Poverty and accessibility to education in the context of privatisation of services in Sub-Saharan Africa . The cases of Conakry and Douala

Abstract

Sub-Saharan African countries have been experiencing since the end of the last century a privatisation process in a number of areas. What could the impact of the quantitative and qualitative evolutions of the offer of schools on schooling rates be particularly for children from poor households? We have carried out secondary analyses of empirical data collected in 2003 for a study on mobility and accessibility to urban services of the poor populations from Conakry and Douala . If schooling problems seem even more significant in Conakry than in Douala, two converging results can be pointed out: 1) the density of schools and distance to the school have a real but limited impact on schooling rates; 2) because of high schooling costs and unaffordability for a number of households, private and public are not substitutable. From the point of view of equity in access to education, these results renew the need for public intervention as regards education.