Document: Accelerating Catch-up: Tertiary Education for Growth in Sub-Saharan Africa

This report argues that there is an urgent need for countries in SSA to acquire the capabilities that will spawn new industries that create more productive jobs, multiple linkages, and a wider range of exports. The desired capabilities derive from investment in physical assets, such as infrastructure and productive facilities, as well as in institutions and human capital. We have stressed human capital in this report, because in the context of SSA, it is arguably the stepping-stone to a viable and growth-promoting industrial system. Physical investment and a variety of market and non-market institutions are important complements. But as experience has shown, the former cannot be efficiently utilized or maintained where technical and managerial skills are in short supply, and the latter cannot be engineered or mplemented when human capital is desperately scarce and of questionable quality.