This opinion piece was written by Obakeng Leseyane, founder of the EdConnect Initiative and an Apolitical Academy public service fellow in southern Africa.

Africa’s lack of development is due, in large part, to poor leadership.  A critical element of improving Africa’s future will be ensuring that the next generation of African young leaders receive the best possible education. So access to quality education is crucial to developing Africa into a peaceful and prosperous continent.

I grew up in the remote rural village of Phokeng, in South Africa. My experience growing up is a challenging reality, shared by millions of children in South Africa: we are born to teenage single mothers, who must leave school to provide for us. As children, we are welcomed into socio-economically disadvantaged families. Very few, if any at all, have gone through formal education.

For as long as I can remember the cost of accessing quality education has been unaffordable for more than 90% of South African households. The 10% that can finance access to education are a predominantly white population, beneficiaries of the apartheid system which robbed black people of economic resources.

In summary, those who can access quality education are the already socio-economically privileged — continuing a cycle of concentrated ownership of economic resources. Access to quality education paves a path to economic liberation.

How scholarships help

In 2012, I was awarded a scholarship to start high school at one of the best — and most grossly expensive — schools in South Africa, located in Cape Town. The school transformed my life. It also helped my family, as my mother no longer had to worry about household expenses and fees for me on top of my two little sisters.

But in this new space, I always reflected on the differences between it and my home. They were too evident to be ignored. I wanted to make sure that the scholarship opportunity I had, which changed how I saw myself and my future, was accessible to other young people from my community.

Thus, in the spring of 2015, I started a campaign called Let’s Apply South Africa to assist high-potential students in my community to apply to scholarships down in Cape Town. We won some admission offers, and with lessons learned from the campaign, I dared to dream big and founded a socially conscious enterprise, EdConnect Initiative. We are working towards enhancing access to quality education for a million socio-economically disadvantaged but high-potential students by 2025, aligning with the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals.

As a South Africa based social enterprise, we recognise that girls face more difficulties than boys in accessing education. Over two million girls miss school because of menstruation: most cannot afford sanitation pads, as they live on less than a dollar a day. We’re currently seeking to partner with global organizations that also have a local presence, to start addressing this menstruation problem.

We want to give millions of Africans better educational opportunities, regardless of their socio-economic position

As we think about our target to enrol a million students in school by 2025, we need an advisory board so that we can explore multiple routes to achieving this vision. I am currently refining a blueprint for a mobile app, which we want to develop with a skilled technology company, that will provide a central access point for students’ applications and other educational opportunities. The top three things we need are partnerships with well-resourced companies that can assist students, an advisory board of experienced businesspeople and social enterprise experts and, lastly, tech partners willing to work for a good cause and help us build a high-impact mobile app.

As the founder and executive director of EdConnect Initiative, I am dedicating myself to spreading the experience of accessing quality education which transformed my life. We want to give millions of Africans better educational opportunities, regardless of their socio-economic position.

For the world order to transform, it is necessary for Africa to invest in stronger, sustainable institutions to educate its future leaders. We will soon be the biggest continent in the world, with an average age of 17 years. Educating our future generations remains a priority — access to quality education is a means of liberation, and to liberate Africans is to grow the world. — Obakeng Leseyane

(Picture credit: Flickr)

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