Internal institutional, policy and capacity reforms are the keys to facilitating the transition to a trade and investment relationship for Africa with the world economy. We must be bullish on Africa, and we must be realistic. Serious challenges remain. Twenty-two of the world's 30 poorest countries are in Africa. A quarter of all African children will die before their fifth birthday from disease and malnutrition.
Clearly education is also a core issue at the center of Africa's development challenge.
From almost every study we have seen, the role of education in advancing a country's economic and political fortunes is tremendous. The World Bank found that investments in education for girls had the single highest rate of economic and social return for any development investment. Data shows that societies with literacy rates less than 70 percent simply do not grow and flourish. By the same token, when we look at the enormous progress that countries like South Korea made in the 1960s and 1970s, many of these advances are traced directly back to heavy investments in education and building human capacity. While sub-Saharan Africa has made great progress in education, enormous challenges remain.