Primary education expansion and the challenge of inadequate teacher supply in Sub-Saharan Africa

Abstract

This paper focuses on the expansion of teacher education and the efforts to introduce universal primary education (UPE) in Africa. It also looks at the need for an adequate supply of primary school teachers. With specifi c reference to the expansion of teacher education in Kenya after independence, and the country’s issues regarding quality education, it shows that the poor supply of teachers in most African countries, following the introduction of free primary education, has more to do with (among other factors) the ad hoc manner in which UPE programmes were introduced, structural adjustment programmes (SAPs), and the teachers’ wage bill, rather than the inadequacy of inherited systems of teacher education.