

Another private institution, the Franco-American Management Academy (Academie Franco-Americaine de Management, AFRAM), opened in 2003. With annual school fees of between CFA1.5m (€2250) and CFA2m (€3000), it is one of the most expensive private business schools in Libreville. The independent National Scholarship Agency of Gabon fully finances school fees of students who cannot afford to pay under a partnership contract between the Gabonese state and private universities, according to Mensah Bekanty, the CFO of AFRAM. The school has set up various partnerships with foreign universities such as the African Management Institute in Dakar, Senegal; Dresden Technical University in Germany; and Montpellier University 1, Paul Valery Montpellier University 3 and the University Technology Institute of Oise in France. It also trains executives and sends interns to partnership companies, including Airtel and Ecobank.

Until 2014 the BGFI Business School was solely focused on finance careers, but it has recently expanded its curriculum to cover all aspects of management.

Public Administration Programmes

In light of improving governance and leadership under its Services Gabon plan, the government has invested in a number of training programmes to improve the skills of the public administration workforce. Gabon’s National Administration School (Ecole Nationale d’ Administration, ENA), which trains top-level civil servants, recruits only after a master’s degree through a competitive exam, and through yet another exam targeting only high-ranking bureaucrats. Its students have the choice to study a range of subjects: diplomacy, labour code inspection, school administration, health administration, administrative management and local authority management. The school also offers an international programme, financed by the World Bank via the African Capacity Building Foundation, for civil servants from CEMAC countries. A number of partnerships have also been signed, including one with UOB and the World Bank for the delivery of a master’s degree in public administration; one with ENA France to send experts to Gabon for specific courses; and one with ENA Quebec to send professors to Gabon as well as train ENA Gabon’s teachers.

Apart from these traditional francophone partners, ENA has also partnered with the Management Development Institute of Singapore. The five-year partnership offers the opportunity for the best ENA students to travel to Singapore for a period of 10 months, consisting of three months of language courses and three months of courses in public sector management, followed by an internship. Two classes have been sent over the past two years, for a total of 19 students. Other students must complete an eight-month internship in central administration, but in the near future they will also be allowed to complete their training with regional administrations or Gabonese embassies. They are, however, not able to train with private companies, according to Anatole Tsioukacka, ENA’s director, as the school is 100% state-funded. Furthermore, “Emerging Gabon means looking for performance, so we reorganised our courses to introduce new subjects such as good governance, regional integration and public-private partnerships (PPPs). We are also supposed to relocate to Fougamou and absorb the Institute for Economy and Finance to set up a regional pole that will also involve CEMAC civil servants,” Tsioukacka said.

Vocational Training

Agreements with private companies looking to increase the number of qualified professionals are on the rise, with plans for several new industry-specific schools announced in recent years. French catering and facilities management group Sodexo signed a PPP with MENETP in 2013. The company will train a few students each year and provide catering services to the university.

Meanwhile, mining firm Compagnie Minière de l’ Ogooué partnered in a project to complete the School of Mines and Metallurgy in Moanda by 2015. The firm is supported by a consortium of French universities, including the Paris School of Mines. Another PPP, the Oil and Gas Institute opened In January 2014 in PortGentil with a budget of CFA5.5bn (€8.4m) for 60 students. The partners in the project included Total, Shell, Addax Petroleum, Perenco and Enischool, and the school will train petroleum technicians and engineers to work in the local hydrocarbons industry.

In June 2012 the China Aviation Industry Corporation International signed a three-year partnership with MENETP for the construction of three vocational schools in Libreville, Port-Gentil and Franceville, each with an expected capacity of 600 students. The investment is estimated to total $34m per school and will be financed by Exim Bank.

The World Bank and the AFD also provide support for professional training and to help address the education-employment imbalance, but the most significant donor in the sector (mainly for facilities and teacher training) is the African Development Bank. It estimates that around 8% of Gabonese students are enrolled in vocational and technical programmes, in areas such as wood processing and fishing.

Developing an increasing number of such vocational programmes should help absorb some of the 10, 000-15,000 young people entering the market each year. The state’s aim is to increase the number of students enrolled in vocational education to 20% by 2020. To align courses with the needs of growing industries and offer more advanced degrees, a number of professional schools were turned into technical schools in 2010, increasing their number to 11.

Outlook

With 82% of African CEOs citing a lack of key skills as the main threat to business, according to the results of the “16th Annual Global CEO Survey” conducted by PwC in 2013, efforts to identify future economic needs and to bring tertiary education in line with the demands of the job market are vital for the economic growth of the country.

On-the-job training as well as work-study programmes would also help to meet the requirements of the domestic labour market as well as address the shortage of skills. The private sector and foreign cooperation will play a key role in improving the educational offering and thereby help the nation to provide the skilled workers required by its growing economy.