Beyond economic complexity/growth diagnoses, I am excited to be doing a deep dive into education. A few weeks ago, I did a poll across different groups and ask what policy or public administration area should I focus on at the @Kennedy_School. Education came out: #EducateNigeria 
Over the last two months, I’ve engaged professors and students who are passionate about education transformation to help zoom in on the best education policy direction for Nigeria in the next 50years. #EducateNigeria
To effectively do this, we needed to ask “where does Nigeria want to be in 30-50 years”; since no one has defined this for us, I had to first define that, at least for me and we can revisit later and agree/disagree as a generation. #educateNigeria
Secondly, where is the world going to be in the next 30-50 years. We have some ideas about the next 5, that was easier. What sort of jobs or skills does the world (or Africa) need in that future and how can Nigeria position its education system to meet these? #EducateNigeria
Third and finally, where is Nigeria today in terms of education, what’s the gap and how to we fill it? These infographics show us some sad realities. 10.5 million children are out of school. Only 61% of Nigerians are literate. 10million youth can’t read/write #EducateNigeria
Without going too deep into data, we have a literacy problem. Yesterday I spent over an hour on the phone with one of the finest minds on Education in Nigeria, the brilliant Dr. Modupe Adefeso-Olateju of TEP and she graciously broke down the problem. #educateNigeria
I’m her words “how do you even begin to teach a child about AI or Data Science if he or she can’t read or write?” According to her, it takes about 50days to get a child to have foundational literacy and numeracy. This is proven! #EducateNigeria
How then do children go through our new foundational literacy and numberacy system of 1.6.3. (1 years pre-primary, 6 years primary and 3 years junior secondary school) and still can’t read or write? Only about 30% of children can reach and write by JSS3. Shocking! #EducateNigeria
Short of declaring a state of emergency on education, and since I have no formal authority to do so, lol, I am enlisting the help of Nigerian@students/Professors at @MIT, @Harvard Ed School and professionals in Nigeria to spend the next 6 months... @EducateNigeria
working on revamping our foundational literacy and numeracy. Since my main constituency for now is the private sector, I’ll be looking to work with people who are willing to put their money towards this. We will create some positive deviances, and hopefully scale #educatenigeria
If we are able to raise private funds to build say 10 schools across Nigeria and work with organizations like TEP, in support of SUBEB (and State Governors) to get literacy up to 98%, hopefully the federal government will adopt the model of the positive deviances. #EducateNigeria
Hopefully then we can actually begin to teach students coding, AI, Blockchain, data science and other skills of the future. And if Nigeria decides that it wants to be a manufacture hub of Africa for instance, we’ll resign curriculum accordingly. #educateNigeria
At least for now, let our children learn to read and write. It’s their constitutional right, and we’re denying them of that right. We will also need to raise new types of teachers, train and pay them well and ensure they’re well mentored by older ones. #EducateNigeria
That’s my thought on basic education and I won’t wait for government on this. This is the foundation, once a child is 13-15 and can’t read or write, it sets the cause for their lives. Even they’re talent like wizkid, they will end up signing the wrong contract. #educateNigeria
