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Contact: Laurel Higbee
lhigbee@schoolventures.com

703.535.3257

Silent revolution of African education markets finds expression in the new APSI Index
New education index sheds light on opportunities for investment in Africa

(Washington, DC) December 3, 2007 – School Ventures today launched the African Private Schools Investment Index (“APSI” www.apsiindex.com), developed in cooperation with the Economist Intelligence Unit. The APSI is a research tool for individuals, private investors, academics, foundations and governments that informs decision-making within Africa's education markets.

Whereas the microcredit and mobile telephony markets in Sub-Saharan Africa are the current darlings of domestic and international investors, private education in the region represents the marginalized stepsister. With information asymmetries threatening to limit investment in private education, the APSI intends to place the slipper back on the foot of this Cinderella.

It is not difficult to see why microcredit and mobile telephony get all the attention. For one, 2005 was declared “The Year of Microcredit” for microcredit's success as a commercially-oriented poverty reduction strategy. Then, at the 2007 Connect Africa Summit in Rwanda, mobile telephony attracted US$50 billion in pledges primarily from private investors. They were responding to staggering subscriber growth (16 million in 2000 to 135 million in 2005) and mobile telephony is now expected to go beyond bridging the digital divide to leapfrogging over it.

“It does not make sense,” said Mubuso Zamchiya, founder and CEO of School Ventures. “Access to capital, technology and education are the three legs of the stool that support corporate and national competitiveness in the modern global economy. The world has placed confidence in the power of market forces to drive access, equity and innovation in finance and ICT. But 19th century mindsets still dominate our thinking when it comes to education. We still either fear or underrate the potential role of private education as a complementary force to public education in the quest toward Education for All.”

Yet, even with the misperception of elitism, its afterthought position in the global development agenda, and the desperate lack of access to commercial capital, private education is gradually advancing a silent revolution; education markets are scratching their way to prominence in Sub-Saharan Africa.

“Private schools exist at both ends of the economic spectrum in Africa and private schools for the poor represent a bold new frontier for sustainable mass education provision on a commercial basis,” said Professor James Tooley, President of Orient Global Education Fund.

Knowing that investors cannot be expected to risk capital in markets they do not understand, the APSI is taking a bold first step toward placing education market intelligence at their fingertips. The APSI aims to assess and analyze the growth potential in the education markets of 36 different African countries based on the existence of favorable conditions in several key categories spanning 46 economic and social indicators.

“Countries that score well across a number of categories, especially the social, market and operating environments, offer good prospects for investment in private sector education,” said Leo Abruzzese, Editorial Director in North America for the Economist Intelligence Unit. "No single factor has propelled countries to the top of the list."

The APSI's interactive website, Apsiindex.com, allows users to conduct their own scenario simulations by changing the relative importance of variables and observing the impact on the rankings. Comprehensive country profiles, graphs and charts, as well as discussion boards, are also features of the website.

“These are exciting times for education in Africa,” said Peter Woicke, former Executive Vice President of the International Finance Corporation. “Tools like the APSI are useful for investors, philanthropists, donors and policy makers, researchers, academics and the general public as well. They increase transparency and get people thinking innovatively about how to do well and do good, reducing inequality through private sector solutions.”

Cinderella, it seems, may be on the way to meeting her prince.

About School Ventures
School Ventures is an education development company based in the Washington, DC area. The Company exists to provide better intelligence for the education sector in Africa and internationally as a way to help school operators, and the investors that support them, make quality investment decisions. School Ventures works to reduce information asymmetries by:

• Assessing education markets across the world;
• Evaluating the performance of private schools and benchmarking them for the marketplace; and
• Analyzing public school systems to shed light on the complex relationships between education investment, school performance, and learning outcomes.