Secondary Education

                           This graph shows the percentage of males and females that are enrolled in secondary school. As you can see the numbers in Africa are substantially lower than the world except for South Africa. So why is South Africa so much higher than the rest of the Africa? I believe that the answer to this question is that South African people are primarily from England because the country was once owned by them. This means that South Africa is a whole other world compared to the rest of Africa.
                           Another question that could be asked is why is the rest of African enrollment so much lower the rest of the world? There could be many different answers to this question. One answer would be they don't have the opportunity because they don't have any schools near them or because they have to help their families so they don't have the time. I have learned through distance running that most of the best distance runners come from Africa because they have to walk 10 miles just to get to school and then another 10 on the way home so it's like they are being prepped for all of training that will take place later. This shows how hard it is for African's to get an education, but it also shows how much the people want it that do go to school and make us Americans look so disrespectful for taking public education not serious.
                          This graph can be looked at through many different perspectives, but I'm sure that every single person can agree that change in necessary. In order for the world to improve then Africa must improve so I think that a lot more people should understand this and try to help out. Help can be made monetarily or just by advocating this problem to other people to spread the news and try to get this problem solved as quickly and efficiently as possible.

Sub-indices of Botswana.

   As you can see in the picture there are categories that influence the prosperity of a country. Botswana is ranked 1st and has been for the past 3 years. Although they do have an abundant supply of diamonds thats bringing in plenty of money, they are ranked 17th in economy. That might seem odd for a country to be rather far down the line in economy even though they have plenty of diamond mines at their exposure.

   Botswana also was ranked 3rd in entrepreneurship and opportunity. This means that they have many opportunities for people to look for jobs and other ventures. They also are good at exporting and importing goods. This helps bring in income and raise the GDP for the country. Although they make plenty off of the diamond mines, they have been trying to look into other ways to bring in profits for the country.

   As being ranked 1st in governance and 4th in personal freedom, Botswana has developed well since gaining independence from Great Britain in 1966. There is little corruption within it's governement. They care very little aboutbthe immigrants coming into the country. 

Debswana.

   In my recent blogs, I've posted about the landlocked country of Botswana. This country is known to be the top ranked prosperous country of the continent. A major reason why it's made such progress in recent years is because of its large diamond mines. Ever since the discovery of the supply of diamonds, its forever changed the country of Botswana.

   Botswana as of 2015 is progressing a lot faster than most of the countries on the continent. They have been moving up the ranks of a certain number of catgories. One in particular is education. They have spent a good amount of money on the education system they have set up. If it weren't for the abundant diamond mines, they wouldn't have the chance to improve the schools and environment for the students. 

   In 1969 the government of Botswana signed a "50/50" deal with the global diamond company De Beers. They've signed this deal so the company can explore and mine all of the countries mines'. This partnership, later called Debswana, helped make Botswana into what it is today. Although Botswana mines these riches as an owner, they also get a share of the profits rather than just bring in money by collecting taxes and royalties. 

   In conclusion, Botswana was built upon a foundation of a unique material that would later on help them to become the most prosperous African country of the 2010's. That unique material is diamonds. Since the discovery of the diamond supply they've increased the GDP and help improve the education for students.

Varying Solutions to Complex Challenges.

All around the world is a holiday celebrated called "International Youth Day".  The point of this holiday is to give the youth the chance to speak out on previous issues, how they got past these issues and how they are stronger than before. There have been a lot of issues, such as health issues and discrimination, but the topic I'm focusing on today is youth unemployment. While celebrating this day, it is important to turn your attention on Sub-Saharan most, since their youth population is currently enormous, and expecting to grow dramatically.

Due to an article I found, about 10 to 12 million Sub-Saharan youth enter the labor market each year. This growth provides and opportunity for a demographic dividend (the amount of working age people outweighs the number of dependents), it prevents the risk of hight unemployment. The website I researched provided me with multiple essays that were written by five of Brookings Africa Growth Initiatives.  The essays contained ways to fix the youth unemployment issue.

In the first essay, the most important thing it proposes it a program that teaches skills to young people over a two year period of time and then hires these individuals to work on rural community projects that show their newly learned work skills. I think this is such a good way to fix the youth unemployment because not only is this program teaching them skills they currently need, but hiring them also. Many other programs I have learned about just taught skills but never gave them an oppurtunity to use them. Another essay explained another important way to overcome youth unemployment. Paying close attention to the young women seeking jobs can lead to more women actually getting hired. Women often are discriminated in land ownership and must overcome cultural attitudes that still see women as caretakers. A third lesson is that government-sponsored vouchers and subsidies can help resolve the targeting problem by preserving a degree of enterprise and individual choice. These tools are especially worthy of consideration in situations where government services have the potential to be misdirected, either by going to recipients who should not receive them or by not reaching recipients who should.

Unlike most of the articles we have previously used, this one focuses on the ways to help youth unemployment. It opened my eyes a lot to how we can actually help these people instead of just focusing on the percentages.

Unemployment

The picture you see here says a lot about the topic our blog is focusing on. The people here are demanding a change. The unemployment rates in Africa are only continuing to get worse and them problem doesn't seem to be getting resolved. The people of Africa in this picture are taking a stand and trying to make something be done about this issue. This has been going on for long enough and they're tired of nothing being done. They seem to be protesting against this and trying to get somebody's attention. Somebody who will realize what is going on, who actually cares and who will take action and do something about this. Nobody seems to care, but what if it were your country? Then would it be a big deal to you? What is it going to take for people to take charge and resolve this?

The woman in the front is holding a sign that reads "We demand skills and development. Decent jobs for youth." The people of Africa don't have the greatest education. They get very little or they're just completely illiterate. The skills they learn aren't great which causes them not to develop right. In order to get better skills and development, they need to get a better education. The government needs to take action and take part in brightening their futures. The lack of education is what leads to unemployment especially for the youth. Because of their lack of knowledge, the youth either have terrible jobs, or none at all. If the job you have isn't good, there's really no point in having one. The people of Africa are demanding skills and development that will help them learn more and better their education. Learning more will help them to gain more knowledge which will be helpful when it comes to finding a job. This then leads back to "decent jobs for youth." After gaining these skills and development, the youth's education will be better, which will lead them to finding a good, and safe job. With more kids getting decent educations and decent jobs, the unemployment rate will begin to fall, solving many of the problems they have in Africa.

Like most of the other posts here on this blog, you see yet again that the unemployment problem leads back to education. The lesser the education, the harder it is to find jobs. No jobs mean no money. With no money, how could you possibly survive? The people of Africa have been living like this for long enough and I think it's about time someone do something about it. The government seems to be sitting back doing nothing and that's the biggest problem. They run the country, they should be the ones addressing this issue, but instead they're acting as if it is not even there. If this were your country, what would you do? Wouldn't you want help in resolving this? It's not fair for everyone to just watch this happen. People should work together to help create jobs and education facilities that will help these people. It doesn't take much to put a little effort in and try to make a difference in peoples lives. In fact, it'll all be worth it in the end.

Africa Unemployment

This picture really amazed me.  It shows that 1 in every 2 African youths are unemployed. That’s crazy considering the fact that Africa is one of the most highly populated countries in the world.  The youths making up Africa is precisely 41%... so out of that large percentage, half of them are jobless and do not create even the smallest of an income for their family.

Can you imagine what America would be like if half of it was unemployed? 

The next fact my picture shows, is that out of all the unemployed youth, 60% of them are women. Personally I was not surprised by this. In previous articles I have read it said, that IF women go to school, they most likely do not get jobs afterwards. They just work in the homes cooking, cleaning, and caring for the family and its needs. However, a lot of women do not go to school, they just stay at home with their mothers and begin picking up on the jobs women are “ required” to fulfill in the homes at such a young age.

The last fact my picture represents was most shocking to me. Within all the young Africans going to school only 10% of them will get a job once finished school. 10% is not a big number at all. This is exactly why there is high unemployment rates. Due to the lack in jobs available to these students once they have finished their education. They spend a lot of time working towards a good education, and there isn't even a job promised to them in the end. That right there is why Africa also has low education system numbers. Students simply do not see a point in going to school if they aren't guaranteed a place to work in the end.

This picture was really eye opening to me. All the articles stated facts like this, but actually seeing it shown through a picture made me realize how big this issue is and badly it needs to decrease. 

African Electricity and Energy

                   In this data chart above I learned a good amount not just about Africa but about the world as a whole.In today's world technology is becoming more and more of a necessity and a way of life. Seeing that 79% of people in Africa don't even have a means of getting to electricity is unbelievable. This means that the people of Africa will never be able to catch up to the world because they are way too busy playing catch up with all the little things that lead to educational success. Not only does having an obtainable way to work with technology benefit education it also benefits the economy because it gives many more adults opportunities to make money and gain skills that weren't previously available. The main reason I picked this picture was because in Madelyn's most recent post, Nikki commented discussing the possibility of online classes and I began to question if that idea was possible which I later came to learn that it isn't possible.
                Also in this picture there are many other educational things we can learn about Africa such as energy. Africa has the lowest per capita energy when looking at all the continents. This is also very upsetting because when you relate this to physics work requires energy so the less energy being used the less work gets done. Africa needs a tremendous amount of work done within itself so that means it need as much energy as it can get. The countries governments are collapsing because they are distraught about what they should do first and it is a split decision which makes it weak. Some people claim that education should be a first priority while others claim energy resources should be as well as many other cries for what should be first on the agenda. In my opinion, I think that this is in fact a very controversial topic and can see how there are so many different points of view. Although, I think that more caution should be taken in these discussions to make sure that rebellions don't occur as well as have the government fall. It is pretty ironic seeing a government argue about what is most important with helping them get ahead and in the process collapse and take five steps backwards.