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This working paper is based on country case studies of Ethiopia, Ghana, Guinea, Madagascar, Tanzania, and Uganda, and an extensive literature review. In many parts of Africa, the demand for secondary teachers substantially exceeds the supply, due to factors such as secondary teacher attrition, bottlenecks in the teacher preparation system, and perceived unattractive conditions of service. Few countries have strong policies, strategies, and programs for recruiting able secondary school graduates to secondary teaching. The paper suggests several critical and promising areas for improvement in the quality of secondary teachers through new approaches to recruitment; pre-service and in-service teacher development; and improvements in the deployment, utilization, compensation, and conditions of service for teachers.

This study asks whether the impoverished people of Botswana are likely to benefit from poverty focused development and educational policies adopted by the Botswana government in the middle 1970s. The study first examines the evolution of poverty focused strategies in the western oriented development and educational literature. Using major policy documents, the study then describes Botswana's evolving poverty focused strategies and demonstrates a close parallel to the development literature. Interpretations of whether impoverished Batswana are likely to benefit from poverty focused policies are provided from two theoretical perspectives: (1) The development/poverty focused perspective essentially evaluates Botswana's development and educational policies against its own standards since Botswana is closely allied with this development orientation. Poverty focused strategies assume that the poor will benefit by joining an expanding rural economy stimulated by redistribution to rural areas of government proceeds from economic growth. From this perspective, expanded rural education should be a major contributor to increased rural productivity. However, evidence from Botswana's policy documents and research reports indicates that redistribution from the high-growth mining sector had been limited and productive opportunities in rural areas were not significantly expanding in the early 1980s. (2) The dependency perspective challenges the notion that the poor rural Batswana would benefit significantly from incorporation in an expanding capitalist economy and views poverty focused rhetoric as a substitute for equality. The dependency perspective identifies expanding rural education as a means of socializing the poor for failure rather than as a contributor to increased productivity. Combining these two perspectives, the study concludes that impoverished rural Batswana are unlikely to benefit from poverty focused development and educational strategies, as presently implemented, despite greatly expanded rural infrastructure and greatly expanded access to schooling. Increased schooling in rural areas in the context of continuing rural stagnation is unlikely to contribute to increased rural productivity; it is more likely to continue to be the means of escape from unproductive rural areas. Benefit would be likely only if a greater commitment of government resources to poor rural areas as well as other structural reforms were forthcoming.